The Modern Era The Modern Era of political philosophy is best characterized as a revolt against the traditional constraints of the time. Machiavelli believed that politics should be separate and distinct from ethics, morality, and religion. Protestant reformers such as Luther and Calvin went head to head with the Catholic Church, paving the way for religious individualism and incorporating various political revisions. Hobbes called for a major overhaul in England concerning not only political and …showed first 75 words of 1195 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1195 total…of liberty upon which the governments of the United States and numerous other nation-states in the West are based. Also, the focus of individual liberty is very apparent in many of the political discourses of the Modern philosophers. Had the philosophers of the Modern Era not battled the widespread corruption apparent in the Catholic Church and the ruling classes across Europe, who is to say that the Western political tradition would have unfolded at all?