Best Enlightenment
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher whose 1762 Social Contract argued that legitimate political authority rests on the general will.
Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher whose 1759 Candide satirized optimism and defended tolerance, reason, and civil liberty.
Montesquieu was a French political philosopher whose 1748 Spirit of the Laws argued for separation of powers and comparative study of governments.
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher who co-edited the Encyclopedie from 1751, making it a central project of Enlightenment secular learning.
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English philosopher and feminist whose 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman argued for women's rational education.
Edmund Burke was an Irish-British statesman and philosopher whose 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France became a classic conservative text.
Thomas Reid was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher who founded common sense realism and opposed Humean skepticism in Essays on the Intellectual Powers.
