# List of intellectuals of the Enlightenment

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The Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement taking place in Europe from the late 17th century to the early 19th century. The Enlightenment, which valued knowledge gained through rationalism and empiricism, was concerned with a range of social ideas and political ideals such as natural law, liberty, and progress, toleration and fraternity, constitutional government, and the formal separation of church and state.
This list of intellectuals, sorted alphabetically by surname, includes figures largely from Western Europe and British North America. Overwhelmingly these intellectuals were male, but the emergence of women philosophers who made contributions is notable.
| Person | Dates | Nationality | Notes | |
| Thomas Abbt | 1738–1766 | German | Author of "Vom Tode für das Vaterland" (On dying for one's nation). | |
| Jean le Rond d'Alembert | 1717–1783 | French | Mathematician and physicist, one of the editors of the Encyclopédie. | |
| Francis Bacon | 1561–1626 | English | Philosopher who started the revolution in empirical thought that characterized much of the Enlightenment. | |
| Pierre Bayle | 1647–1706 | French | Author of the widely-circulated and influential work in French, not Latin, Dictionnaire historique et critique, and "Nouvelles de la république des lettres"; following Spinoza and others he was an advocate of tolerance between the different religious beliefs. | |
| James Beattie | 1735–1803 | Scottish | Poet, moralist, and philosopher. | |
| Cesare Beccaria | 1738–1794 | Italian | Criminal law reformer, best known for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764). | |
| Balthasar Bekker | 1634–1698 | Dutch | Dutch Reformed theologian and a key figure in the early Enlightenment. In his book De Philosophia Cartesiana (1668) Bekker argued that theology and philosophy each had their separate terrains and that Nature can no more be explained from Scripture than can theological truth be deduced from Nature. Author of The World Bewitched in Dutch, not Latin (1692-93). | |
| George Berkeley | 1685–1753 | Irish | Philosopher and mathematician famous for developing the theory of subjective idealism. | |
| Justus Henning Boehmer | 1674–1749 | German | Ecclesiastical jurist, one of the first reformers of the church law and the civil law which was the basis for further reforms and maintained until the 20th century. | |
| Ruđer Josip Bošković (Roger Joseph Boscovich) | 1711–1787 | Ragusan (Serbian) | A physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit priest, and a polymath from the Republic of Ragusa (today Dubrovnik, Croatia), who studied and lived in Italy and France where he also published many of his works. He produced a precursor of atomic theory and made many contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon. | |
| James Boswell | 1740–1795 | Scottish | Biographer of Samuel Johnson, helped established the norms for writing biography in general. | |
| G.L. Buffon | 1707–1788 | French | Biologist, author of L'Histoire Naturelle considered Natural Selection and the similarities between humans and apes. | |
| Edmund Burke | 1729–1797 | Irish | Parliamentarian and political philosopher, best known for pragmatism, considered important to both Enlightenment and conservative thinking. | |
| Joseph Butler | 1692–1752 | English | Bishop, theologian, Christian apologist, and philosopher. He also played an important, though under appreciated, role in the development of eighteenth-century economic discourse. | |
| George Campbell | 1719-1796 | Scottish | A figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, known as a philosopher, minister, and professor of divinity. Campbell was primarily interested in rhetoric and faculty psychology. | |
| Dimitrie Cantemir | 1673–1723 | Moldavian(Romanian) | Philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer. | |
| Émilie du Châtelet | 1706–1749 | French | Mathematician, physicist, and author. Translated Newton's Principia with commentary. | |
| Anders Chydenius | 1729–1803 | Finnish-Swedish | Priest and an ecclesiastical member of the Riksdag, contemporary known as the leading classical liberal of Nordic history. | |
| Francisco Javier Clavijero | 1731–1787 | Mexican | Historian, best known for his Antique History of Mexico. | |
| Étienne Bonnot de Condillac | 1714–1780 | French | Philosopher. | |
| Marquis de Condorcet | 1743–1794 | French | Philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who devised the concept of a Condorcet method. | |
