I am not a pessimist and I believe things can improve. Utopian perfection, though, is unrealistic because even the best of nations suffer. Nonetheless, there have cle

Jean Calvin achieved the climax of political and academic theological progress. For him, there are two governments, the spiritual and the political. Thus, there are two regulators, the conscience and external jurisdictions. The “former has its seat in the interior of the mind, whilst the latter only directs the external conduct: one may be termed a spiritual kingdom, and the other a political one.” However, “he who knows how to distinguish between the body and the soul, between this present transitory life and the future eternal one, will find no difficulty in understanding that the spiritual kingdom of Christ and civil government are things very different and remote from each other.” “God appointed governors in his name to decide secular controversies” for civil government. Calvin believed the state controls sinful men and women and that discipline restrains the refractory. This is because “the insolence of the wicked is so great.” In his writings, Calvin quotes Judges 21:25 when “there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Government can be a positive good when it pushes persons toward a holy end. Calvin wrote

Condorcet and other Enlightenment thinkers comprised the most optimistic genre of thinkers in history. All of these humanists esteemed Hellenic optimism and the Roman State’s governmental form. They borrowed greatly from their British predecessors’ contract government and hope in people. Condorcet was the most optimistic of all the thinkers and has been a spokesman for optimists who seek perfection for the future. Together, these Frenchmen epitomized the ideals of utopia. While some later political theorists also helped model modern day socialist utopias, they owe much to Condorcet and his perfectionist dreams, as this paper will show. The predecessors to the French (i.e. Greece, Rome and England), the French themselves, and their philosophical followers created the philosophical constructs that led to the construction of social democratic states like present day Sweden. Just as there were three national influences on enlightenment thought, three consequent schools of thought which borrow from the French are correspondingly influential in modern utopian societies. These are communism (as outlined by Marx), utilitarianism (from Mill), and nihilism (like Nietzsche).

Chapter IV-The Failure of Utopian Philosophy

For Condorcet, the natural man is good, because “nature has set no term to the perfection of human faculties.” Moreover, education eliminates vices, trains people to be sympathetic, and makes people perfectible. People have natural rights due to their possession of feeling and reason. This is because “man is a sentient being, capable of reasoning and acquiring moral ideas.” The bad in people’s pasts is attributed, as Socrates had said, to ignorance of the good. People can be educated to see the light of reason and the validity of natural rights, so their “battle cry [will be]-reason, tolerance, humanity.” We have seen this progress in the printing press with journalism, which gives “the means of communicating with people all over the world” by providing “the education of the people from all political and religious shackles.” “From his writings, it is difficult to tell whether Condorcet was an atheist or a deist,” but he clearly sought a smaller role for religion. “Both Rousseau and Condorcet…can be thought of as advocates for what has been called a “civil religion”.” In his time, “the process of the sciences was swift and startling,” with recent discoveries that helped abolish ignorance and superstition. “Thus all the intellectual activities of man...have combined to further the progress of human reason.” Now, man can “forecast the future on the basis of his experience of the past,” because scientific laws should apply to social science just like natural sc

Some topics in this essay:
Jean Calvin, Catholic Church, Persian Letters, Sweden Enlightenment, Pollution Sweden, Jacques Rousseau, Caritat Marquis, Basis Enlightenment, Bruce Springsteen, Friederich Nietzsche, political system, jean calvin, universal education, political systems, seen sweden, karl marx, 18th century, living conditions, hope people, de condorcet, six principles social, calvin borrowed heavily, baron de montesquieu, roman catholic church, government checks balances,