The Enlightenment Research Paper

The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual and social growth which took place in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This period was also known as the Age of Reason. It was a huge and dramatic change throughout the world. During this period, Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens was passed by the French People. People started to search the world around them and started to create new ideas and inventions. The enlightenment was a period of success because enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire changed the role of government by spreading their ideas and publishing books.
As the enlightenment began, European thinkers started to apply reasons in order to understand the human conditions and

The Spirit of the Laws was one of the most important and influential book of his entire career in which he explained how government should work. Montesquieu argued that in order to prevent kings from being too strong, power in government should be divided into three branches Executive, Legislative and Judicial. In his quote, “ when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty”(Montesquieu) he is explaining about the importance and significances of the separation of power. The Legislative branch is the parliament that create laws. The Executive branch is the king or president who carried out the laws. The Judicial branch is where Supreme Court interpreted constitution and review the laws. He believed that it’s more important to create three separate branches of government with equal powers. This way government would not give too much power to either one person or group of individuals. After creating three branches of government he also created the system known as the checks and balances system because he believed that government should operate with this system. This system was made so each branch of government should limit the power of other two branches. Thus power, would be balanced and no one branch would be powerful. “Each branch is restrained by the other two branches in many ways for example president may rejected the law that was passed by congress; Congress can override that veto and with a vote from both of the houses the senate and the representatives”