【正文】 l, Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke. Among them, Hobbes and Locke are the earliest philosophes in Britain and their political thought has made tremendous impact on the shaping of American culture.At the right beginning of the Enlightenment, British thinker Hobbes claimed that the state of nature knows no government, and government is instituted by people. Before the birth of government, men in a state of nature were in a war of all against all in which life and subsistence were hardly protected. To find a way out of this desperate state, men were willing to make a social contract and transfer their rights to a ruler or rulers to establish the state to keep peace and order. Thus government came into being and men entered a state of society. the Leviathan by Thomas HobbesWhile sovereignty was conferred by people, people must absolutely obey the monarch. Such philosophy of social contract posed a threat to the Divine Right of King theory, which, as it was called, asserted that God chose some people to rule on earth in his will and whatever the monarch decided was the will of God. However, far from being an antiauthoritarian, Hobbes regarded absolute monarchy as the best government pattern. As a matter of fact, he just converted the divine right of King to that given by people under social contract.Another important person who carried forward and further developed the theory of the social contract was John Locke. But contradicting Hobbes, Locke maintained that the original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and tolerance。 that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed。 or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press。 equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything。 all human beings were equal and free to pursue “l(fā)ife, health, liberty and possessions”. In his The Second Treatise of Government ，Locke wrote:In a state of nature all men are free and equal.In a state of nature no man ought to harm another.Man acquires property through the products of his labor.In order to remedy inconveniences resulting from a state of nature…men enter into contract, thereby creating a civil society… to defend the natural rights of men.If a government violates the social contract… it rebels against the people, and the people have the right to dissolve the government.This set forth the doctrine that the contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits. Behind the doctrine laid the idea of the independence of the individual person. Against Hobbes, Locke argued that the ruler is only the unilateral party to the contract so that the ruler’s rights are restrained as well as its obligations bound by the contract. Men’s right to life, liberty and property are automatically earned by being born. And the ruler’s powers are given to him as a trust for the good of its people. If the trust is broken his powers can be taken away. So, for Locke, a legitimate civil government is instituted by the explicit consent of those governed. Those who make this agreement transfer some of their rights to the central government, while retaining the others. He believed that a monarchy with an assembly to hold the monarch to his trust was an ideal political arrangement. From here, it is quite clear to see that Locke is an advocate of constitutional monarchy. And his radical natural right theories influenced the ideologies of the American and French revolutions. Locke also added the division of state powers to and argued for broad religious freedom to his social contract theories. As we know, the Enlightenment reached its climax in France by its most enthusiastic followers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. Inspired by the pioneering spirit of reason, they vigorously fostered the development of the Enlightenment.A central theme of the Enlightenment is the effort to humanize religion. Enlightened philosophers reject the older pessimistic belief in man’s total depravity. Instead of the gloomy doctrine of Original Sin, they embr