Adam Smith

1723 CE – 1790 CE

Kirkcaldy, Fife

Scottish philosopher from Kirkcaldy, Fife associated with epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy.

Christian Wolff

1679 CE – 1754 CE

Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland)

German Enlightenment rationalist whose systematic textbooks in logic, ontology, psychology, natural theology, ethics, natural law, aesthetics, and philosophy of science made Wolffian method the main bridge between Leibniz and Kant.

Dai Zhen

1724 CE – 1777 CE

Xiuning, Anhui

Qing Confucian evidential scholar from Xiuning whose work joined philology, moral psychology, language, desire, principle, and precise inquiry against empty abstraction.

David Hume

1711 CE – 1776 CE

Edinburgh

Scottish Enlightenment philosopher who transformed empiricism, skepticism, moral psychology, aesthetics, political economy, natural religion, and the philosophy of science through a systematic science of human nature.

Denis Diderot

1713 CE – 1784 CE

Langres, Champagne

French Enlightenment philosopher, critic, editor, and writer whose materialist, empiricist, aesthetic, political, and scientific thought helped make the Encyclopédie a program of public reason.

Émilie du Châtelet

1706 CE – 1749 CE

Paris

Enlightenment philosopher, mathematician, translator of Newton, and critic of dogma whose work on force, physics, happiness, freedom, and natural religion reshaped French Newtonianism.

Immanuel Kant

1724 CE – 1804 CE

Königsberg, Prussia

Prussian Enlightenment philosopher whose critical philosophy of transcendental idealism, autonomy, public reason, aesthetic judgment, natural science, religion, and right reshaped modern metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert

1717 CE – 1783 CE

Paris

French Enlightenment philosopher, mathematician, physicist, music theorist, and encyclopedist from Paris, associated with mathematical physics, the Encyclopedie, the Preliminary Discourse, and philosophy of science.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712 CE – 1778 CE

Geneva

Genevan French-language Enlightenment philosopher of popular sovereignty, the general will, social contract theory, natural education, civil religion, moral psychology, language, music, autobiography, and the critique of corrupting civilization.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

1762 CE – 1814 CE

Rammenau, Upper Lusatia, Saxony

German post-Kantian idealist philosopher of the Wissenschaftslehre, self-positing subjectivity, moral freedom, natural right, language, vocation, political economy, religion, and national education.

Mary Wollstonecraft

1759 CE – 1797 CE

Spitalfields, London

English Enlightenment feminist philosopher, republican political writer, educator, novelist, translator, historian, and advocate of women's rational education, civic dignity, and moral independence.

Thomas Reid

1710 CE – 1796 CE

Strachan, Kincardineshire

Scottish Enlightenment philosopher of common sense, direct realism, perception, first principles, active powers, moral liberty, natural signs, and criticism of the theory of ideas.