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John Locke Enlightenment Ideas

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John Locke Enlightenment Ideas
Way back when in the late 17th and 18th century, there was this thing called, The Enlightenment, and people say it was explicitly important for why we live life the way we live it today. Now whether you believe that or not (I suggest believing it because it's true) it doesn't part from the the people who were a major key in this whole enlightenment thing. I will talk about four different philosophers in this essay that all spoke about individual freedom and natural rights. These thinkers were all majorly influenced by a man named Isaac Newton. They all wanted to be the “next newton”. So they invented, spoke, wrote books, wrote poems and letters all to share their ideas. So there is just one question, What are these philosophers main ideas? …show more content…
Locke believed that people are born a free human being. His main idea is his writing was that if a government should fail the people of the country have the right to become or create a new government. The same rules apply if the citizens decide the government is using their power in the wrong ways. As well as the other philosophers and more to come as I write, John Locke wrote many books and was a very influential enlightenment thinker. In one of his books, Second Treatise on Civil Government, written in 1690, he was talking about the dissolution of government. He says,”When the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide themselves, by erecting a new legislative,... they have not only a right to to get out of a failed government, but to prevent it.”(Locke) Okay, that literally is almost a restatement of what I said about his beliefs earlier. This explains that if a government was to be unruly or disrespectful to their people, the people have the right to rebel and create a new law making body. The interesting thing about our government is that if we were in fact to rebel against our government, which we have right to, the government would also then have to right to shut us down and stop the crusade we started. What he is saying is true but what Locke is also saying is what we do with our individual rights can always come back to bite us in the

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