The Eighteenth Century is commonly referred to as the “Age of Enlightenment” in terms of the history of political thought.

In the eighteenth century the concept of the “limited state” that Locke had foreseen began to gain strength.

Although these schools were deeply separated from each other in terms of perspectives of the enlightenment idea, they also focused on common themes.

The common features of these revolutions are the limitation of the state power and the heading to the national sovereignty.

The Enlightenment Thought, born in the Eighteenth Century, shows a characteristic that places the reason at center.

In the process that started with the Enlightenment, almost everything about the old one became clearer. In this respect, the Enlightenment has risen over an anti-tradition. In other words, the thinkers of the Enlightenment have largely opposed traditional values of society, including religion.

According to the Enlightenment, the individual should be able to use his or her own free will by getting rid of the constraints that restrict him/herself. Moreover, this is not a specific turn or geography, but a phenomenon unique to all mankind. In this sense, mastery of the reason is universal for all people. Philosophy should examine and criticize natural and social phenomena.

Rational thought is supported by a mentality of “progress”.

Freedom refers to the liberation of people from self-restraint and becoming a “rational autonomous subject”. The man who moves with a reason will take his destiny in his own hand, using an attitude that is called free-will.

The background of the idea of enlightenment is primarily the Renaissance and Reform movements. Along with the Renaissance, a new world of fantasy emerged. After the birth of Christianity, the society confirming dogmas without questioning critically appraises the approach of all authorities including the church. Scientific knowledge rises and people begin to resort to knowing the truth about the event. Thus, people foresee that the universe and the world are no place for the church to navigate them. This understanding has caused the church’s authority to erode within societies.

Looking at the Enlightenment movement in Europe, we notice three authentic traditions that differ from each other in terms of certain aspects. These traditions that have their own virtues and emphasises in terms of political developments can be pointed out as French Enlightenment, Scottish Enlightenment and German Enlightenment.

the French Enlightenment thinkers stand on the construction of a new political and social structure by opposing the “old (ancient) regime”. The change must be comprehensive, changing all social dynamics. For this reason, it can be said that the idea of the French Enlightenment is very close to the idea of “revolution”. As a matter of fact, the French Revolution has emerged to a great extent as the product of the idea of Enlightenment.

The leading names of the French Enlightenment are Condillac, Diderot, D’Alembert, Helvetius, Turgot and Voltaire. Thinkers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu also contributed in the Encyclopedia.

The Scottish Enlightenment, on the other hand, asserts that the reason alone will not be enough to understand man and society. Even trying to explain everything by reason will lead people to the wrong path. According to Francis Hutcheson, one of the most important names in the Scottish Enlightenment, people present some behavior even though they do not benefit from them. This holds forts other invisible factors besides reason are also effective in human life. The concept encountered here is “moral sense”. Hutcheson has argued that people are reconciled to some moral concepts, even though the rules are not written anywhere. This compromise is of human nature, as it has a universal character. Hence, there are some values and principles that cannot be explained by rational arguments in human nature.

The most important name of the Scottish Enlightenment is David Hume. Epistemologically, Hume, like Locke, argued that knowledge depends on senses. However, according to Hume, information transmission does not take place only through rational means. Psychological factors such as emotions and intuitions also affect the emergence of information. Also the implications and experiences of the relationships we build up with other people also play a role in birth of knowledge.

In the modern world, Montesquieu is perhaps the first thinker to analyze politics and sociology in a scientific way. In this respect, it can be said that Montesquieu is an important contributor to the emergence of “social sciences” as a discipline.

Montesquieu’s first published work is headed by Persian Letters. In this work, he criticized the traditions and customs of his country in sarcastic way, in so-called mouths of two Iranians who visited France. This approach is quite harmonious with the critical point of view of all of Enlightenment. The purpose of the work is to show them how absurd the customs and habits that people correctly accept without being questioned.

According to Montesquieu, in the southern countries, warm climate pushes people to be lazy. They do not like working and being disciplined. People living in these regions have problems with authority. For this reason, people living in the South cannot develop a regular and strong union. This includes political structures they build. They build weaker states. It is therefore much easier for states established in the South to be invaded. Similarly, it may be possible to enslave people living in the southern regions.

According to him, a person’s intellectual development has led to need for interacting with others. In this way, the process of socialization has emerged. In other words, it is the socialization of people by getting rid of their loneliness together with the increase of their requirements.

The Nineteenth Century is a time of radical changes in the political arena. Under the influence of the revolutions of the previous century, a new state formation called “nation-state” began to rise in different parts of the world. The nation-state model that takes its legitimacy from governing of people has spread to different parts of the world after the French Revolution. Thus, the concept of “national sovereignty” emerged. It is also seen that democracies have also increased in the same period. Especially in the Western world, democratic governance has begun to spread rapidly.