18th Century Philosophy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy, and reason as primary values of society.

No brief summary can do justice to the diversity of enlightened thought in 18th-century Europe. Because it was a value system rather than a set of shared beliefs, there are many contradictory trains to follow. In his famous essay "What is Enlightenment?" (1784), Immanuel Kant described it simply as freedom to use one's own intelligence. More broadly, the Enlightenment period is marked by increasing empiricism, scientific rigor, and reductionism, along with increasing questioning of religious orthodoxy.

Important figures:

• Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698) Dutch, a key figure in the Early Enlightenment. In his book De Philosophia Cartesiana (1668) Bekker argued that theology and philosophy each had their separate terrain and that Nature can no more be explained from Scripture than can theological truth be deduced from Nature.
• Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) French. Literary critic known for Nouvelles de la république des lettres and Dictionnaire historique et critique, and one of the earliest influences on the Enlightenment thinkers to advocate tolerance between the difference religious beliefs.
• Cesare Beccaria Italian. Best known for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764).
• George Berkeley Irish. Philosopher and mathematician famous for developing the theory of subjective idealism.
• 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.
• Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723) Romanian. Philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin. His most important works were History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire and Descriptio Moldavie.
• Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) French. Philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who devised the concept of a Condorcet method.
• Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French. Founder of the Encyclopédie, speculated on free will and attachment to material objects, contributed to the theory of literature.
• Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American. Statesman, scientist, political philosopher, pragmatic deist, author. As a philosopher known for his writings on nationality, economic matters, aphorisms published in Poor Richard's Almanac and polemics in favour of American Independence. Involved with writing the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787.
• Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fuveau,(1746–1818), writer and philosopher who had used for the first time in 1785 the word "communism" in a doctrinal sense.
• Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English. Historian best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is closely identified with Enlightenment values, progressing from Sturm und Drang and participating with Schiller in the movement of Weimar Classicism.
• Johann Gottfried von Herder German. Theologian 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.
• Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, who wrote Leviathan, a key text in political philosophy.
• Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French. Author, encyclopaedist and Europe's first outspoken atheist. Roused much controversy over his criticism of religion as a whole in his work The System of Nature.
• David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish. Historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his empiricism and scientific scepticism, advanced doctrines of naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
• Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American. Statesman, political philosopher, educator, deist. As a philosopher best known for the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and his interpretation of the United States Constitution (1787) 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."
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) 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. Prescribed a politics of Enlightenment in What is Enlightenment? (1784). Influenced by Hume and Isaac Newton. Important figure in German Idealism, and important to the work of Fichte and Hegel.
• Gottfried Leibniz Inventor of Calculus as we know it today and wrote Protogea, amongst other scientific and philosophical works.
• 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 centre of political and cultural life is the middle class.
• John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher.
• Montesquieu (1689–1755) French political thinker. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions all over the world.
• Thomas Reid (1710–1796) Scottish. Presbyterian minister and Philosopher. Contributed greatly to the idea of Common-Sense philosophy and was Hume's most famous contemporary critic. Best known for his An Inquiry Into The Human Mind. Heavily influenced William James.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Swiss political philosopher. Argued that the basis of morality was conscience, rather than reason, as most other philosophers argued. 
• Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish economist and philosopher. He wrote The Wealth of Nations, in which he argued that wealth was not money in itself, but wealth was derived from the added value in manufactured items produced by both invested capital and labor. 
• Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch, philosopher who is considered to have laid the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment.  
• François-Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) (1694–1778) French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher. He wrote several books, the most famous of which is Dictionnaire Philosophique, in which he argued that organized religion is pernicious. He was the Enlightenment's most vigorous antireligious polemicist, as well as being a highly well known advocate of intellectual freedom.
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) British writer, philosopher, and feminist.