What Enlightenment philosopher created the three branches of government? trias politica
What did Hobbes believe in?
Hobbes believes that moral judgments about good and evil cannot exist until they are decreed by a society’s central authority. This position leads directly to Hobbes’s belief in
an autocratic and absolutist form of government
.
How did Thomas Hobbes and John Locke’s philosophies differ?
Hobbes was a proponent of Absolutism, a system which placed control of the state in the hands of a single individual, a monarch free from all forms of limitations or accountability. Locke, on the other hand, favored a more open approach to state-building.
What government did John Locke believe in?
Locke favored a
representative government
such as the English Parliament, which had a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted representatives to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male property owners should have the right to vote.
What was Voltaire’s ideas?
Voltaire
believed above all in the efficacy of reason
. He believed social progress could be achieved through reason and that no authority—religious or political or otherwise—should be immune to challenge by reason. He emphasized in his work the importance of tolerance, especially religious tolerance.
Many of his most famous works were banned.
Since his
writing denigrated everything from organized religion to the justice system
, Voltaire ran up against frequent censorship from the French government.
Founding Fathers, the most prominent statesmen of America’s Revolutionary generation, responsible for the successful war for colonial independence from Great Britain, the liberal ideas celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, and the
republican
form of government defined in the United States Constitution.
The Federal Government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in
the Congress, the President, and the Federal courts
, respectively.
Drafted by James Madison, and presented by Edmund Randolph to the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787,
the Virginia Plan
proposed a strong central government composed of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
These branches are the legislative branch, which makes laws and takes the form of the United States Congress; the executive branch, which enforces the laws and consists of the president and people who report to the president; and the judicial branch, which evaluates laws and includes the Supreme Court and other courts.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, scientist, and historian best known for his
political philosophy
, especially as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651).
Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher and scientist, was one of the key figures in the political debates of the Enlightenment period. He
introduced a social contract theory based on the relation between the absolute sovereign and the civil society
.
Montesquieu believed that
all things were made up of rules or laws that never changed
. He set out 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.
Hobbes thought a monarchy was best, and that the people could never overthrow the sovereign power. Locke believed that the government should be overthrown by the people once it failed to serve and protect them.
Voltaire
dominated the discourse of his era
. In his writing, he left virtually no subject untouched. Voltaire wrote on subjects as distinct as metaphysics and politics, and he circulated nearly as many books of history as he did books of political theory.
Voltaire’s failure to produce an original philosophy was, in a sense, counterbalanced by his deliberate cultivation of a philosophy of action;
his ‘common sense’ crusade against superstition and prejudice and in favour of religious toleration
was his single greatest contribution to the progress of Enlightenment.
French political philosopher Montesquieu was best known for
The Spirit of Laws
(1748), one of the great works in the history of political theory and of jurisprudence.
In conclusion,
The Legislative Branch
is the most powerful branch of the United States government not only because of the powers given to them by the Constitution, but also the implied powers that Congress has.
The Framers structured the government in this way to prevent one branch of government from becoming too powerful, and to create a system of checks and balances. Under this system of checks and balances, there is an interplay of power among the three branches.
