c. 1600 – 1800
Enlightenment
Reason turned on everything
Knowledge, government and belief were all asked to justify themselves.
René Descartes
1596 – 1650
Contemporary likeness
A soldier-turned-philosopher who decided to doubt everything and see what survived.
PhilosophyMathematics
Baruch Spinoza
1632 – 1677
After surviving artwork
A lens grinder in The Hague who wrote his ethics as a geometry.
PhilosophyPolitical theory
John Locke
1632 – 1704
Contemporary likeness
A physician and political adviser who asked where the contents of a mind come from.
PhilosophyPolitical theory
David Hume
1711 – 1776
Contemporary likeness
The most disquieting sceptic of the age, and reportedly its most cheerful man.
PhilosophyHistory
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712 – 1778
Contemporary likeness
The Enlightenment's most effective critic of the Enlightenment.
Political theoryPhilosophyEducation
Immanuel Kant
1724 – 1804
After surviving artwork
A Königsberg lecturer who never left his province and rearranged philosophy from it.
Philosophy
Adam Smith
1723 – 1790
After surviving artwork
A moral philosopher who explained how strangers end up feeding each other.
Political economyPhilosophy
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 – 1797
Contemporary likeness
A radical writer who applied the age's own principles to the half of humanity it had skipped.
PhilosophyPolitical theoryEducation
Voltaire
1694 – 1778
Contemporary likeness
The age's sharpest polemicist, twice imprisoned and repeatedly exiled for saying so.
PhilosophyLiterature
Émilie du Châtelet
1706 – 1749
Contemporary likeness
The mathematician who gave France its Newton, and corrected him along the way.
PhysicsMathematicsPhilosophy