Curated category
Enlightenment philosophers
- VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet was born in Paris on the 21st of November 1694. He entered the world as the youngest child of a minor treasury official and a woman…
- Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant was born on the 22nd of April 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. His father Johann Georg worked as a harness maker from Memel while his mother Anna…
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on the 28th of August 1749 in a large house on Großer Hirschgraben in Frankfurt. His father, Johann Caspar Goethe, had…
- Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson entered the world on the 13th of April 1743, at Shadwell Plantation in Virginia. His father Peter Jefferson was a planter and surveyor who…
- Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was born on the 5th of October 1713 in the city of Langres. His father Didier worked as a cutler and his mother Angélique Vigneron supported…
- Friedrich SchillerOn the 10th of November 1759, a boy named Friedrich Schiller was born in Marbach. He grew up as the only son of Johann Kaspar Schiller and Elisabetha…
- Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau was born on the 28th of June 1712 in the Republic of Geneva. His mother Suzanne Bernard died nine days after his birth from puerperal…
- René DescartesRené Descartes entered the world on the 31st of March 1596 in La Haye en Touraine, France. His mother Jeanne Brochard died just days after his birth while…
- John MiltonJohn Milton was born on the 9th of December 1608 in Bread Street, London. His father, also named John Milton, had moved to London around 1583 after being…
- MontesquieuCharles Louis de Secondat entered the world on the 18th of January 1689 at the Château de la Brède. This estate sat south of Bordeaux in southwest France.
- John LockeOn the 29th of August in the year of our Lord 1632, a boy named John Locke was born in the village of Wrington, Somerset.
- Baruch SpinozaOn the 24th of November 1632, a boy named Baruch Espinoza was born into a house on the Houtgracht canal. This street sat on an artificial island called the…
- David HumeDavid Hume was born on the 7th of May 1711 in a tenement building located on the north side of Edinburgh's Lawnmarket. He entered the University of Edinburgh…
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on the 27th of August 1770 in Stuttgart, the capital of the Duchy of Württemberg.
- Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley was born in Birstall, West Yorkshire, on the 24th of March 1733. He grew up as the oldest of six children to Mary Swift and Jonas Priestley…
- Mary WollstonecraftMary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. Her father Edward John Wollstonecraft squandered a comfortable family income…
- Adam SmithAdam Smith was born in the port town of Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. His father died two months before his birth, leaving his mother Margaret Douglas a widow.
- Christoph Martin WielandChristoph Martin Wieland arrived in the world on the 5th of September 1733. He entered life within a village called Oberholzheim, now part of Achstetten.
- Mikhail LomonosovIn 1730, a nineteen-year-old fisherman named Mikhail Lomonosov walked one hundred miles from his village of Mishaninskaya to the city of Moscow.