Enlightenment Thinkers

Mary Wollstonecraft

• Women's Rights
• suggested both men & women should be treated as rational beings
• imaged a social order founded for on reason
• received more attention than her writing

Jean Jacques Rousseau

• was a Francophone Genevan
• his political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France & across Europe

Baron de Montesquieu

• was a French lawyer, man of letters, and political philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment
• famous for his articulations of the theory of separation of powers which is many constitutions of the world
• dividing different powers among more than one branch of government, no one group in the government could grow too powerful

Francois Marie Arouet (Voltaire)

• was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church
• including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical scientific works
• wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.
• concerned with freedom of thoughts and expressions
• freedom of religious

John Locke

• most influential of Enlightenment thinkers
• commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism
• was an English philosopher and physician
• his work affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy
• his contribution to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence
• he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, & that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perseption
• said government needs to respect peoples rights or they will be overthrown
• thinks governments should protect life, liberty, and property

Thomas Hobbes

• was an English philosopher
• his 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy
• developed fundamentals of European liberal thought
• he purposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man, & State
• he went on to conceive the system of thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life
• built a good reputation in philosophic circles & in 1645 was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval & others, to referee the controversy between John Pell & Longomontanus over the problem of squaring the circle
• believed people are naturally selfish, cruel, and greedy
• said the government was needed to protect people from their own selfishness