codigo de hamurabi

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imagine a well - reasoned argument against family, free speech, the ownership of private property and anu other values you believe to the right and just and you will have some ideas of how radical the statement. all men are createf equal sounded to 18th century ears. we are taught to think of the american revolution as a political revolt that led to an outright war. such uprising would neverhave begun, much less succeeded, had they not been sparked by an intellectual insurrection that lif fires around the world in the mid 1700s and continues to burn to this day. europeans of the 1700s thought of themselves as above all else, supremely modern. they hag achieved advances in sciences and culture that would have been unimaginable to their forebeans of only a few generation ealier. allthis progess it was believed rested upon a hard-won recognition of the nAtural order of things; god who had created the world selected the ablest and worthiest men to govern it as kings, while everyone else accepted their divinely ordained stations in this life and worked humbly for reward in the next.
This social hierarchy was mirrored by a religious hierarchy that answered the needs of the soul.Acceptance of this order distinguished humans from animals and made it possible to know the mind of God by unlocking secrets like the movement of the planets. But rejecting this order as the American colonists are doing in the illustration above threatened to return humanity to chaos and squalor of the Dark Ages.
Men like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and others who valued reason more highlythat tradition threatened civilization it-self suggesting that princes and peasants were equal in the eyes of god meant the the traditional mediator between heaven and earth, kings and priests, were suddenly far less importants, perhaps entirely obsolete. If all menare endowed by their creator, with certain inalienable rights they would have little need for middlemen in robes to administer thoserights.
Inspired by radical advances is science anda natural phillosphy pioneered by isacc newton in the 16th anda 17th centuries, thinkers of the Enlightemment were predisposed to questions everything. But there were, at first, strict limits on the sedition of scholars; suggesting that the earth moved around the sun might no longer get you burned at the stake, but implying that the king was notanointed by God could still

fact the revolutions in science were being paced, if more slowly, by an evolution in politics. Beginning with the magna carta, the 1215 documents in wich English nobles forced king john to relinquish his claims to absolute rule, and progressing thought Britains 1689 Billl of rights power was slowly but inexorably trickling down to ever larger numbers of people. Asthese two forces had converged, the skeptical inquiry that was driving scientist spilled over into politics, and the dam broke. In 1690 the british philosopher John locke, would write in his second treative on civil government about the universal right to “life liberty and property”. In 1748, the French scholar Mostesquieur wrote in The Spirit of laces the governmental power ought to be dividedbetween those who make laws the legislature, those who enforce them the executive and those who interpret the judges- anda that these three branches should be independent of one another. By 1762, French philosopher Jean-jacques Roussean, in his Social Contract Was insisting that governments derive their powers from the consent of the people they govern.

In Europe these musing were, at least for thehalf of the 18th century, largely theoretical. The weight of law, tradition and all the arned power of established states rendered such heresies harmless. But in Britain’S American colonies, the situation was very differente. Here a- confident, self- reliant population led by a well-educated, affluent, elite was poised to exploit the opportunities offered by a vast wilderness they had scarcely...