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Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.
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François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plumeM. de Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet, known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French political economist and mathematician. His ideas, including support for free markets, public education, constitutional government, and equal rights for women and people of all races, have been said to embody the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, of which he has been called the "last witness", and Enlightenment rationalism. A critic of the constitution proposed by Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles in 1793, the Convention Nationale — and the Jacobin faction in particular — voted to have Condorcet arrested. He died in prison after a period of hiding from the French Revolutionary authorities.
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was, together with Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the Encyclopédie. D'Alembert's formula for obtaining solutions to the wave equation is named after him. The wave equation is sometimes referred to as d'Alembert's equation, and the fundamental theorem of algebra is named after d'Alembert in French.
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Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, known as d'Holbach, was a Franco-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He helped in the dissemination of "Protestant and especially German thought", particularly in the field of the sciences, but was best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770) and The Universal Morality (1776).
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Antoine-Jacques Roustan was a Genevan pastor and theologian, who engaged in an extensive correspondence with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Unlike Rousseau, he believed that a Christian republic was practical - that the Christian religion was not incompatible with patriotism or republicanism.
Jacob Vernes was a Genevan theologian and Protestant pastor in Geneva, famous for his correspondence with Voltaire and Rousseau.
Jacob Vernet was a prominent theologian in Geneva, Republic of Geneva, who believed in a rationalist approach to religion. He was called "the most important and influential Genevan pastor of his day".
Christianity Unveiled, or Examination of the Principles and Effects of the Christian Religion(Le christianisme dévoilé, ou Examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne) is an anti-Christian book attributed to Baron d'Holbach, probably published in 1766 under a pseudonym in Nancy.
Idées républicaines is a political pamphlet by the French philosopher and author Voltaire. It was published anonymously and undated, but is thought to have been written in late 1765. It defends free thought and free expression in general, and also contains Voltaire's thoughts on the ongoing campaign for democracy in Geneva, where he supported greater power for the citizens.
References
- 1 2 Roe, Shirley A. (January–March 1985). "Voltaire Versus Needham: Atheism, Materialism, and the Generation of Life". Journal of the History of Ideas. 46 (1): 65–87. doi:10.2307/2709776.
- 1 2 3 Gay, Peter (1959). Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 215.
- ↑ Aldridge, A. Owen (1975). Voltaire and the Century of Light . New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 335.
- 1 2 Besterman, Theodore (1969). Voltaire. London: Longmans. pp. 447–448. ISBN 0582112168.
- 1 2 Philips, Edith (February 1931). "Some Changes Contemplated by Voltaire in His "Questions sur les Miracles"". Modern Philology. 28 (3). JSTOR 433669.
- ↑ Voltaire. Torrey, Norman Lewis, translator. Les Philosophes. The Philosophers of the Enlightenment and Modern Democracy. Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 277–8. ISBN 9780399501319