Enlightenment Philosophers

Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer, international revolutionary, and controversialist and he wrote "Common Sense" that was behind the call for the Americans to gain independence from Great Britain. The pamphlet he wrote called the "Rights of man" was his most popular pamphlet during the movement to reform in Great Britian in the 1790s. Thomas Paine was active in the French Revolution and was a member of the French National Convention. He was seen as an important person in the emergence of claims for the state's responsibilities, educational provision and welfare. His "age of reason" was a popular deist text which remained influential throughout the 19th century. Thomas Paine's ideas still influence people even today.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a very influential Enlightenment thinker in Europe in the 18th century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's first major work on philosophy "Discourse on the sciences and Arts" won the best response to an essay contest that was conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750. Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that the progression of science and art was causing corruption in the virtue and morality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a huge impact on governments today through the evolution of philosophy and social contract. The Idea of social contract is found in the American Declaration of Independence when the Founding Fathers wanted to create a government for and by the people of the United States.

John Locke is a very famous philosopher and political theorist in the 17th century and he inspired many people with his theories. An example of people who where inspired by John Locke was the writers of the Declaration of Independence. John Locke wrote the second Treatise of Government and it identified the base of a legitimate government and that if the government failed to protect the rights of the people, the citizens had the right to overthrow the government. This idea really influenced Declaration of Independence writer Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Hobbes, is known because of his political philosophy, was a thinker with a lot of interests. Thomas Hobbes fought for the fact that in order to avoid chaos, which he thought of it with the state of Nature, people need to accede to a social contract and establish a civil society. In the Declaration of Independence, it reflects the idea of Social Contract Theory, which was developed by Thomas Hobbes, and later continued by John Locke. Thomas Hobbes argued that in a persons natural state, they tend to concern with only the self and fulfilling and selfish needs.

Montesquieu was a great philosopher of the Enlightenment. Montesquieu constructed a Naturalist account of the many forms of government and how they were advanced or constrained in their development. Montesquieu came up with the idea of separation of powers and checks and balances. Separation of powers was established so that the government was divided into three branches. Checks and balances was established so that each branch kept a check on the other branches so that no one branch becomes too powerful.

Voltaire was a French writer and an activist was someone who helped defining the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment. Voltaire strongly supported a social contract reformation while Rousseau supported equality in society. Both philosophers gave America's founding fathers and the American revolution concepts in which to form a new type of government.