An eighteenth century intellectual movement whose three central concepts were the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress. Enlightenment thinkers believed they could help create better societies and better people.

Did Rousseau believe that it was the right of the strongest to rule? No; he believed that being strong and forceful did not necessarily give the strongest the rule unless the people willed it.

The enlightened person is happy and joyful. He has a cheerful disposition most of the time, and is willing to share that joy with others. He is always optimistic that all challenges have a resolution. Even though the resolution may not be the most desirable, he is confident that he is capable of being at peace with it.

Declaration of Independence – Right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness; all men are created equal; right to overthrow government. Constitution – Based on popular sovereignty, created a new 3 branch government, used checks and balances.

At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form.

John Locke

10 Key Figures of The Enlightenment

• John Locke (1632–1704)
• Frederick the Great (1712–1786)
• Voltaire (1694–1778)
• Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
• Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
• Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
• David Hume (1711-1776)

His political theory of government by the consent of the governed as a means to protect the three natural rights of “life, liberty and estate” deeply influenced the United States’ founding documents. His essays on religious tolerance provided an early model for the separation of church and state.

In political theory, or political philosophy, John Locke refuted the theory of the divine right of kings and argued that all persons are endowed with natural rights to life, liberty, and property and that rulers who fail to protect those rights may be removed by the people, by force if necessary.

Labor can generate claims to private property because private property makes individuals more independent and able to direct their own actions. Nozick (1974) takes Locke to be a libertarian, with the government having no right to take property to use for the common good without the consent of the property owner.

Libertarianism is often thought of as ‘right-wing’ doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on social—rather than economic—issues, libertarianism tends to be ‘left-wing’. Right-libertarians are distinguished from the dominant libertarian tradition by their relation to property and capital.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862): advocate of minimal or no government and civil disobedience against the authoritarian state. Joseph Déjacque (1821–1864): French communist-anarchist and the first person to coin the term libertarian in its modern sense.