How Did John Locke Influence The French Revolution

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John Locke and his philosophies had a substantial impact on the French Revolution and its thinkers. He had a firm belief that the primary goals of a government should be to promote accountability and to protect its individuals. He also viewed civil society as a condition of artificiality that enforced laws created by man. Locke’s views aimed to clarify the relationships between man and state and in the direction of modern democracies. He believed that government should in itself be selected and governed by the will of the people, which was an important assertion of the French Revolution. “Napoleon certainly had his contribution to the Revolution and expanded upon these ideals. He is often credited with taming the revolution in the face of growing disenchantment with its more radical features and with the social conflicts it generated. He preserved many of its more moderate elements, such as civil equality, a secular law code, religious freedom, and promotion by merit…” (Strayer 792). Thomas Hobbes left a perpetual influence on political thought. His idea of people being …show more content…
One notable figure would be Nicolaus Copernicus. He would be known for his contributions to Astronomy and the way that we look at our world today. His famous idea that he theorized was that the Sun was at the center of the universe, rather than the Earth. Though there limitations to his heliocentric model, it was a breakthrough of an idea. One of those limitations would be that Copernicus still used a model based on the universe, rather than one based on a solar system. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory sparked further thoughts and experiments of later scientists such as Johannes Kepler. Most considerably, Kepler modified his theory from the use of perfect circles to the use of ellipses, thus solving many issues with Copernicus’s