Enlightenment and Constitution

Enlightenment and the Constitution The coupled States is a demesne established in 1776 on a set of principles liberty, equality, and self- administration. These estimatels derived in separate from broad lessons of history, from the colonist, and treatises such as those of Locke and Rousseau. Liberty is a principle that souls should be free to act and think as they choose, as long as their actions dont infringe on the mightilys and freedoms of others. Equality is a supposition that all in all individuals are equal and entitled to equal treatment nether the law.Self- government activity is the principle that the people are the ultimate source and proper beneficiary of governing authority. These principles were the foundation for the united States set forth and compose by our founding fathers, but taken from rulers and minds of Europeans during the Enlightenment period. The Enlightenment was an eighteenth- century gifted movement whose proponents believed that human beings could apply a critical, reasoning spirit to all(prenominal) problem (Hunt, Lynn, Martin & Rosenwein, page 545).During this period the rulers, writers, and thinkers gave the back bone to the resolve of Independence, the coupled States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Although before we get to this period and how it shaped the United States we will score to go back a little notwithstanding to 1651. In 1651 an English philosopher Thomas Hobbes had his work Leviathan published. Hobbes argued that government rests on a well-disposed weigh in which the people give up trustworthy freedoms they would have in a state of nature in return for the aegis that a sovereign ruler can provide.Almost a half of a century later, an English philosopher, John Locke, used Hobbes concept of social contract in his Second Treatise on Civil Government. Locke claimed that all individuals have certain inalienable rights, including those of life, liberty, and property. When people form a government for securing their safety, they retain these individual rights. only Locke saw the social contract a bit differently.The correspondence to submit to governing authority is based on the premise that government will protect these rights, if the government fails to the people can overthrow the government and form a new one( Patterson,page 14-15, 30). Thomas Jefferson declared that Locke was one of the third greatest men that ever lived. Jefferson paraphrased Lockes ideas in passages of the Declaration of Independence. Including those that, all men are created equal, that government derive their just powers from the consent of the government, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish a tyrannical government. The Declaration was a call of revolution rather than a framework for government. However the ideas contained in the document liverty, equality, individual rights, self-government became the basis for the Constitution of the United States (Patterson, page 30). I n Voltaires, Treatise on Toleration and denim Jacques Rousseau, Social boil down we find more Enlightenment thinkers ideas framed in the Constitution. The ideas the Constitution receives from these whole works are the basis for Amendment I, freedom of religion.Voltaire states in A Treatise on Tolertion, devotion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. Christians should ache each other. I, however, am going further I say that we should wish all men as brothers, are we not all children of the resembling father and creatures of the same God? Voltaire is setting the basis for freedom of religion, facial expression that the people must show Universal Tolerance for all. Rousseau takes it even further in The Social Contract.He states, it is of importance to the State that each citizen should have a religion requiring his devotion to duty, however the dogmas of that religion are of no refer to the State. Rousseau sets forth the idea that the government sha ll make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, as stated by the offset printing Amendment of the Constitution. Finally Cesare Beccarria and Empress Catherine the Great both have an idea that resides in the Constitution. That idea is that all men are innocent until proven guilty.In Beccarrias annoyance and Punishment he states, No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty nor can rules of order take from him the public protection until it have been proven that he has violate the conditions on which it was granted. Empress Catherine states in her Proposal for a New Legal cipher in Russia, No man ought to be looked upon as guilty, before he has received his judicial sentence nor can the Laws deprive him of their protection when it is soon enough dubious, whether he is Innocent or Guilty?. The United States is a body politic established in 1776 on a set of principles liberty, equality, and self-government. These ideal s derived in break down from broad lessons of history, from the colonist, and treatises from the Enlightenment Period. Men and women from Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Cesare Beccarria, and Empress Catherine the Great have tending(p) ideas that our founding fathers saw and deemed worthy to be put in the United States Constitution. Thomas Jefferson himself based many ideas in the Declaration of Independence from concepts written by John Locke that became the basis for the Constitution of the United States.Where would the United States be without these enlightened minds from Europe? Works Cited Beccarria, Cesare, Crime and Punishment Catherine the Great, Proposal for a New Legal Code in Russia Hunt, Lynn, Thomas R. Martin and Barbara H. Rosenwein The Making of the atomic number 74 Bedford/St. Matins, Boston, New York, 2009 Locke, John, Second Treatise Patterson, Thomas E. , The American Democracy, Mc Graw Hill, New York, NY, 2009 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Social Contract Voltaire, Treatise on Toleration Europe?