Early Modern
21 philosophers
Descartes
Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, is the most famous line in philosophy. Invented a...
Spinoza
Excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community at age 23. His Ethics is written in geo...
Leibniz
Co-invented calculus independently of Newton, causing a bitter priority dispute. Invented ...
Kant
The Critique of Pure Reason is considered the most important work in modern philosophy. Ne...
Hegel
The dialectical method of thesis-antithesis-synthesis influenced Marx and countless others...
Hume
The problem of induction: we can never prove the sun will rise tomorrow. His bundle theory...
Locke
The father of liberalism and empirical epistemology. The tabula rasa or blank slate theory...
Berkeley
Argued that material substance does not exist, only minds and ideas. The phrase esse est p...
Bentham
The founder of utilitarianism: the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Designed th...
Hobbes
Leviathan argued that without government, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, an...
Rousseau
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. The Social Contract inspired both the Fr...
Montaigne
Invented the essay as a literary form. His tower library is where he wrote and read surrou...
Schopenhauer
The World as Will and Representation argues that a blind, irrational will drives all exist...
Erasmus
The prince of Renaissance humanists. Edited the first printed Greek New Testament. The Pra...
Thomas More
Coined the word utopia in his book about an island commonwealth. The name puns on good pla...
Francis Bacon
Declared that knowledge is power. The Novum Organum proposed induction in place of syllogi...
Blaise Pascal
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, yet a thinking reed. The wager argues that belie...
Voltaire
Candide razed the optimism of Leibniz with one disaster after another. We must cultivate o...
Denis Diderot
Chief editor of the Encyclopedie, the great project to map all knowledge. Jailed for a ske...
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations founded modern economics. The invisible hand shows how self interest...
Mary Wollstonecraft
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman demanded real education for women. Argued that reason...