Introduction. The Age of Enlightenment is a period of active development in all spheres of social life, in particular philosophy, which laid the foundations of the modern socio-political system. Theoretical analysis. By the end of the 17th century, it became increasingly clear that ordinary people should have civil rights, and the power of the monarch had no divine source. The development of ideas about the nature of the relationship between the state and society is reflected in the teachings of T. Hobbes, J. Locke and T. Paine. The comparison of the views of thinkers is carried out according to several parameters, so the ideas about the ideal form of government, attitude to religion, private property, revolution and gender issues are analyzed. In addition, the historical context of the formation of the views of these thinkers, which reflected the most pressing problems of our time, is considered. The departure of the feudal system from the historical stage and the establishment of capitalism provoked bourgeois revolutions, which determined the perspective of the philosophy of that period. Conclusion. The result of the study was the identification of the trend of democratization and secularization of socio-political thought in the philosophy of the English Enlightenment. Confidence in the necessity of absolute monarchy is replaced by the demand for its limitation and subsequently even by the doubt about the necessity of the existence of a state in a civil society, which indicates the increasing importance of individual freedom in philosophical thought.