Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment refers to the 18th century in European philosophy, and is often thought of as part of a larger period which includes the Age of Reason.

Important figures of the Enlightenment era

• French Encyclopédistes | Voltaire | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Condorcet | Helvétius | Fontenelle | Olympe de Gouges | Ignacy Krasicki | Francois Quesney | Benedict Spinoza | Cesare Beccaria | Adam Smith | Isaac Newton | John Wilkes | Antoine Lavoisier | G.L. Buffon | Mikhail Lomonosov | Mikhailo Shcherbatov | Ekaterina Dashkova
• Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783) French. Mathematician and physicist, one of the editors of Encyclopédie
• Thomas Abbt (1738-1766) German. Promoted what would later be called Nationalism in Om Tode für's Vaterland (On dying for one's nation).
• Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) French. Literary critic known for Nouvelles de la république des lettres and Dictionnaire historique et critique.
• James Boswell (1740-1795) Scottish. Biographer of Samuel Johnson, helped established the norms for writing Biography in general.
• Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Irish. Parliamentarian and political philosopher, best known for pragmatism, considered important to both liberal and conservative thinking.
• Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French. Founder of the Encyclopédie, speculated on free will and attachment to material objects, contributed to the theory of literature.
• Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801)Polish. Outstanding poet of the Polish Enlightenment, hailed by contemporaries as "the Prince of Poets." After the election of Stanis?aw August Poniatowski as king of Poland in 1764, Krasicki became the new King's confidant and chaplain. He participated in the King's famous "Thursday dinners" and co-founded the Monitor, the preeminent periodical of the Polish Enlightenment, sponsored by the King. Consecrated Bishop of Warmia in 1766, Krasicki thereby also became an ex-officio Senator of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American. Statesman, scientist, political philosopher, author. As a philosopher known for his writings on nationality, economic matters, aphorisms published in Poor Richard's Alamanac and polemics in favor of American Independence. Involved with writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787.
• Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English. Historian best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• Johann Gottfried von Herder German. Theologan and Linguist. Proposed that language determines thought, introduced concepts of ethnic study and nationalism, influential on later Romantic thinkers. Early supporter of democracy and republican self rule.
• David Hume Scottish. Historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his empiricism and scepticism, advanced doctrines of naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
• Immanuel Kant German. Philosopher and physicist. Established critical philosophy on a systematic basis, proposed a material theory for the origin of the solar system, wrote on ethics and morals. Influenced by Hume and Isaac Newton. Important figure in German Idealism, and important to the work of Fichte and Hegel.
• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American Statesman, political philosopher, educator. As a philosopher best known for the Declaration of Independence and his interpretation of the Constitution which he pursued as president. Argued for natural rights as the basis of all states, argued that violation of these rights negates the contract which bind a people to their rulers and that therefore there is an inherent "Right to Revolution."
• Hugo Ko???taj (1750-1812) Polish. He was active in the Commission for National Education and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the Kraków Academy, of which he was rector in 1783-1786. An organizer of the townspeople's movement, in 1789 he edited a memorial from the cities. He co-authored the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation. In 1791-1792 he served as Crown Vice Chancellor. In 1794 he took part in the Ko?ciuszko Uprising, co-authoring its Uprising Act (March 24, 1794) and Po?aniec Manifesto (May 7, 1794), heading the Supreme National Council's Treasury Department, and backing the Uprising's left, Jacobin wing.
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German Dramatist, critic, political philosopher. Created theatre in the German language, began reappraisal of Shakespeare to being a central figure, and the importance of classical dramatic norms as being crucial to good dramatic writing, theorized that the center of political and cultural life is the middle class.
• John Locke (1632-1704) English Philosopher. Important empricist who expanded and extended the work of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Seminal thinker in the realm of the relationship between the state and the individual, the contractual basis of the state and the rule of law. Argued for personal liberty with respect to property
• Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828) Spanish. Dramatist and translator, support of republicanism and free thinking. Transitional figure to Romanticism.
• Nikolay Novikov (1744-1818) Russian. Philanthropist and journalist who sought to rise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress.
• Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American. Pamphleteer and polemicist, most famous for Common Sense attacking England's domination of the colonies in America.