Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Baron d'Holbach (Paul-Henri Thiry)

Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach

Germany

1723 – 1789 (65 years old)

German-born French Enlightenment philosopher and wealthy patron whose legendary Parisian salon became the 'coterie holbachique' and whose radical atheist treatise Système de la Nature was dubbed the 'Atheist's Bible'.

Paris, France

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Moses Mendelssohn

משה מנדלסזון

Germany

1729 – 1786 (56 years old)

German-Jewish philosopher hailed as the 'German Plato', leader of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), who translated the Torah into German and advocated religious tolerance in Jerusalem.

Berlin, Germany

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Gabriel Bonnot de Mably

France

1709 – 1785 (76 years old)

Influential French political philosopher and historian, elder brother of Condillac, whose communal egalitarian critiques of private property and defense of popular sovereignty deeply influenced the French Revolution.

Paris, France

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Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

France

1717 – 1783 (65 years old)

Foremost French mathematician, physicist, and Enlightenment philosopher who co-founded and co-edited the monumental Encyclopédie alongside Denis Diderot, and formulated d'Alembert's principle in fluid mechanics.

Paris, France

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Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

France

1714 – 1780 (65 years old)

Pioneering Enlightenment philosopher who radicalized John Locke's empiricism into pure sensationalism in his 1754 Traité des sensations, using the famous thought experiment of an awakened marble statue.

Lailly-en-Val (Loiret), France

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Switzerland

28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778 (66 years old)

Genevan philosopher whose Social Contract, Émile, and Confessions championed popular sovereignty, direct democracy, natural education, and the primacy of authentic human sentiment.

Ermenonville (Oise), France

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Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

François-Marie Arouet

France

21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778 (83 years old)

Incarnation of the French Enlightenment whose biting wit in Candide and passionate defense of civil liberties made him the universal symbol of religious tolerance and free speech.

Paris, France

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David Hume

Great Britain

7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776 (65 years old)

Foremost thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment whose radical empiricism dismantled the rational basis of causality, personal identity, and induction, waking Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber'.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

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Emanuel Swedenborg

Sweden

1688-01-29 – 1772-03-29 (84 years old)

Polymathic Swedish scientist, metallurgist, and inventor who at age fifty-six experienced visionary awakenings, authoring monumental theological treatises like 'Heaven and Hell'.

Uppsala, Sweden

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Claude-Adrien Helvétius

France

1715 – 1771 (56 years old)

French Enlightenment philosopher whose sensationalist 1758 treatise De l'esprit was publicly condemned by the Sorbonne and burned by the Parlement of Paris, asserting that human intelligence is shaped solely by education.

Paris, France

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Anton Wilhelm Amo

Ghana

c. 1703 CE – c. 1759 CE (56 years old)

Ghanaian-born philosopher who became the first African to earn a doctorate and hold a university professorship in Europe, teaching at Halle, Wittenberg, and Jena.

Axim, Ghana

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Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

France

1657 – 1757 (99 years old)

Centenarian French philosopher, man of letters, and scientist who served as Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences for forty-two years, popularizing the Copernican universe in Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds.

Paris, France

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George Berkeley

Ireland

1685 – 1753 (67 years old)

Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop who formulated subjective idealism (immaterialism), asserting with the maxim 'esse est percipi' (to be is to be perceived) that material objects exist only as perceptions in minds.

Oxford, United Kingdom

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Ogyu Sorai

荻生徂徠

Japan

1666 – 1728 (61 years old)

Revolutionary Edo-period Japanese Confucian philosopher and political theorist who founded the School of Ancient Learning (Kogaku), rejecting Song Neo-Confucian moralism in favor of utilitarian institutional statecraft.

Tokyo (Sumida), Japan

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Germany

1 July 1646 – 14 November 1716 (70 years old)

Universal genius who co-invented infinitesimal calculus, built mechanical calculators, and formulated the Monadology, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and optimistic theodicy.

Hanover, Germany

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Walda Heywat

ወልደ ሕይወት

Ethiopia

c. 1633 CE – c. 1710 CE (77 years old)

Ethiopian philosopher and foremost disciple of Zar Yaqob who expanded the Hatata with profound ethical treatises on practical morality, women's rights, and social justice.

Enfraz (near Gondar), Ethiopia

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