During and prior to the French Revolution, many great leaders known as the philosophes, influenced our world. These people were a group of French academics who sought the answer to the struggle of how to maximize human potential towards the goal of infinite progress. They addressed elements of our world that to this day are part of the modern world including things with regard to organisms, function of the society, role in science and also led us towards the Age of Enlightenment. Some of these philosophes included John Locke who's main philosophy was that there was no such government under the Divine Right of Kings theory, Voltaire who's primary focus was individual liberty and Cesare Beccaria who was mainly against capital punishment and identified new directions in the system of criminal law. .
John Locke was strongly against the idea of having someone rule the country under Gods will. This theory, known as the Divine Rights of Kings, asserted that God chose some people to rule on earth in his will. Therefore, whatever the monarchy decided was the will of God and if you criticized the ruling of the monarchy, you were challenging God. This is how the government was structured prior to the French Revolution in France. John Locke totally disagreed with this idea and said that the purpose of a government was to protect the natural rights of its citizens. Natural rights included individual liberty, right to property, and the right to live. His belief was that people automatically earned these rights by simply being born and that through experience and outside resources, we developed and learned great ideas. His theory was that if the government did not protect these rights, the citizens had the right to overthrow the government and choose a new leader who would fulfill their needs. I totally agree with Locke. I think that people should be allowed to choose their leader who will protect his citizens and provide them with every need.
