European Intellectuals by Century

Note:  The names of the philosophers covered in the two courses are denoted by a larger text font.


Quick links:   Jump to 17th century philosophers     Jump to 18th century philosophers


The Philosophers of Antiquity  (Greeks and Romans) webpage.


Late Antiquity Philosophers

(204 - 270)       Plotinus  Greek


Early Medieval Philosophers  (starting around the fall of the Western Roman Empire)

(354 - 430)       Augustine of Hippo  (modern day Algeria)

(480 - 524)       Boethius  Roman

(815 - 877)       Jon Scotus Erigena  Irish

(980 - 1023)     Avicenna   Islamic/Persian (present day Uzbekistan) 

(1033 - 1109)   Anselm of Canterbury  English

(1079 - 1142)   Peter Abelard  French 

(1126 - 1198)   Averroes  (Islamic/Andalusian)  (pronounce)  

(1138 - 1204)   Maimonides  (Sephardic Jew / Cordoba) 


13th Century - High Medieval Period - The Scholastics

(1175 - 2153)   Robert Grosseteste  English

(1200 - 1280)   Albert Magnus  German  Dominican

(1220 - 1292)   Roger Bacon  English  Franciscan

(1221 - 1274)   Bonaventure  Italian  Franciscan

(1225 - 1274)   Thomas Aquinas  Italian   Dominican

(1240 - 1284)   Siger of Brabant  Low Countries

(1266 - 1308)   Duns Scotus  English  (Franciscan?)


14th & 15th Centuries - The Early Renaissance

(1304 - 1374)   Francesco Petrarch  Italian  -  Founder of Renaissance Humanism

(c 1320 - 1384)  John Wycliff  English  -  Theologian of the English Lollards

(1401 - 1464)   Nicholas of Cusa  Italian

(1433 - 1499)   Marsilio Ficino  Italian  -  Platonic Humanist

(1452 - 1519)   Leonardo da Vinci  Italian  -  A brilliant polymath, but not really a philosopher


16th Century - The Late Renaissance

(1455 - 1522)   Johann Reuchlin  German  

(1459 - 1527)   Niccolò Machiavelli  Italian  -   Political Theory

(1463 - 1494)   Giovanni Pico della Mirandola  Italian  -  Platonic Humanist

(1466 - 1536)   Desiderius Erasmus  Dutch/Netherlander

(1478 - 1535)   Thomas More  English   

(1483 - 1540)   Francesco Guicciardini  Italian  - early modern historian (realism / used primary sources) 

(1483 - 1546)   Francisco de Vitoria  Spanish  -  Just War Theory & International Law

(1488 - 1523)   Ulrich von Hutten  German  -  critic of the Catholic Church

(1512 - 1594)   Geradus Mercator  German  - Netherlander  -  cartographer, not a philosopher

(1533 - 1592)   Michel de Montaigne  French

(1548 - 1600)   Giordano Bruno  Italian  Dominican

(1548 - 1617)   Francisco Suárez  Spanish  Jesuit  -  The Last Major Scholastic / Modern leaning thought

(1562 - 1608)   Alberico Gentili  Italian  


17th Century (aka - the Baroque Era)

(1561 - 1626)   Francis Bacon  English  -  Science

(1564 - 1642)   Galileo Galilei  Italian  -  Science

(1574 - 1635)   Samuel de Champlain  French - More a modern thinker than a philosopher

(1578 - 1657)   William Harvey  English  -  Science

(1583 - 1645)   Hugo Grotius  Dutch  -  International Law / War

(1585 - 1619)   Lucilo Vanini  Italian -  "free-thinker" on sex (a Libertine)

(1588 - 1653)   Robert Filmer  English  -  Divine Rights of Kings / Patriarchy

(1592 - 1670)   John Amos Comenius  Czech  -  Universal Education

(1592 - 1655)   Pierre Gassendi  French

(1596 - 1660)   René Descartes  French    

(1599 - 1679)   Thomas Hobbes  English  

(1602 - 1674)   Franciscus van den Enden  Dutch  -   Spinoza's teacher

(1603 - 1683)   Roger Williams  English-American  -  modern thinker on democracy, freedom of conscious

(1618 - 1685)   Pieter de la Court  Dutch  -   Economist

(1620 - 1687)   William Petty  English  -  Economist

(1623 - 1662)   Blaise Pascal  French

(1623 - 1683)   Algernon Sidney  English  -  Political Theory

(1627 - 1629)   Robert Boyle  English  -  Science

(1631/32 - 1718)  Richard Cumberland  English

(1632 - 1677)   Baruch Spinoza  Sephardi-Dutch  -  Materialist  (proto-radical)

