Enlightenment Philosophers
Philosopher↕ | Nationality↕ | Born↕ | Died↕ | Key Idea↕ | Major Work↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
John Locke | English | 1,632 | 1,704 | Natural rights (life, liberty, property), social contract | Two Treatises of Government |
Voltaire | French | 1,694 | 1,778 | Freedom of speech, separation of church and state | Candide |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Genevan | 1,712 | 1,778 | General will, noble savage, popular sovereignty | The Social Contract |
Immanuel Kant | German | 1,724 | 1,804 | Categorical imperative, synthetic a priori knowledge | Critique of Pure Reason |
David Hume | Scottish | 1,711 | 1,776 | Empiricism, skepticism about causation and induction | A Treatise of Human Nature |
Baron de Montesquieu | French | 1,689 | 1,755 | Separation of powers into branches of government | The Spirit of the Laws |
Denis Diderot | French | 1,713 | 1,784 | Encyclopedism, universal access to knowledge | Encyclopedie |
Thomas Hobbes | English | 1,588 | 1,679 | Social contract, life without government is nasty and brutish | Leviathan |
Adam Smith | Scottish | 1,723 | 1,790 | Invisible hand, free markets, division of labor | The Wealth of Nations |
Mary Wollstonecraft | English | 1,759 | 1,797 | Women's rights and equal education for women | A Vindication of the Rights of Woman |
Baruch Spinoza | Dutch | 1,632 | 1,677 | Pantheism, God and Nature are one substance | Ethics |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | German | 1,646 | 1,716 | Monads, best of all possible worlds, calculus co-inventor | Monadology |
Thomas Paine | English-American | 1,737 | 1,809 | Republican government, common sense democracy | Common Sense |
Marquis de Condorcet | French | 1,743 | 1,794 | Human progress is inevitable, women's suffrage | Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind |
Cesare Beccaria | Italian | 1,738 | 1,794 | Abolition of torture and death penalty, proportional punishment | On Crimes and Punishments |
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