| Anne Conway | 1631-1679 | English | English rationalist philosopher, influenced Gottfried Leibniz, considered England most important woman philosopher. Author of The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, published in Latin 1690, in English 1692. | |
| Mihály Csokonai Vitéz | 1773-1805 | Hungarian | Hungarian poet, main person in the Hungarian literary revival of the Enlightenment. | |
| Ekaterina Dashkova | 1743–1810 | Russian | Director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences (known now as the Russian Academy of Sciences). | |
| Denis Diderot | 1713–1784 | French | Founder of the Encyclopédie, speculated on free will and attachment to material objects, art critic, contributed to the theory of literature. | |
| Leonhard Euler | 1707–1783 | Swiss | Mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer. | |
| Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro | 1676–1764 | Spanish | The most prominent promoter of the critical empiricist attitude at the dawn of the Spanish Enlightenment. See also the Spanish Martín Sarmiento (1695–1772) | |
| Adam Ferguson | 1723-1816 | Scottish | Philosopher and historian. | |
| Gaetano Filangieri | 1753–1788 | Italian | Philosopher and jurist. | |
| Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle | 1657–1757 | French | Author. | |
| Denis Fonvizin | 1744–1792 | Russian | Writer and playwright. | |
| José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia | 1766–1840 | Paraguayan | First president of Paraguay. Introduced radical political ideas to Paraguay. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | 1706–1790 | American | Statesman, scientist, political philosopher, author. As a philosopher known for his writings on nationality, economic matters, aphorisms published in Poor Richard's Almanack and polemics in favor of American Independence. Involved with writing the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787. | |
| Ferdinando Galiani | 1728-1787 | Italian | Economist. | |
| Luigi Galvani | 1737–1798 | Italian | Physician, physicist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the studies of Bioelectricity. | |
| Antonio Genovesi | 1712–1769 | Italian | Writer on philosophy and political economy. | |
| Edward Gibbon | 1737–1794 | English | Historian best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. | |
| Johann Wolfgang Goethe | 1749–1832 | German | Closely identified with Enlightenment values, progressing from Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress"); leader in Weimar Classicism. | |
| Olympe de Gouges | 1748–1793 | French | Playwright and activist who championed feminist politics, author of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. She was beheaded during the French Revolution. | |
| Hugo Grotius | 1583–1645 | Dutch | Philosopher of law and jurist who laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. Wrote De jure belli ac pacis. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | 1755–1804 | American | Economist, political theorist and politician. A major protagonist for the Constitution of the United States, and the single greatest contributor to The Federalist Papers, advocating for the constitution's ratification through detailed examinations of its construction, philosophical and moral basis, and intent. | |
| Joseph Haydn | 1732–1809 | Austrian | A leading composer of the era; revolutionized i.a. the symphonic form. | |
| Claude Adrien Helvétius | 1715–1771 | French | Philosopher and writer. Famous for De l'esprit (On Mind). | |
| Johann Gottfried Herder | 1744–1803 | German | Theologian and linguist. Proposed that language determines thought, introduced concepts of ethnic study and nationalism, influential on later Romantic thinkers. Early supporter of democracy and republican self-rule. | |
| Thomas Hobbes | 1588–1679 | English | Philosopher who wrote Leviathan, a key text in political philosophy. While Hobbes justifies absolute monarchy, this work is the first to posit that the temporal power of a monarch comes about, not because God has ordained that he be monarch, but because his subjects have freely yielded their own power and freedom to him – in other words, Hobbes replaces the divine right of kings with an early formulation of the social contract. Hobbes' work was condemned by reformers for its defense of absolutism, and by traditionalists for its claim that the power of government derives from the power of its subjects rather than the will of God. | |
| Baron d'Holbach | 1723–1789 | French | Author, Encyclopédist and Europe's first outspoken atheist. Roused much controversy over his criticism of religion as a whole in his work The System of Nature. | |
| Ludvig Holberg | 1684–1754 | Norwegian | Writer, essayist, historian and playwright. | |
