The historic context in which the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence take place is the Age of Reason, also recognized as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers developed new thoughts about open-mindedness, inner investigation, and tolerance in Europe and America. Several of the concepts that dominated Enlightenment thought: rationalism, empiricism, progressivism, and cosmopolitanism.
Rationalism is the concept that people are successful while using of their rationality to attain knowledge. This used to be far away from the prevailing thinking that human beings wished to rely on scripture and religion to achieve knowledge. Above all, Enlightenment thinkers tried to be driven by the usage of reason, not prejudice.
The English Bill of Rights was an act signed in 1689 with the aid of William III and Mary II. The bill outlined precise constitutional and civil rights and started to give Parliament power over the monarchy. Many experts regard the English Bill of Rights as the primary regulation that set the stage for a constitutional monarchy in England. The two leaders formed a monarchy but they agreed to furnish Parliament with higher rights and power. The Bill of Rights condemned King James II for abusing of his strength and declared that the monarchy couldn't rule without the consent of the Parliament.
Most of all, the Bill of Rights restricted the range of the monarchy, accelerated the strengthening of Parliament, and outlined the special rights of individuals.
The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted during the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration described why the Thirteen Colonies in struggle with the Kingdom of Great Britain saw themselves as 13 independent sovereign states, no longer beneath British rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step toward forming the United States of America.
Many of the concern matters and philosophies that we can find in the English Bill of Rights were a source of inspiration for the thoughts that brought to the American Declaration of Independence. The main concepts fixed in it are indisputable truths: anybody is created equal, with unalienable rights, that are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The Preamble has expressed a well-known philosophy of government that justifies revolution.
Political and philosophical thought on which these two constitutions are based is fundamental to understanding the historical period.
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Many historians are genuinely convinced that the thoughts of the English freethinker John Locke highly influenced the matter of the Bill of Rights. Locke proposed that the function of the authorities is to protect citizens' natural rights.
The English Bill of Rights stimulated a new sensibility in which the rights and freedom of men and women would have been protected. The king did not preserve absolute power, as Hobbes said, however, acted to defend the natural rights of the people. If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract used to be broken, and the people had the right to rebel and set up a new government. Thomas Jefferson used this concept in writing the Declaration of Independence.
Another philosopher who influenced the mentality of the time is Montesquieu, he conceived the thinking of sharing authority into the three most important branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. This new point of view influenced the authors of the Constitution concerning the organizing and the division of political powers and in addition the inclusion of laws due to preserve individual liberties. Unlike Hobbes and Locke, Montesquieu believed that in the kingdom of nature, human beings would have gone towards violence and war. Montesquieu did now not describe a social contract, he wrote that the most fundamental aim of authorities is to preserve regulation and order, political liberty, and the property of the individual.
Moreover, J.J. Rousseau described savages in the kingdom of nature as free, equal, peaceful, and happy. When human beings started out to claim possession of property, Rousseau argued, inequality, murder, and fighting resulted.
Rousseau describes how democracy would work. There would be an authority of sorts, entrusted with administering the normal will. But it would be composed of more officials who bought their orders from the people.
Rousseau realized that democracy as he anticipated it would be difficult to maintain. He warned, ' As quickly as any man says of the affairs of the State, 'What does it count number to me?' the State may additionally be given up for lost.'
Enlightenment philosophers John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all developed theories of the authorities in which people would govern. These thinkers had a profound effect on the American and French revolutions and on the democratic governments that they produced.
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