Key People
Aristotle
The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the chief student of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great. Artistotle is one of the most influential founding figures of the Western intellectual tradition. His achievements range from creating the forerunner of the modern university curriculum to devising formal logic.
John Locke
John Locke, one of the most influential philosophers and political theorists of seventeenth-century England, was the author of the Second Treatise on Civil Government. Locke’s text remains important in the history of theories of natural law and the social contract and thus stands as a key document in the history of Western political thought. In fact, his treatise provided an intellectual foundation for the future rejection of absolute monarchies.
Spotlight
Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
Although Copernicus’s views were slow to gain adherents, today On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres is considered a monumental document in the history of Western thought. It laid the foundation for the work of such luminaries in the field of astronomy as Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and in its own way launched the scientific revolution.
Read Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
Decameron
A collection of one hundred novellas, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is unanimously considered a fundamental book in the development of Western prose. Written during the Middle Ages, it has deeply influenced various writers from later historical periods, among them, Niccoló Machiavelli, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the English Romantics.
Read Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron
Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary
François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), better known by his pen name of Voltaire, was the foremost champion of the Enlightenment in France. His Philosophical Dictionary expounds a skeptical view of the human capacity for self-government far removed from the stereotype of a facile “Enlightenment optimism.”
Read Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary
Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft advocated the extention of rights and reason to women in the 1792 book-length treatise entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, later widely regarded as one of the first feminist writings. Publication was met with both acclaim and hostility.
Read Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
