Enlightenment Thinkers

we are going to talk about a time period called the Enlightenment it is during the Enlightenment that we see huge changes in the world in terms of the way people view government for the long history of the world there was always a king and it was the job of that King to make sure that people stayed in line that people did what they were supposed to do and it was the job of the king to rule over the people so you had a king and that king would tell people what to do and the people would do I don't think I have a whole lot of choice because the Kings power was what we call absolute so these kings were known as absolute monarchs because they had absolute power over the people that they ruled but where did they get this absolute power from it was believed that they got the absolute power from God up above the King and Kings referred to this as their divine right of king so the divine right or the right from God came down to the king the King would then rule over the people and tell the people what to do well in the 1700s you started to see a time period called the Enlightenment in emerge and during the Enlightenment there were a number of people who started to question this concept that a king simply got his right to rule from God and then would rule over people and tell people what to do and those ideas might be rational they might not be rational people that started to challenge some of these ideas for people like a gentleman named Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes comes along and he says that people are basically two things evil and selfish so I'll draw a little evil guy here for us and that people make bad decisions and because people make bad decisions people need over them they need things they need absolute monarchs then tell them what to do another man came along by the name of John Mok he was a second enlightenment thinker and he said this whole idea that hobbes has about people being evil and selfish and so on is not really true he said people are born into the world with what are called natural rights and he said there are three basic natural rights of people and those rights are life people are born with their life obviously they are born with their liberty or their freedom and they are born with property and John Locke said because people are born with life liberty and property they know when those things are violated Sony attempts to violate your life your right away going to protect yourself if somebody attempts to violate your Liberty by locking you up or kidnapping you you're going to want to get away from that and right that situation and if somebody violates your property obviously we call that stealing in society and so John Locke said the role of a government the job of a government is to protect your three basic natural rights and so government is then the role of government is to protect or if you want to remember it this way lock up your natural basic rights surround and protect your basic rights this is why in a place like the United States we have an army that faces out and protects your basic rights if somebody from the outside threatens your life then the Army goes and attacks protects your basic rights if somebody steals your property it is the job of the government to investigate that situation and to protect you the next enlightenment thinker montesquieu naman ski comes along and he says but wait a minute he says what if these the same government that is protecting your natural rights what if that same government uses its power against your natural rights in other words the government comes to take your life the government came comes to lock you up or take away your liberty or take your property and so Montesquieu put forth the idea that there should be a separation of powers a separation of powers and that government should look something like this that there should be an executive part of government which is what we have in the presidency today a legislative part of government which is where our Congress is and that a judicial part of government and each of those different parts of government should have power but those powers should be balanced and should be a check on each other so you have a tremendously powerful government as Locke spoke about but at the same time the powers within government are divided the next leader that comes along the next writer that comes along is a gentleman named Rousseau jean-jacques Rousseau and Rousseau is going to state that government is actually a contract a contract and when we sign contracts contracts are agreements between people so jean-jacques Rousseau says a contract between the government and the people is called a social contract Rousseau would say that just like Locke said the government's job is to protect our basic rights of life liberty and property and if the government does anything besides that because the people have a contract with that government the people have a right to back out of the contract and to make a new government for themselves the last of the Enlightenment thinkers that talked about redefining government is a gentleman named Voltaire Voltaire did quite a bit of writing but one of his major focuses is going to be on the idea that government needs to be separate from the church in other words he believed in religious freedom so I'll draw a basic Church here for you okay on the one side on the other side I will draw a state of some kind now state in particular okay and so the idea is that the state or the government should be separate from any kind of religious practice okay so that there is greater tolerance in society of all different kinds of religious groups he was very much against religious fanaticism because very often these kings up here who believed that they got their rights to rule from God would take whatever religion they were and force it on the people in Volterra said that's not a good idea now the way you can remember these is if you will with Voltaire if you think of the big V for Voltaire and you put on one side state and on the other side you put Church it's almost as if Voltaire is prying open with the V the separation between the state and the church if you take the name Russa his basic concept looks much like or I should say sounds much like his name is actually fresh Russo Rous se au sounds like Russo and if you just drop down the so and Russo Roo social contract through social contract is a way to remember Russo okay Montesquieu of all the Enlightenment writers his big idea is this separation of powers Montesquieu Mon Tess qu i e you if you separate out this very long name you have kind of a concept of separation of church and state sauer longest one we're going to separate separation of powers separation of church and state Rousseau we have roots social contract Voltaire we're going to use the V & Voltaire to pull apart a separation of church and state and over here for John Locke remember John Locke talked about natural rights okay and if you just remember in your mind this concept that it is the job of the government to lock up lock up to lock to protect our basic rights basic rights natural rights but remember the thomas hobbes book was called leviathan because he believed that the government should be kind of like a sea monster where it rises up it basically comes and gets or attacks anybody that is acting in a way that they should not remember of these five Enlightenment thinkers Thomas Hobbes is going to be the most like the traditional idea about what a government should be like okay you have to put this all together real quickly all of these writings are going to be read all over the world and they're going to have huge results so if we move down this way into our results the big result that we're going to talk about in our next mini lesson here is the fact that this is going to set off revolutions around the world people are going to decide that the ideas of these Enlightenment thinkers are actually pretty good ideas and that the way the world has been ruled up to this point should change one of the major revolutions that takes place is going to take place in what is eventually going to be the United States the American colonies are going to in 1776 they are going to rebel against the British a revolution is also going to take place in the country of freights in Europe and you are going to have a second revolution taking place and that is going to take place get my french flag here that's going to take place in 1789 and that will be the focus of our next lesson

Channel: Mr. Byrd

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Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2013