Enlightenment Thinkers: Lifespans and Works

By Dancey
  • Period: Jan 22, 1561 to

    Francis Bacon

    Father of Empiricism. He belived that [scientific] knowledge should not be used for pleasure, profit, fame, superiority, or power, but to the benefit and use of life. He also believed that this knowledge should be shared charitably.

  • Francis Bacon: Novum Organum, Instauratio Magna

    That scientific discovery should not be used for pleasure, profit, power. But for charity and to ease the ills of all mankind.
  • Period: to

    John Locke

    Father of Classical Liberalism. His political work influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, American revoluntionaries. His philosophical work influenced Rousseau, Hume, and Kant. He proposed the idea of consciousness, and that we are a tabula rasa (clean slate) when we are born and gain knowledge and ideas through experiences through sense perception.
  • Period: to

    Spinoza

  • Period: to

    Isaac Newton

  • Spinoza: 'Ethics' and other works are published posthumously by friends.

  • Isaac Newton: Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

  • Period: to

    Montesquieu

  • Period: to

    Voltaire

  • Period: to

    Benjamin Franklin

  • Period: to

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • Period: to

    Denis Diderot

  • Montesquieu: Lettres Persanes

  • Period: to

    Immanuel Kant

  • Period: to

    Thomas Paine

    Strong supporter of French Revolution.
  • Period: to

    Thomas Jefferson

  • Montesquieu: L'Espirit de Lois

  • Rousseau: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men

  • Rousseau: Of The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right

  • Kant: What Is Enlightenment?

  • Thomas Paine: Rights Of Man (I)