Rousseau And The Enlightenment

Enlightenment is defined as “The eighteenth-century philosophy and trend that emphasized reason, individualism, and human rights as opposed to tradition” (Mason 209). Enlightenment removes the theological hierarchy as an explanation for questions and it restructured society with the laws of nature.
The social contract theories written in the seventeenth and eighteenth century by Locke and Rousseau are social structures that are not interpreted by the clergies as the word of God. Locke states that we are free by nature to protect our liberty and that the government should only protect what we cannot protect ourselves from. We will never relinquish our freedom. If the government is abusing the contract it is our natural right to over throw it.

Sieyès’s describes it as “Everything” (Sieyès’s 65). The Third Estate represented the common French people or almost 95% of the population. The rising bourgeoisie wanted the same political and social equality as the other estates. Sieyès’s argues that that the first and second estate which are the clergy and the aristocracy are useless. “It suffices here to have made the point that the supposed usefulness of a privileged order to the public service is nothing but a mirage; that without that order, all that is most arduous in this service is performed by the Third Estate” (Sieyès 66). The ancien régime was threatened “by new ways of thinking about society and the world” (Mason 17). As demonstrated by Sieyès’s pamphlet in which he clearly challenges the ancien régime by attacking the privileges of the nobles. Sieyès’s is the first to define “What is a Nation? A body of associates living under a common law and represented by the same legislature. Defining citizenship for the first time as a corporation of citizens. Yet it fails to identify attributes such as social class, race, sex and gender. Sieyès’s reasoned that the clergy and the aristocracy do not belong to this nation because they don’t contribute socially or economically, as “Such a class is surely foreign to the Nation because of its idleness” (Sieyès’s 67). This was the foundation for the creation of ethnic nationalism, which differentiates from civil nationalism which lies within