John Locke Vs Montesquieu Essay

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The age of enlightenment was a revolutionary experience for us all. Starting in the late 1600 's by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the enlightenment period helped construct a structured authoritative system. Behind it all were men known as the enlightenment thinkers. John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu are two of the more famously know enlightened thinkers. The two philosophers had both similarities and differences, when it came to the construction of our government today, but through the many differences, they both had the same key idea. They both felt that we needed a structured government. As said by Thomas Hobbes "life without government would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

John Locke was born in 1632, in England. He began …show more content…

In contrast to John Locke 's successes , Baron de Montesquieu also had an impact on our government. Originally named Charles Louis de Secondat, Montesquieu was born in Bordeaux France in 1689. Montesquieu did a lot of thinking about how a government was to be created and then maintained. The term liberty to him meant "a peace of mind that comes from being safe", with this in mind he came to believe that safety could only exist if laws were followed. If the government was able to to enforce laws,that could be easily followed, then that would increase "liberty" and improve our world. Montesquieu later grew very fond of english government, which was made up of three different parts. There was a kind to enforce laws, a parliament to create them, and courts to clarify them. Because the government was divided into parts each part had a different job, Montesquieu called this separation of powers. He thought that if each branch had its own power, then there needed to be some kind of balance between them. This then worried him that if one branch would have more power than the others, that the people would lose their liberty and suffer. To avoid such a scenario, he made each branch have the power to to limit the ability of the other branches. Today day this system is call checks and balances and separates the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. Baron de Montesquieu made the government "separate but

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