| Henry Home, Lord Kames | 1696–1782 | Scottish | Lawyer and philosopher. Patron of Adam Smith and David Hume. See Scottish Enlightenment. | |
| Robert Hooke | 1635–1703 | English | Probably the leading experimenter of his age, Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society. Performed the work which quantified such concepts as Boyle's Law and the inverse-square nature of gravitation, father of the science of microscopy. | |
| Wilhelm von Humboldt | 1767–1835 | German | Linguist, diplomat, founder of the modern educational system, philosopher. | |
| David Hume | 1711–1776 | Scottish | Philosopher, historian and essayist. Best known for his empiricism and rational skepticism, advanced doctrines of naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith. | |
| Francis Hutcheson | 1694–1746 | Scottish | Philosopher. | |
| Christiaan Huygens | 1629–1695 | Dutch | Physicist and mathematician who made groundbreaking contributions in optics and mechanics and is responsible for the mathematization of physics. Author of Horologium Oscillatorium and Treatise on Light. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | 1743–1826 | American | Statesman, political philosopher, educator. As a philosopher best known for the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), especially "All men are created equal", and his support of democracy in theory and practice. A polymath, he promoted higher education as a way to uplift the entire nation . | |
| Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos | 1744–1811 | Spanish | Main figure of the Spanish Enlightenment. Preeminent statesman. | |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724–1804 | German | Philosopher and physicist. Established critical philosophy on a systematic basis, proposed a material theory for the origin of the solar system, wrote on ethics and morals. Prescribed a politics of Enlightenment in What is Enlightenment? (1784). Influenced by Hume and Rousseau. Important figure in German Idealism, and important to the work of Fichte and Hegel. | |
| Vasyl Karazin | 1773–1842 | Russian and Ukrainian | Enlightenment figure, intellectual, inventor, founder of The Ministry of National Education in Russian Empire and scientific publisher in Ukraine. Founder of Kharkiv University, which now bears his name. Also known for opposing to what he saw as colonial exploitation of Ukraine by the Russian Empire, even though he himself was ethnically Serbian. | |
| Adriaan Koerbagh | 1633–1669 | Dutch | A follower of Spinoza Koerbagh was among the most radical figures of the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting and reviling the religious authorities and state as unreliable institutions and exposing theologians' and lawyers' language as vague and opaque tools to blind the people in order to maintain their own power. He wrote Een Bloemhof in 1668 in Dutch rather than Latin, which brought him to the immediate attention of authorities, who suppressed his work. He was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, where he rapidly died. His imprisonment and death was a cautionary tale for radical philosophers, including Spinoza, who subsequently published only anonymously. | |
| Hugo Kołłątaj | 1750–1812 | Polish | Active in the Commission for National Education and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the Kraków Academy, of which he was rector in 1783–86. Co-authored the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's Constitution of May 3, 1791, and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation. | |
| Adamantios Korais | 1748–1833 | Greek | Leading philosopher and scholar of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment who exerted enormous influence on the Greek language, culture and Greece's legal system. | |
| Ignacy Krasicki | 1735–1801 | Polish | Leading poet of the Polish Enlightenment. | |
| Joseph-Louis Lagrange | 1736–1813 | Italian-French | Major mathematician, famous for his contributions to analysis, number theory, and mechanics. | |
| Antoine Lavoisier | 1743–1794 | French | Founder of modern chemistry; executed in the French Revolution for his politics | |
| Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | 1632–1723 | Dutch | The father of microbiology and known for his pioneering work in microscopy and for his contributions toward the establishment of microbiology as a scientific discipline. Van Leeuwenhoek was the first to discover living cells, bacteria, spermatozoa and red blood cells. | |
| Gottfried Leibniz | 1646–1716 | German | Polymath-philosopher, mathematician, diplomat, jurist, historian; rival of Newton. | |
