Enlightenment Timeline By 21co0885@wwprsd.org Period: 1600 to 1800 Enlightenment Years Period: 1614 to 1648 Thirty Years War 1639 Rene Descartes publishes his philosophical Meditations 1651 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Leviathan is written. Period: 1668 to 1669 John Locke's Two Treatises of Government 1748 Baron Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws 1756 Voltaire's "Essay on Customs" Period: 1756 to 1763 The Seven Years War 1762 Rousseau's Social Contract 1771 Diderot's Encyclopedia 1784 Kant's "What is the Encyclopedia" 1798 Thomas Malthus "Essay of the Principle of Population"