the concepts in the declaration of independence are based on the idea of the philosopher?

Question

A descrates
B hobbes
C smith
D locke

Answer 1

Locke

Scholarship in the last thirty years has emphaisized the influence of the Scottish Englightment thinkers, as well as the other thinkers mentioned in the answer below mine.

Answer 2

It must be Locke, but not only him. The whole Philosophy of the Enlightenment is represented there, and in that case we are talking about some famous Frenchmen, most notably Montesquieu, Jean-Jaques Rousseau and Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. All three contributed to the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. Montesquieu was the more practical of them, it is to him we owe the idea of the division of power between a legislative, an executive and a judicial branches of power.
So no one philosopher embodies all of the values on which the American nation is built.

Answer 3

It's Locke. Many of the concepts in the Declaration and even some of the wording is very close to passages in Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government.

Descartes influenced Locke, but the extent of his direct influence on the Declaration is limited to the words "We hold these truths to be self evident..." Descartes had opined on the importance of self evident truths.

Hobbes is the anti-answer. His work, Leviathan, was essentially a justification of the absolute monarch as preferable to the nasty, brutish and short existence of man in a state of nature.

Smith was a Scot who pioneered the science (art?) of economics.

I noticed someone else cited Montesquieu -- certainly Jefferson studied him -- but separation of powers is in the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence.

Answer 4

Locke but he was not the only philosopher who had the same idea

Answer 5

D