ive whole. Locke interpreted the meaning of a “social contract” as the freedom of all people to pursue their own personal interests with the inevitable cause of “inequity, oppression, and lost of freedom.” (691) Whereas Hobbes saw all people being equal under an absolute ruler, but none free. Rousseau’s view guarantees freedom and equality for all individuals who give everything for the betterment of the whole creating a just society. This ideal is mimicked in our Declaration of Independence. But it was the influence of Montesquieu, the philosophe author of The Spirit of the Laws in 1748, which aided in the understanding that government powers need to be separated to secure liberty. He instilled the idea of checks and balances found in our American Constitution and in many other ruling institutions as well. These ideals of the Enlightenment are repeated and strengthened through the inspirations of many brilliant intellectuals. The idea of balance and harmony is prevalent in the writings of this era. This new Newtonian universe is learning to obey its own new laws of reason without divine intervention. The downfall to the operation was fact that the elitists were the ones first exposed through the invention of the printing press and the use of salons to congregate and spread these monumental concepts. Slowly but surely the changes brought about by a newly enlightened breed of p...
