The Enlightenment
During the late 17th to 18th century there was a period known as the Enlightenment where there were many new controversial philosophical ideas on the government and politics. Some of the ideas that have come up are standard in our government and political practice in the present.
One of the great philosophers of the enlightenment period was Adam Smith and he wrote the great book of The Wealth of Nations. Adam had ideas involving the economy, which was that the economy was a self-correcting mechanism, which did not need to be regulated by the government. He wanted a capitalist system where business owners freely managed their own companies and workers could freely choose their pursuits. Adam had said that humans work better when they are striving for personal profits than when they are aiming for the public. Self-interest is a motivator, so capitalism would be able to flourish through individual efforts. In the time that Adam wrote the Wealth of Nations many people felt that with the capitalist system Smith was promoting greed but he said that it was just a good way for individuals to strive to gain and maintain wealth. People liked his ideas on capitalism and the changes have had a significant influence on production and caused capitalism to flourish to western part of the world. Today the U.S. uses capitalism a lot and it plays a big part in the rest of the world and makes the nature of labor more efficient through division and more desirable through self-motivation.
John Locke was another good philosopher of his time he wrote the book Second Treatise of Civil Government. Locke thought that people set up civil governments to protect life, liberty, and property, but he said that they are overstepping its proper function, which is to protect the natural rights. Natural rights are the rights basic to all men because all men have the ability to reason. An example of natural rights is under a tyranny people have the natural right to a rebellion....