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How Did John Locke Contribute To The Enlightenment

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Arguably one of the most important and most enriching periods in human history was the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, a time in which many great thinkers used reason to birth groundbreaking ideas about science, religion, government, philosophy, and a wide range of other subjects. Prior to the advent of the Enlightenment, most ideas were built on “folk beliefs, authority, or religion”, especially notions of human nature. The change in methods of thinking that occurred also triggered an extremely important change in peoples’ concepts of human nature, which in turn inspired people such as John Locke and Montesquieu to invent novel forms of government. An understanding of human nature is required to form a government that provides for the needs of its people. …show more content…

He believed that men were born neither good nor evil, but were instead molded and shaped by the experiences they had throughout their lives. He also was of the belief that there were certain rights - life, liberty, and property - which a man was born with and that it was wrong for a government to infringe on such rights. Because of this, he created a model of government whose job it was to protect those inalienable rights. Such a government got its power from the consent of its people, and should it not guard their rights, the people’s duty would be to overthrow it. This model of government is what that of the United States is based on

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