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Aristotle
Lived 384-322 BC Aristotle was a Greek philosopher a polymath. A student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great, his writing shelped to create the sphere of Western philosophy. -
Oct 12, 700
Liberals
"it isn't that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so" -
Aug 29, 1473
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus
German: Nikolaus Kopernikus
Italian: Nicolò Copernico
Polish: Mikołaj Kopernik
In his youth, Niclas Koppernigk This fellow was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. He was too much of a chicken to publish his controversial works until 1543, the year of his death, -
Oct 10, 1546
Tycho Brahe
Lived 1546-1601 Tycho Brahe, born Tyge Ottesen Brahe was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations. Coming from Scania, now part of modern-day Sweden, Tycho was well known in his lifetime as an astronomer and alchemist. He also holds the five-time title of "Greatest Astronomer's Mustache." -
May 31, 1561
Sir Francis Bacon
Lived 1561-1629 Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. He famously died of pneumonia contracted while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He died without heirs and in disgrace after falling into debt. -
Nov 4, 1571
Johannes Kepler
Lived 1571-1630 Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. He was a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution and is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion. Kepler's mother, Katharina Guldenmann, an inn-keeper's daughter, was a healer and herbalist who was later tried for witchcraft. -
Oct 6, 1579
Galileo Galilei
Lived 1564-1650 Galileo was a Florentine mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and philosopher. His greatest accomplishments include the discovery of Jupiter's four largest moons and the elaboration of the experimental method -
Thomas Hobbes
Lived 1588-1679 Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book, "Leviathan," established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory -
Rene Descartes
Lived 1596-1650 Descartes was a French philosopher and write who spent much of his life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed "The Father of Modern Philosophy." "Cogito ergo sum."
I think therefore I am. -
Pierre Bayle
Lived 1647-1706 Bayle was a Huguenot, a French Protestant, who spent most of his life as a refugee in Holland. Nonetheless, for a century he was one the most widely read philosophers ever. His "Dictionnaire historique et critique" was the single most popular work of the eighteenth century -
Baruch Spinoza
Lived 1632-1677 Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה
Portuguese: Benedito or Bento de Espinosa
Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher. He revealed considerable scientific aptitude, but unforunately the breadth and importance of his work was not fully realized until years after his death. Spinoza helped to lay the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. -
Francois Quesnay
Lived 1694-1774
Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" (Economic Table) in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats. This was perhaps the first work to attempt to describe the workings of the economy in an analytical way, and as such can be viewed as one of the first important contributions to economic thought. -
John Locke
Lived 1632-1704 Locke, widely known as the "Father of Liberalism," was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. His words can be reflected in the establishment of the American government. -
Emilie du Chatelet
Lived 1706-1749 Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet was a French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her crowning achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica. The translation, published ten years after her death in 1759, is still considered the standard French translation. -
William Pitt
Lived 1759-1806 William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 (although the term Prime Minister was not then used). He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He was also the Chancellor of the Exchequer throughout his premiership. He is known as "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt the Elder. -
David Hume
Lived 1711-1776 David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist He was known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a "British Empiricist." -
Denis Diderot
Lved 1713-1784 Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent persona during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie. -
Sir Isaac Newton
Lived 1642-1727 Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived." He was better known by the locals of Lincolnshire as "the creepy guy that never comes out of his house and blinds himself with prisms." -
King Louis XV
Louis XV ruled as King of France from September 1st, 1715 until his death(1774.) He came to the throne at age 5, but did not take control of the French state until 1743. Louis enjoyed a favorable reputation at the beginning of his reign, earning the epithet "le Bien-Aimé" ("the Beloved.") However, Louis XV's ill-advised financial policies damaged the power of France, weakened the treasury, discredited the monarchy, & arguably led to the French Revolution (15 years later.) -
Baron d'Holbach
Lived 1723-1789 Paul-Henri Thiry was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. Born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, Thiry lived and worked mainly in Paris (where he kept a salon.) He is best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being the System of Nature (1770.) -
Edmund Burke
Lived 1729-1797 Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. He is remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution. -
Frederick the Great
Ruled 1740-1786 Frederick II was a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. He became known as Frederick the Great and was nicknamed Der Alte Fritz ("Old Fritz"). Frederick was a proponent of enlightened absolutism. He was a correspondent of Voltaire. He modernized the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm. Frederick patronized the arts and philosophers, and wrote flute music. -
Baron de Montesquieu
Lived 1686-1755 Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers (sound familiar?) His drinking buddies call him "Monty." -
Mary Wollstonecraft
Lived 1759-1797 Wollstonecraft was an 18th-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argued that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. -
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death, Voltaire wrote: "I am very sad at the death of Madame de Pompadour. I was indebted to her and I mourn her out of gratitude. It seems absurd that while an ancient pen-pusher, hardly able to walk, should still be alive, a beautiful woman, in the midst of a splendid career, should die at the age of forty." -
Catherine the Great
Ruled 1762-1796 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. She was the most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reigning after a coup d'état and the assassination of her husband, Peter III until her death. Catherine's rule re-vitalized Russia, which grew larger and stronger than ever and became recognized as one of the great powers of Europe. -
Rousseau
Lived 1712-1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a well-known Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy heavily influenced the French Revolution, as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. He's so cool, he can be recognized by his last name alone. -
Francois-Marie Arouet
Lived 1694-1778 François-Marie Arouet, or better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade. Voltaire produced works in almost every literary form, including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. The name "Voltaire" is an anagram of "AROVET LI," the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet. -
Adam Smith
Lived 1723 -1790 Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." He had no idea that centuries later, his ideas would be so controversial and misinterpreted. -
Joseph II of Austria
Ruled 1780-1790 Joseph II, Joseph Benedikt Anton Michael Adam, was Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Habsburg lands. Joseph was a proponent of enlightened absolutism, though most of his reforms failed. He has been ranked with Catherine II of Russia and Frederick II of Prussia, as one of the three great Enlightenment monarchs. His policies are now known as Josephinism. He died sonless and was succeeded by his younger brother, Leopold. -
Immanuel Kant
Lived 1724-1804
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg (today Kaliningrad of Russia), researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment. -
King George III
Lived 1738-1820
George III, George William Frederick, was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was king during the American Revolution and was affectionately called Mad King George.
