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In this essay I intend to review some of the key ideas from political and economic philosophy and the general themes that characterised the thinking of the two movements. I hope to trace the course of the perception of the ‘other’ from that of the semi-mythical through to the nascent reject of ethnocentricity. I will be focusing particularly on conceptions of the ‘state of nature’ and the development of the comparative methodology. Finally, I intend to argue that the separation of Enlightenment thought from romantic thought is to some extent a false division in the field of political philosophy. The British Enlightenment movement, (the 17th & 18th Centuries), was deeply embedded in the political and economic upheavals of the time. The trial and execution of Charles I was an open challenge to the orthodoxy of the divine right of Kings to rule and much of the later political philosophy was to address the form and nature of government. Science and industrialisation were continuing apace, and by the early 1700s Britain would see the first Industrial Revolution. The old feudal order was rapidly giving way to a new capitalist one. While contributors to the body of work produced during the Enlightenment took quite different philosophical positions, it could be said that at the heart of the Enlightenment movement was “a confidence in science, a daring attempt at new discoveries about the human mind, an opposition to superstition and fanaticism, an emphasis on human nature, a restrained scepticism about traditional views of knowledge and belief, and a mood of reform and critique.” (Hume, 1999, [1748], 10) A few years after the execution of Charles I, Hobbes was to publish Leviathan (1651), his seminal work in which he laid out his blueprint for civil peace. In Leviathan Hobbes examines the foundations and nature of civil society and envisions man emerging from a ‘state of nature’, (the hypothetical condition existing “if there were no common power able to restrain individuals, no law and no law-enforcement”. (Hobbes, 1968, [1651], 40)). Essentially, Hobbes believed certain aspects of human life would always bring man into conflict with each other, constantly balancing a desire for power with an aversion to death or injury. He thought that men would reason that the best method of self-preservation was peace and that men should be willing to forgo their “right to all things” on the provision that everyone else does simultaneously. This system is precarious though as men will always seek to recover his devolved powers and use them to his own advantage and to prevent this, these powers must be surrendered to a sovereign.
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