Question

Analyse the role of philosophers in the French Revolution in 1789.

Answer 1

The ideas of envisaging a society based on freedom and equal laws and opportunities for all, were put forward by philosophers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke sought to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the monarch.

Rousseau carried the idea forward, proposing a form of government based on a social contract between people and their representatives.

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu proposed a division of power within the government between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary.

The ideas of these philosophers were discussed intensively in salons and coffee-houses and spread among people through books and newspapers.