【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 nd 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 embraced the concept that favored man’s capability of infinite perfectibility and that the good or evil human traits result from environmental conditioning rather than from the sins of Adam and Eve. American literature lectures, part Ⅱ~mseifert/ It was the Enlightenment, not the Renaissance or the Reformation that dislodged the ecclesiastical establishment from central control of cultural and intellectual life. By emancipating science from the trammels of theological tradition the Enlightenment rendered possible the autonomous evolution of modern culture.While all of the philosophes opposed despotism, denied clericalism and advocated democracy, they had their individual thought which differed themselves from others. For instance, Voltaire’s chief adversary was JeanJacques Rousseau. Whereas Voltaire argued that equality was impossible and called for a transitional period in the middle of despotism and constitutional monarchy, Rousseau argued that inequality was not only unnatural, but it made decent government impossible. Whereas Voltaire insisted on the supremacy of the intellect, Rousseau emphasized the emotions, being a contributor to both the Enlightenment and its successor, romanticism. Another renowned philosophe was the Marquis de Montesquieu, a judicial official as well as a nobleman. Born in Bordeaux, France, in 1689 to a wealthy family, he went to college and studied science and history, eventually being a lawyer in the local government. Montesquieu won his fame by publishing the Persian Letter, but it was the Spirit of Law (1748) that made him famous. On the base of Locke’s division of state powers theory, he explicitly brought forward the principle of separation of powers. Montesquieu believed that all things were made up of rules and laws that never changed. He set to study these laws scientifically with the hope that knowledge of the laws of government would reduce the problems of society and improve human life. In the Spirit of Law, Montesquieu described three types of government: a monarchy (ruled by a king or queen), a republic (ruled by an elected leader), and despoti