Ideas of Enlightment
During the history, many well-known thinkers of different times have developed their theories on what is better for the society and how people can reach ideal social life. All those men were noble people and had vast experience and each of them wrote from the prospect of their education and qualification. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau created political theories which differ from each other; nevertheless, those writings have one common issue that they discourse: how to make an ideal society a reality.
The French nobleman and judge, Montesquieu, in his writing The Spirit of the Laws (1748) presented a number of political theories regarding the role of climate and history in a nation’s political structure (Halsall). In this work, the thinker focused on three branches of the state’s power and idealized the British Constitution. According to Montesquieu, the government and state will exist until there is a liberty in the society and all power is not concentrated in one hands (Halsall). In order to reach the liberty inside the state, each person needs to have safety and tranquility of mind within the society. They can be obtained when the government performs such a way that one man is not afraid of another. The thinker stated that legislative and executive powers could not be in one hands, since than the tyrannical society would be developed and the liberty could not be reached (Halsall). At the same time, judicial power should be separate from legislative and executive ones; hence in the case if it is not, the judge might become an oppressor. Montesquieu outlined that in order to reach an ideal society, the executive power should be in the hands of monarch and legislative power had better be regulated by many than by one person (Halsall).
Voltaire in his Patrie, in The Philosophical Dictionary (1752) describes his vision on who is a real patriot and what does the world fatherland actually means (Halsall). The thinker assumes that thousands of people who live in a particular state and actually do not have a fatherland (Halsall). According to Voltaire, the truth of life is that when a person is a real patriot, he/she becomes an enemy to the rest of mankind (Halsall). It happens due to the fact that if the individual wants to be a good patriot, he need to wish for his country to be powerful in arms and enriched by trade. The man states that the country cannot become rich without making another one miserable and one will not gain until another will lose (Halsall). Thus, if someone wishes for his country to be great, he wishes the harm to the neighbor state at the same time. The person who wishes his fatherland becomes the citizen of the world.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his work The Social Contract (1763) conveyed his opinion about the social contract among all members of the society and replaced “natural” human rights (Halsall). The man followed and made more profound John Lickem’s idea of social contract between …
