THE CHRISTIAN GENESIS OF LIBERALISM: FROM THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF CALVINISM TO JOHN LOCKE

Abstract

“Among all the peoples of the world, the English excel in three extraordinary things – piety, freedom, and trade” – these words belong to Jean Louis Montesquieu (Max Weber 48). He, like another prominent French Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, admired the English liberal system and did not give up hope for its implementation in his homeland. Although French Enlightenment figures are more famous than English ones, and historians traditionally pay much more attention to the Great French Revolution than to the Glorious Revolution, the English Enlightenment and the English Revolution took place earlier in time and had a greater impact on world history. In fact, the French, to some extent, emulated the English, including the founder of liberalism, J. Locke, who will be given special attention in this article. Therefore, liberalism is not an invention of the French; it became the quintessence of the evolutionary progress of English history, the key events of which occurred in the 17th century. And French liberal maxims and experiments took place only in the next century. Historical assessments of the Great French Revolution differ, but all recognize the striking difference between its idealistic intentions and brutal reality. The struggle for freedom degenerated into the bloody Robespierre terror and eventually into the Napoleonic dictatorship. Of course, the question of why the French Enlightenment project did not have practical success will always remain rhetorical, as it is impossible to reach a consensus on the assessment of such a complex historical phenomenon in the ideologically engaged humanitarian field. However, this should not prevent researchers from trying to understand the essence of this phenomenon.