The Enlightenment And The American Revolution - 2027 Words

The Enlightenment and the American Revolution Everyone knows the story of how America came to be. It was similar to David versus Goliath, the American colonists against the potent England. England at the time of the Revolution, boasted the largest and most powerful fighting force in the history of the world. The Americans were rebellious country-cousins who wanted freedom from what they regarded as a capricious and tyrannical paternal England so they could govern themselves. The result was America. How did they do it? A look at what influenced and motivated them might help answer this question. In particular, understanding the impact of Enlightenment thinking on the Revolutionaries, especially that small group of men, most people call The†¦show more content†¦Although when a new idea was introduced to the world, it angered the king (or other ruler), it did not have such an enormous effect on the population, usually because the king portrayed himself as a â€Å"universal ruler†. Jean-Jacques Rousseau hated this. The king claimed it was his â€Å"divine right† to rule, which supposedly gave him the ability to say or do anything he pleased. Rather than having a â€Å"divinely chosen† ruler, Rousseau believed in popular sovereignty, the idea that governments should express the will of the people. The divine right of kings is exactly what The Founders wanted explicitly to avoid when contemplating their new nation. As John Locke said, in his most famous book Two Treatises on Government, â€Å"People have the right to revolt if government doesn’t protect people’s natural rights.† Maybe the most important concept to the Founding Fathers was natural law and natural right. This was a concept that had most thoroughly been discussed by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke had very similar views on natural law and natural right. What was their difference, and why did John Locke’s thinking end up influencing The Founders? John Locke’s views on natural rights were reciprocal, that is, one could exercise their rights as long as they respected the same exercise of right’s for others and did not infringe upon those rights. He rooted this reciprocity in â€Å"natural law†. Thomas Hobbes state of the natural man was