John Lock and the French Revolution
For this essay I will be talking about the English philosopher John Locke and how he may have viewed the French Revolution if he would have been alive during it. Locke died in 1704 while the French Revolution began in 1789, so while we can’t actually know what he would have thought, we can examine his previous thoughts and try to apply them to the French Revolution. I will first examine Locke’s views about government and how it should receive its power. Then I’ll be talking about what Locke would have thought about the French Revolution and what advice he would have given to the King of France to solve the protests. Some of Locke’s views include that governments were originally formed from people wanting to be protected from physical harm and that a government is a form of contract stating that the citizens will relinquish some of their rights for the promise of protection. He also believed that governments receive power from the people, so they need to follow the will of the people and uphold their
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Also, many French citizens were inspired by ideas from the Enlightenment, a European revolution of philosophy. I believe that John Locke would have agreed with the citizen’s desire to revolt. As I previously stated, Locke believed that governments received power from its citizens and are created solely to protect the citizens and their rights, and because the monarchy failed at this it entitles the citizens to revolt according to Locke. I think Locke would have disapproved of the infighting that began and that he would have wished for the new government to remember why they revolted in the first place. Locke probably would have disliked Napoleon’s rise as it discredited the entire revolution as a monarch gained power once