Locke, John (1632–1704)

By Ayers, Michael

John Locke was the first of the empiricist opponents of Descartes to achieve comparable authority among his European contemporaries. Together with Newton’s physics, the philosophy of An Essay ...

Locke, John (1632–1704)

John Locke was the leading English philosopher of the late seventeenth century. His two major works, An Essay concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of ...

Bold, Samuel (1649–1737)

By Rogers, G.A.J.

Samuel Bold (or Bolde) was a Latitudinarian minister who defended John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bold published a series of pamphlets and ...

Political philosophy

By Miller, David

Political philosophy can be defined as philosophical reflection on how best to arrange our collective life - our political institutions and our social practices, such as our economic ...

Browne, Peter (1666–1735)

By Winkler, Kenneth P.

Peter Browne, an Irish bishop, was a critic of Locke’s theory of ideas. His chief philosophical concern was to explain how human beings can conceive of God. He ...

Common Sense School

By Madden, Edward H.

The term ‘Common Sense School’ refers to the works of Thomas Reid and to the tradition of Scottish realist philosophy for which Reid’s works were the main source. ...

Cockburn, Catharine (1679–1749)

By Hutton, Sarah

Catharine Cockburn (Catharine Trotter) was a British moral philosopher who turned to philosophy after a successful career as one of the first woman playwrights. She wrote no substantial ...

Cumberland, Richard (1632–1718)

By Haakonssen, Knud

Richard Cumberland developed his ideas in response to Hobbes’ Leviathan. He introduced concepts of aggregate goodness (later used in utilitarianism), of benevolence (used in moral-sense theory), of moral ...

Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van (1614–98)

By Brown, Stuart

Although he lived in the seventeenth century, van Helmont belongs more to late Renaissance than to modern intellectual culture. He was a larger-than-life figure who, in his prime, ...

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

By Moore, James; Silverthorne, Michael

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the ...

Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804)

By Schofield, Robert E.

A major figure of the British Enlightenment, Joseph Priestley is best known as a scientist and for his discovery of oxygen, though he was by profession a theologian, ...

Encyclopedists, 18th-century

By Mason, John Hope

The Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was published in seventeen folio volumes (about 20 million words) between 1751 and 1765, accompanied by ...

Eberhard, Johann August (1739–1809)

By Allison, Henry E.

A German philosopher and theologian, Eberhard was trained in the rationalist tradition of Christian Wolff, but was also influenced by the more empirical ‘popular philosophy’ of the Enlightenment. ...

Le Clerc, Jean (1657–1737)

By Verbeek, Theo

Le Clerc was not a particularly original philosopher – his position was somewhat eclectic – but his journals and textbooks make him an important historical figure. He acted ...

Introspection, psychology of

Introspection is the process of directly examining one’s own conscious mental states and processes. Since the seventeenth century, there has been considerable disagreement on the scope, nature and ...

Judgment and belief, in early modern philosophy

By Marušić, Jennifer

What is the difference between simply thinking about something and judging or believing that something is the case? ...

Chông Yagyong (Tasan) (1762–1836)

By Ch’oe, Yông-Ho

Chông Yagyong was a government official and a scholar of the Sirhak (Practical Learning) school in the late Chosôn dynasty of Korea. He is also known by his ...

Sergeant, John (1623–1704)

By Southgate, Beverley

John Sergeant was the last of the Blackloists – the faction of English Catholics who followed the thought of Thomas White in the middle decades of the seventeenth ...

Chillingworth, William (1602–44)

By Milton, J.R.

Chillingworth was one of the most notable English-speaking contributors to debates between Protestants and Catholics in the seventeenth century. His use of a distinction between metaphysical and moral ...

Amo, Anton Wilhelm (c.1703–56)

By Wright, John S.

The first European-trained African philosopher, Amo pursued a scholarly career in jurisprudence and then in rationalist psychology, logic, and metaphysics. He trained at Halle, Wittenberg and Jena universities, ...

Buffier, Claude (1661–1737)

By Manns, James W.

A French Jesuit who flourished in the early eighteenth century, Buffier developed an outlook that he referred to as common-sense philosophy. While deeply influenced by the philosophies of ...

Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–80)

By O'Neill, Eileen

Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine, exerted an influence on seventeenth-century Cartesianism via her correspondence with Descartes. She questioned his accounts of mind–body interaction and free will, and persuasively ...

Gerdil, Giancinto Sigismondo (1718–1802)

By Riley, Patrick

A lifelong member of the Barnabite religious order, Gerdil became well-known as the most eminent Italian disciple of Malebranche (and critic of Locke); in 1764 he published a ...

Strauss, Leo (1899–1973)

By Drury, Shadia B.

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish émigré political philosopher and historian of political thought, who wrote some fifteen books and eighty articles on the history of political thought from ...

Masham, Damaris (1658–1708)

By Hutton, Sarah

Damaris Cudworth, who became Lady Masham on her marriage to Sir Francis Masham in 1685, was an English moral philosopher who published two short treatises on moral philosophy. ...