French Social Contract Essay

In the eighteenth century, the movement known as the Enlightenment brought forward a necessary progress to the French governments. During this time period, France experienced reason that focused on equality of the human being, social contract that erased the individual will, and the growing middle class whose authority was established at a similar level of the monarch’s. Many philosophers believed in reasoning the equality of human beings and disregard just about everything that relates to inherited knowledge. A philosophe wanted to create a movement.The social contract based on general will encouraged the needs of the community and the not the wants of an individual. Finally, the growing middle class began a new form of government for France that would include balance of power between three branches. The rethinking of past ideas was led by reason and the determination to find new tradition. The French judge, Montesquieu, emphasized that logic was to apply to all status in the nation. As Voltaire explains the reasoning of spiritual souls, the very basis of the Church was reconsidered. God, a mechanic, started the universe and it has been a continuous clock. Also, the reasoning of tabula rasa was meant to recognize that the inherited ideas of the past centuries were not entirely the

Rousseau explained that a person must give up one’s desires for the good of the community. The idea was that it was in the public’s best interest. Montesquieu’s work reflected the ethic of a strong stable government in which the decisions were made for the public. Popular sovereignty was one example that reflected the will of the public. The use of English government in France was seen as a way to unify the people and promote a more stable republic and less of a single monarch in power. The social contract defined the monarch as being on the same level as everyone else when it came to the public