The Enlightenment: The Rise of New Governments

Kings, emperors, and czars have ruled over Europe for hundreds of years, and the general public accepted them as their rulers because they believed they were placed in this hierarchical position of supremacy by a divine deity. This hierarchical structure of society was never really questioned because most people simply could not conceive of another form of government or society; however, as Enlightenment thinkers questioned everything around them, they turned their attention to the political sphere and began to question the long-standing tradition of a monarchy. English political thinker John Locke believed a government should be subject to the people, not the people as subjects to the government, as under a monarchy. Locke suggested the idea that the governments sole purpose is to secure the rights of the governed- the protection of the life, liberty, and property of all- and if a government begins to abuse those rights or ceases to defend them effectively, the governed have a moral right to overthrow that government and replace it with one that does the job properly. If this idea sounds familiar it is because this is the exact same idea propounded in the American Declaration of Independence. The type of government suggested by Locke involves a type of social contract between the government and the governed in which the governed agree to give up a certain amount of individual freedom in exchange for the protection of their individual rights. One of the key concepts to arise from this time period is the idea of inalienable rights. These are certain rights each individual has that cannot be taken away. Intellectuals and revolutionaries sought a new form of government that would constitutionalize the rights of citizens and deprive the State of any right to set those human liberties aside. The culmination of these ideas is ultimately expressed in the Constitution of the United States of America.