| Giacomo Leopardi | 1798–1837 | Italian | Poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist. | |
| Gotthold Ephraim Lessing | 1729–1781 | German | Dramatist, critic, political philosopher. Created theatre in the German language. Friend of Moses Mendelssohn, whose work he promoted. | |
| Georg Christoph Lichtenberg | 1742–1799 | German | Physicist, satirist, and aphorist. | |
| Carl von Linné (Carl Linnaeus) | 1707–1778 | Swedish | Botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. Known as the father of modern taxonomy. | |
| John Locke | 1632–1704 | English | Philosopher. Important empiricist who expanded and extended the work of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Seminal thinker in the realm of the relationship between the state and the individual, the contractual basis of the state and the rule of law. Argued for personal liberty emphasizing the rights of property. | |
| Mikhail Lomonosov | 1711–1765 | Russian | Polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. | |
| Gabriel Bonnot de Mably | 1709-1785 | French | Philosopher and historian. | |
| James Madison | 1751–1836 | American | Statesman and political philosopher. Played a key role in the writing of the United States Constitution and providing a theoretical justification for it in his contributions to The Federalist Papers; author of the American Bill of Rights. | |
| Sylvain Maréchal | 1750–1803 | French | Essayist, poet, and philosopher. | |
| George Mason | 1725–1792 | American | Statesman, authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights; along with Madison called the "Father of the United States Bill of Rights". | |
| Moses Mendelssohn | 1729–1786 | Jewish German | Philosopher of Jewish Enlightenment in Prussia (Haskalah), honoured by his friend Lessing in his drama as Nathan the Wise. Mendelssohn took from Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) that Judaism is not a revealed religion but a belief based on law, and that religious toleration and liberty of conscience are essential goals. | |
| Jean Meslier | 1664–1729 | French | Roman Catholic priest, philosopher and first atheist writer since ancient times. Author of Testament, a book length essay, which supplied arguments and rhetoric used by other enlightenment authors such as Denis Diderot, Baron d'Holbach and Voltaire. | |
| La Mettrie | 1709–1751 | French | Physician and early French materialist philosopher. Best known as author of L'homme machine (Man a Machine). | |
| John Millar | 1735–1801 | Scottish | Philosopher and historian. | |
| Teodor Janković-Mirijevski | 1741–1814 | Serbian and Russian | Educational reformer, academic, scholar and pedagogical writer | |
| James Burnett, Lord Monboddo | 1714–1799 | Scottish | Philosopher, jurist, pre-evolutionary thinker and contributor to linguistic evolution. See Scottish Enlightenment | |
| Josef Vratislav Monse | 1733–1793 | Czech | Professor of Law at University of Olomouc, leading figure of Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy | |
| Montesquieu | 1689–1755 | French | Political thinker. Famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions all over the world. Political scientist, Donald Lutz, found that Montesquieu was the most frequently quoted authority on government in colonial America. | |
| Leandro Fernández de Moratín | 1760–1828 | Spanish | Dramatist and translator, support of republicanism and free thinking. Transitional figure to Romanticism. | |
| Henry More | 1614-1687 | English | Philosopher and theologian of the Cambridge Platonist school. Teacher and correspondent of Anne Conway; author of numerous works, including the Divine Dialogues (1688) and An Antidote against Atheism, or an Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether there be not a God, 1653 | Henry More |
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | 1756–1791 | Austrian | A leading composer of the era. Influenced by Haydn, Mozart was a child prodigy born in Salzburg. He was quite popular throughout Europe in his lifetime. He died at the age of 35. | |
| José Celestino Mutis | 1755–1808 | Spanish | Botanist; lead the first botanic expeditions to South America, and built a major collection of plants. | |
| Isaac Newton | 1642–1727 | English | Lucasian professor of mathematics, Cambridge University; author of 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' and 'Opticks'. | |
| Nikolay Novikov | 1744–1818 | Russian | Philanthropist and journalist who sought to raise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress. See Russian Enlightenment. | |
| Dositej Obradović | 1739–1811 | Serbian | Writer, linguist, educator, influential proponent of Serbian cultural nationalism, and founder of The Ministry of National Education in Karađorđe's Serbia, and founder of the University of Belgrade. | |