(1632 - 1704)   John Locke  English

(1632 - 1694)   Samuel von Pufendorf  German

(1633 - 1669)   Adriaan Koerbagh  Dutch  -  Liberal politician, critic of religion  (proto-radical)

(1638 - 1715)   Nicholas Malebranche  French

(1644 - 1729)   Jean Meslier  French  -  atheist  

(1646 - 1716)   Gottfried Leibniz  German

(1647 - 1706)   Pierre Bayle  French-Netherlands  (proto-radical)


18th Century - The Enlightenment

(1658 - 1722)   Henri de Boulainvilliers  French

(1668 - 1744)   Giambattista Vico  Italian

(1671 - 1713)   Third Earl of Shaftesbury  English

(1679 - 1754)   Christian Wolff  German

(1685 - 1763)   George Berkeley  Irish

(1685 - 1755)   Montesquieu  French

(1692 - 1752)   Joseph Butler  English

(1694 - 1778)   Voltaire  (François-Marie Arouet)  French

(1694 - 1774)   Francois Quesnay  French -   Economist

(1696 - 1746)   Francis Hutcheson  Scottish 

(1696 - 1782)   Henry Home, Lord Kames  Scottish

(1704 - 1771)   Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens  French

(1706 - 1790)   Benjamin Franklin  American

(1707 - 1788)   Comte de Buffon  French

(1709 - 1751)   Julien Offroy de La Mettrie  French  Materialist / Hedonist  (pronounce)  

(1709 - 1785)   Gabriel Bonnot de Mably

(1710 - 1796)   Thomas Reid  Scottish

(1711 - 1776)   David Hume  Scottish

(1712 - 1778)   Jean-Jacques Rousseau  Swiss


The designation of radical on many names below is taken from the current Enlightenment historian Jonathan Israel.  Israel divides Enlightenment thinkers into two groups: moderates and radicals.  Moderates sought fixes to the existing European institutions of monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power.  Radicals advocated replacing these institutions with egalitarian ideals and democratic government.  Israel's position is highly controversial.    


(1713 - 1784)   Denis Diderot  French  (radical)  (pronounce)

(1713 - 1796)   Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal  French  (radical)   (pronounce)

(1714 - 1776)   Emer de Vattel  Swiss  -  International Law / Just War Ethics 

(1714 - 1780)   Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (Con-de-yak)  French

(1715 - 1771)   Claude-Adrien Helvétius  French  (radical)  (pronounce) 

(1717 - 1783)   Jean le Rond d'Alembert  French  (pronounce)

(1723 - 1790)   Adam Smith  Scottish 

(1723 - 1791)   Richard Price  Welsh  (radical)

(1723 - 1813)   Adam Ferguson  Scottish

(1723 - 1780)   William Blackstone  English 

(1723 - 1789)   Baron d'Holbach  Swiss  (radical)

(1724 - 1804)   Immanual Kant  German

(1727 - 1781)   Anne Robert Jacques Turgot  French  (pronounce)

(1729 - 1781)   Gotthold Ephraim Lessing   German  (radical)

(1729 - 1786)   Moses Mendelssohn  German / Jewish

(1731 - 1791)   Catherine Macaulay  English  -  Early female historian 

(1733 - 1804)   Joseph Priestly  English  (radical) 

(1737 - 1807)   Thomas Paine  Anglo-American  (radical)

(1738 - 1794)   Cesare Beccaria  Italian  (Judicial Reform)

(1741 - 1791)   comte de Mirabeau  French  (radical)  (pronounce)

(1743 - 1794)   Marquis de Condorcet  French  (radical)  (pronounce)

(1744 - 1803)   Johann Gottfried Herder  German  (radical)

(1748 - 1830)   Adam Weishaupt  German  (radical)

(1748 - 1832)   Jeremy Bentham  English  -  utilitarian ethics, social reformer 

(1749 - 1806)   Charles James Fox  English  (radical)  

(1759 - 1797)   Mary Wollstonecraft  English  (radical)  -  women's rights


         List of People in the French Revolution


19th Century

(1749 - 1832)   Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  German

(1762 - 1814)   Johann Gottlieb Fichte  German

(1770 - 1831)   George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  German