Compare And Contrast John Locke And Rousseau

After many years of absolute monarchy different philosophers, leaders, and writers idealized new forms of government to create the age of Enlightenment. Important Pre-Enlightenment people such as Queen Elizabeth,Thomas Hobbes, King Louis XIV, and Plato believed that the most successful way to run a country was with a single ruler. The philosophers and the leaders of the Enlightenment era believed that providing citizens with independence and freedom was the best way for a country to thrive and succeed. In years past, the majority of governmental ideas were based on a ruler with absolute power, such as the king or queen of a country. The common belief of the ruling class during the pre enlightenment period was that humans were born dirty, unhealthy, and were generally unable to govern themselves. With a “caring” and “fair” ruler they could be saved from the burden of their own judgement. In contrast, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Baron De Montesquieu, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that people were born pure and only were bad from the “corruption of society”, thus they should have a say in
Locke and Rousseau both believed in a form of direct democracy, including freedom, equality, and independence. One of Locke’s important philosophies was that people are born with a blank slate, the “Tabula Rasa”, so everyone deserves political respect from birth, but with bad actions such privileges can go away. Rousseau pushed for a social contract to govern society, which took away rights but promised safety. Also, they both valued the human mind much more than past rulers, hence why they set up many ways for citizens to express their own ideas in their government. By including their philosophies in the Enlightenment age it helped push more countries in Europe to become a direct