| Zaharije Orfelin | 1726–1785 | Serbian | Polymath-poet, writer, historian, translator, engraver, editor, publisher, etc. | |
| Francesco Mario Pagano | 1748–1799 | Italian | Jurist and philosopher, one of the pioneers of modern criminal law. | |
| Thomas Paine | 1737–1809 | English/American | Pamphleteer, most famous for Common Sense (1776), calling for American independence as the most rational solution. | |
| Marquis of Pombal | 1699–1782 | Portuguese | Statesman notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. He also implemented sweeping economic policies to regulate commercial activity and standardize quality throughout the country. | |
| Stanisław August Poniatowski | 1732–1798 | Polish | Last king of independent Poland, a leading light of the Enlightenment in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and co-author of one of the world's first modern constitutions, the Constitution of May 3, 1791. | |
| Richard Price | 1723–1791 | Welsh | Philosopher, preacher, and mathematician. | |
| Joseph Priestley | 1733–1804 | English | Philosopher, theologian, and chemist. | |
| François Quesnay | 1694–1774 | French | Economist of the Physiocratic school. | |
| Alexander Radishchev | 1749–1802 | Russian | Writer and philosopher. Brought the tradition of radicalism in Russian literature to prominence. | |
| Jovan Rajić | 1726–1801 | Serbian | Writer, historian, traveller, and pedagogue, considered to be one of the greatest Serbian academics of the 18th century. | |
| Guillaume Thomas François Raynal | 1713–1796 | French | Historian and abolitionist. | |
| Thomas Reid | 1710–1796 | Scottish | Philosopher who developed Common Sense Realism. | |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | 1712–1778 | Swiss | Political philosopher, educational reformer, composer; Encyclopédist who influenced many Enlightenment figures but did not himself believe in the primacy of reason and was a forerunner of Romanticism. | |
| Giovanni Salvemini | 1708-1791 | Italian | Mathematician and astronomer. | |
| Friedrich Schiller | 1759–1805 | German | Philosopher, poet, and playwright. | |
| Adam Smith | 1723–1790 | Scottish | Economist and philosopher. Wrote The Wealth of Nations, in which he argued that wealth was not money in itself, but wealth was derived from the added value in manufactured items produced by both invested capital and labour. Sometimes considered to be the founding father of the laissez-faire economic theory, but in fact argues for some degree of government control in order to maintain equity. Just prior to this he wrote Theory of Moral Sentiments, explaining how it is humans function and interact through what he calls sympathy, setting up important context for The Wealth of Nations. | |
| Jan Śniadecki | 1756–1830 | Polish | Mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer. | |
| Jędrzej Śniadecki | 1768–1838 | Polish | Writer, physician, chemist, and biologist. | |
| Baruch Spinoza | 1632–1677 | Dutch | Philosopher and author of the Ethics, in which he denied the transcendence of God and compared the existence of God to nature ('deus sive natura'). | |
| Alexander Sumarokov | 1717–1777 | Russian | Poet and playwright who created classical theatre in Russia. | |
| Emanuel Swedenborg | 1688–1772 | Swedish | Natural philosopher and theologian whose search for the operation of the soul in the body led him to construct a detailed metaphysical model for spiritual-natural causation. | |
| Matthew Tindal | 1657–1733 | English | Deist. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christian consensus of his time. |
| John Toland | 1670–1722 | Irish | Philosopher and satirist. | |
| Josiah Tucker | 1713–1799 | Welsh | Welsh churchman, known as an economist and political writer. He was concerned in his works with free trade, Jewish emancipation and American independence. He became Dean of Gloucester in 1758. | |
| Pietro Verri | 1728-1797 | Italian | Philosopher, economist, and historian. | |
| Giambattista Vico | 1668–1744 | Italian | Political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist. | |
| Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) | 1694–1778 | French | Highly influential writer, historian and philosopher. He promoted Newtonianism and denounced organized religion as pernicious. | |
| Adam Weishaupt | 1748–1830 | German | Founded the Order of the Illuminati. | |
| Christoph Martin Wieland | 1733–1813 | German | Philosopher and poet. | |
| Christian Wolff | 1679–1754 | German | Philosopher and mathematician. | |
| Mary Wollstonecraft | 1759–1797 | English | Writer, and pioneer feminist. | |