We now move into Enlightenment and the realm of Liberalism. We must see that reason was the undoing of the enlightenment period as it become over rampant. However, the individualist perspective survived and other philosophers used the individual as a starting point for basic rights and the baseline for government. Leading the way in this thought was Hobbes who argued that we have natural rights that must be maintained by a state and thus we have the need for statecraft to protect and promote these rights. Locke also believed in these rights which included the rights to “property,” “life,” and “liberty.” To both of these men the individual was born with rights. This new push for Liberalist statecraft, considered the economical rights of humans, which had not been so really considered in the past. It was a heavy push to the individual whereas as Rousseau would split off to move toward the collective of community. This Modern era approaches created new thought that would carry us into solidified states that were forged through many wars and revolutions.

This period did have some philosophers that pushed the progressive envelop and Aquinas was such a man. He believed that man was created out of God’s image and therefore contained goodness and reason. He saw that God’s works where contained in the physical world and man could therefore use reason to enhance faith and deduce that he existed. This began a progression that helped later intellectuals such as Martin Luther to question the authority of the church and cause decay of the Holy Roman Empire. Influenced by Aristotle, Aquinas brought more credence to the rule of law by stating the “Natural Law,” from which “Human” and “Positive law” were created, was within us and this came from God’s unseen Eternal law. Therefore, a secular government could exist because the laws they created come from this hierarchy of law that could only be good. Again, he can envision a separate church and state, which of course could detract form the churches central authority. Once again we see that the masses began to loose cohesiveness, and the church, which is ruled by the few and the one, begins to loose power in both holy matters and in affairs of the state. We must also realize that during this time there existed the divine right of Kings, which was a direct power given to them by God (the Church). The masses did not question this authority until a certain group from the masses began to prosper by trade from the Far East. This new “middle class” began to ask new questions and saw would help spark the renaissance and the Enlightenment.

The Greek era came after the Peloponnesian wars in which Sparta had won a decisive victory against the Athenians who were confident that they would claim victory over the militant state. Why had their liberal and free state lost this war? Their society was left with many questions and was in an intellectual frenzy. Philosophy and its agents stepped up to answer questions of justice, morality, and political structures that nurtured good. Plato argued that there was a permanent justice that existed beyond our senses and that was unseen. He argued that man could only be just while fulfilling their “Telos” in a just city that. Plato created an idealistic city, which he also equates to the individual as if it existed inside a person as well, that had a virtuous “philosopher” King that guided the “polis” to what was just. This was his morality. It existed beyond the senses but could be harnessed by enlightened people that could transmit this to the masses. The Philosopher King was such a vessel and could deduce right from wrong and therefore determine what was moral for the polis. The polis had to have faith in the Philosopher King and we can therefore see that Plato used faith to help guide his philosophy. This has a slight similarity to Rousseau in that the whole knows what is best for the soci

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