Period
Early modern
c. 1600 – c. 1800
The age of the new science, rationalism and empiricism, from Descartes to Kant.
Early modern philosophy grew up alongside the scientific revolution. Its central questions were about knowledge: whether it rests ultimately on reason or on experience, and how the mind relates to the world. The period is often told as a contest between rationalists such as Descartes and Spinoza and empiricists such as Locke and Hume, resolved — or reframed — by Kant.
- Traditions
- Western
Philosophers
- Francis Bacon1561–1626
- Marie de Gournay1565–1645
- Lucrezia Marinellac. 1571 – 1653
- Jeanne de Chantal1572–1641
- Thomas Hobbes1588–1679
- Angélique Arnauld1591–1661
- Agnès Arnauld1593–1671
- René Descartes1596–1650
- Madame de Sablé1598–1678
- Madeleine de Scudéry1607–1701
- Margaret Fell1614–1702
- Elisabeth of Bohemia1618–1680
- Ninon de Lenclos1620–1705
- Blaise Pascal1623–1662
- Margaret Cavendish1623–1673
- Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d'Andilly1624–1684
- Jacqueline Pascal1625–1661
- Kristina Wasa1626–1689
- Madame de Sévigné1626–1696
- Anne Conway1631–1679
- Baruch Spinoza1632–1677
- John Locke1632–1704
- Madame de Maintenon1635–1719
- Antoinette Deshoulières1638–1694
- Nicolas Malebranche1638–1715
- Marguerite de La Sablière1640–1693
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz1646–1716
- Anne Dacier1647–1720
- Marquise de Lambert1647–1733
- Damaris Masham1658–1708
- Mary Astell1666–1731
- Catharine Trotter Cockburn1679–1749
- George Berkeley1685–1753
- Montesquieu1689–1755
- Émilie du Châtelet1706–1749
- David Hume1711–1776
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778
- Adam Smith1723–1790
- Immanuel Kant1724–1804
- Catharine Macaulay1731–1791
- Jeremy Bentham1748–1832
- Olympe de Gouges1748–1793
- Mary Wollstonecraft1759–1797
Sources
- Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3: The Rise of Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press