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Diderot- (1713 -1784) |
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| was a French philosopher and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment, his major contribution to the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie. Diderot also contributed to literature, notably with Jacques le fataliste et son maître (Jacques the Fatalist and His Master), which emulated Laurence Sterne in challenging conventions regarding novels, their structure and content, while also examining philosophical ideas about free will. |
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George-Louis Buffon |
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| Buffon, in his Historie Naturelle, a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world, wrestled with the similarities of humans and apes and even talked about common ancestry of Man and apes. Although Buffon believed in organic change, he did not provide a coherent mechanism for such changes. He thought that the environment acted directly on organisms through what he called "organic particles". Buffon also published Les Epoques de la Nature (1788) where he openly suggested that the planet was much older than the 6,000 years proclaimed by the church, and discussed concepts very similar to Charles Lyell's "uniformitarianism" which were formulated 40 years later. Buffon was born into the wealth and prestige of the French aristocracy and was educated in law and medicine, but his real interest was nature. He was struck by the diversity of life and was not content with existing explanations of the natural world. |
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau- (1712-1778) |
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| French enlightenment author and philosopher. His works include Heloise, Emile, On Education, and The Social Contract. He condemned the inequality found in civilized societies and was a major inspiration for the ideology of the French Revolution. |
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John Locke- (1632-1704) |
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| English politician and political philosopher who was active during the Glorious Revolution. His theory of natural rights to life, liberty, and property were the intellectual foundation of the American Declaration of Independence. |
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Montesquieu- (1689-1755) |
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| A French nobleman and lawyer who wrote The Spirit of Laws (1748). He examined each form of government in history in order to determine its merits and concluded that a government combining the elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy where the elements would exist in a system of checks and balances, would be best. |
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| Republic Of letters- (1417-on) |
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| Paul Dibon defines it as it was conceived in the 17th century as “an intellectual community reanscending space and time, [but] recognizing as such differences in respect to the diversity of languages, sects, and countries…This State, ideal as it may be, is in no way utopian, but…takes form in [good] old human flesh where good and evil mix” |
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| (French for philosophers) were a group of intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment. The philosophes were a result of this new approach to learning who encouraged reason, knowledge and education as a way of overcoming superstition and ignorance. Philosophes Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert edited the Encyclopédie (1751-1772,) which represented the philosophe belief that everything could be known, classified and understood by man. It also questioned religious authority and criticized social injustice. They believed that the role of philosophy was to change the world, not just to discuss it. |
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John Wesley- (1703 – 1791) |
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| was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian who was the founder of the (Evangelical) Arminian Methodist movement. "Methodism" was originally an unflattering nickname of the "Holy Club" at Oxford University founded by Charles Wesley but led by brother John. Methodism was well advanced in England through George Whitefield who had taken over the responsibility of the Holy Club while the Wesley brothers were in Savannah, Georgia British North America. |
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| (Francis-Marie Auouet, 1964-1778) one of the most famous philosophers, a crusader for religious tolerance, and a proponent of deism. French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade. Voltaire was a prolific writer, and produced works in almost every literary form, authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, over 20,000 letters and over two thousand books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Catholic Church dogma and the French institutions of his day. |
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| (benevolent despotism or enlightened despotism) a form of absolute monarchy or despotism in which rulers were influenced by the Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs embraced the principles of the Enlightenment, especially its emphasis upon rationality, and applied them to their territories. They tended to allow religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press, and the right to hold private property. Most fostered the arts, sciences, and education. Enlightened absolutists' beliefs about royal power were often similar to those of absolute monarchs, in that many believed that they had the right to govern by birth and generally refused to grant constitutions, seeing even the most pro-monarchy ones as being an inherent check on their power. |
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| (1738-1794) marquis of Beccaria and author of the book On Crimes and Punishment (1764), which put forth the concept that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, a cornerstone of Western Judicial systems, and the notion that punishment should be determined by an assessment of the damage done to society. |
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Immanuel Kant- (1724 – 1804) |
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| 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is the Critique of Pure Reason, a critical investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgement, which investigates aesthetics and teleology. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can only think in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. |
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart- (1756 – 1791) |
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| was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His more than 600 compositions include works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music, and he is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers. |
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| 18th century economic thinkers who argued that land, not gold and silver, was the source of wealth. They wanted the state to stop interfering in agriculture and the commerce of farm goods. |
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Adam Smith- (1723-1790) |
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| exonomist who argued against mercantilism and formulated the concept of capitalism. He opposed guild restrictions, monopolies, and trade barriers and instead believed that the market should be allowed to set its own prices and be free from interference from the government. |
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| a style of 18th century French art and interior design. Roccoco rooms were designed as total works of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings. It was largely supplanted by the Neoclassic style. Roccoco developed first in the decorative arts and interior design. Louis XV's succession brought a change in the court artists and general artistic fashion. By the end of the old king's reign, rich Baroque designs were giving way to lighter elements with more curves and natural patterns. These elements are obvious in the architectural designs of Nicolas Pineau. |
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| The Enlightenment salon was the very heart of the philosophic community of discourse that reinvigorated and gave new meaning to the old Republic of Letters. And just as that Republic of Letters was no longer the same polity as it had been in the seventeenth century, when it was peopled and defined by scholars with protestant, emigré and academic identities, the salons the philosophes frequented were different, too. Like seventeenth-century salons, those of the Enlightenment served purposes of social mobility, but the world into which men now sought entry was not that of the old aristocracy, but the new Republic of Letters. Entry into and education in one of these salons did not integrate one into the nobility, but into a Republic of Letters that was asserting itself as a public space from which the monarchy could be criticized as a partner in dialogue. |
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| The Great of Russia-(ruled 1762-1796) |
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| tsarina who embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment in the hopes of making her rule more effective and, in 1785, formalized the relationship between the autocratic state and the nobles with the Charter of Nobility. |
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