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Anne-Catherine De Ligniville, Madame Helvétius
Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius (23 July 1722 – 12 August 1800), also Anne-Catherine de Ligniville d'Autricourt, nicknamed "Minette", maintained a renowned salon in France in the eighteenth century. Life One of the twenty-one children of Jean-Jacques de Ligniville and his wife Charlotte de Saureau, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, the niece of Madame de Graffigny, married the philosopher Helvétius in 1751. By the time he died twenty years later, the couple had amassed a vast fortune, and with it Madame Helvetius maintained her salon which featured the greatest figures of the Enlightenment for over five decades. Among the habitués of Madame Helvétius's salon were Julie de Lespinasse and Suzanne Necker, writers Fontenelle, Diderot, Chamfort, Duclos, Saint-Lambert, Marmontel, Roucher, Saurin, André Chénier, and Volney. Thinkers such as Condorcet, d'Holbach, Turgot, Abbé Sieyès, Abbé Galiani, Destutt de Tracy, Abbé Beccaria, Abbé Morellet, Buffo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard-Joseph Saurin
Bernard-Joseph Saurin (1706 in Paris – 17 November 1781 in Paris) was a lawyer, poet, and playwright. Biography Saurin was the son of Joseph Saurin, a converted Protestant minister and mathematician who had been accused in 1712 by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau of being the actual author of defamatory verses that gossip had attributed to Rousseau.Rousseau was prosecuted for defamation of character and condemned to perpetual exile. Attracted to literature, and frequenting the Society of the Caveau, he became a lawyer at Parliament, a career which he did not like, but endured for fifteen years in order to support his family. His professional life in the theatre began when he was forty. Neither his comedy ''Les Trois rivaux'' (''The Three Rivals''), nor his tragedy ''Aménophis'' met with success, which came in 1760 with the tragedy ''Spartacus'' and the comedy ''Les MÅ“urs du temps'' (''The Manners of the Time''), which were applauded at the Comédie-Française. In the following yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillaume Thomas François Raynal
Guillaume Thomas Raynal (12 April 1713 – 6 March 1796) was a French writer and man of letters during the Age of Enlightenment. Early life He was born at Lapanouse in Rouergue. He was educated at the Jesuit school of Pézenas, and received priest's orders, but he was dismissed for unexplained reasons from the parish of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. He became a writer and journalist, leaving the religious life. The Abbé Raynal wrote for the ''Mercure de France'', and compiled a series of popular but superficial works, which he published and sold himself. These—''L'Histoire du stathoudérat'' (The Hague, 1748), ''L'Histoire du parlement d'Angleterre'' (London, 1748), ''Anecdotes historiques'' (Amsterdam, 3 vols., 1753)—gained for him access to the salons of Mme. Geoffrin, Helvétius, and the Baron d'Holbach. In May 1754 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1775, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. The ''Histoire philosophique des deux ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Étienne Bonnot De Condillac
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (; ; 30 September 17142 August or 3 August 1780) was a French philosopher and epistemologist, who studied in such areas as psychology and the philosophy of the mind. Biography He was born at Grenoble into a legal family, the youngest of three brothers. His two older brothers Jean and Gabriel took names associated with one of the family's properties at Mably, Loire, and were each known as "Bonnot de Mably". Étienne identified with another property at Condillac, Drôme, was known as "Bonnot de Condillac". Like his brother Gabriel, Condillac took holy orders (1733–1740) at Saint-Sulpice church in Paris. He was appointed as Abbot of Mureau. Condillac devoted his whole life, with the exception of an interval as a court-appointed tutor to the court of Parma, to speculative thought. His works are: * ' (1746); * ' (1749); * ' (1754); *' (1755); * a comprehensive ''Cours d'études'' (1767–1773) in 13 vols., written for the young Duke Ferdinand of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his ''Histoire Naturelle'' during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death. Ernst Mayr wrote that "Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century".Mayr, Ernst 1981. ''The Growth of Biological Thought''. Cambridge: Harvard. p 330 Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, he was later forced by the theology committee at the University of Paris to recant his theories about geological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the Biblical na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Morellet
André Morellet (7 March 172712 January 1819) was a French economist, author of various writings, contributor to the and one of the last Enlightenment Age .'' Biography Born at Lyon, and educated by the Jesuits there, Morellet completed his theology degree in 1752 at the Sorbonne and quickly became recognized thereafter in Parisian literary circles for his views on religious tolerance, inoculation, penal reform, liberty of the press and freedom of commerce. Morellet's early instruction by the Jesuits and his eventual clerical designation as abbé undoubtedly influenced his earliest writings in which the then 28-year-old licentiate in theology completed at least six articles, noted for their scope and length, to Volumes 6 and 7 of the ''Encyclopédie''. A fiercely independent thinker once led Voltaire to refer to Morellet as "" ("Father Bite-them") because of his sharp wit. He was a noted friend of Benjamin Franklin. By 1754, Morellet had gradually terminated his official asso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cesare Beccaria
Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio (; 15 March 173828 November 1794) was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, economist and politician, who is widely considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. He is well remembered for his treatise '' On Crimes and Punishments'' (1764), which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the Classical School of criminology. Beccaria is considered the father of modern criminal law and the father of criminal justice. According to John Bessler, Beccaria's works had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States. Birth and education Beccaria was born in Milan on 15 March 1738 to the Marchese Gian Beccaria Bonesana, an aristocrat of moderate standing from the Austrian Habsburg Empire. Beccaria received his early education in the Jesuit college at Parma. Subsequently, he graduated in law from the University of Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt De Tracy
Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de Tracy (; 20 July 1754 – 9 March 1836) was a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher who coined the term "ideology". Biography The son of a distinguished soldier, Claude Destutt, he was born in Paris. His family was of Scottish descent, tracing its origin to Walter Stutt, who had accompanied the Earls of Buchan and Douglas to the court of France in 1420 and whose family afterwards rose to be counts of Tracy. He was educated at home and at the University of Strasbourg, where he was noted for his athletic skill. He went into the army and when the French Revolution broke out he took an active part in the provincial assembly of Bourbonnais. Elected a deputy of the nobility to the estates-general, he sat alongside his friend, the Marquis de La Fayette. In the spring of 1792, he received the rank of ''maréchal de camp'' in command of the cavalry in the army of the north, but the influence of the extremists becoming predominant he took i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinando Galiani
Ferdinando Galiani (2 December 1728, Chieti, Kingdom of Naples – 30 October 1787, Naples, Kingdom of Naples) was an Italian economist, a leading Italian figure of the Enlightenment. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to him as "a most fastidious and refined intelligence" Biography Born in Chieti, he was carefully educated by his uncle, Monsignor Celestino Galiani, in Naples and Rome with a view to entering the church. Galiani showed early promise as an economist, and even more as a wit. By the age of twenty-two, after he took orders, he had produced two works by which his name became widely known far beyond the bounds of Naples. The first, ''Della Moneta'', a disquisition on coinage in which he shows himself a strong supporter of mercantilism, deals with many aspects of the question of exchange, but always with a special reference to the state of confusion then presented by the monetary system of the Neapolitan government. The other, ''Raccolta in Morte del Boia'', established hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne ( ; ; 10 May 172718 March 1781), commonly known as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Originally considered a physiocrat, he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. He is thought to be the first economist to have recognized the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture. Education Born in Paris, Turgot was the youngest son of Michel-Étienne Turgot, "Provost (civil), provost of the merchants" of Paris, and Madeleine Francoise Martineau de Brétignolles, and came from an old Normandy, Norman family. As one of four children, he had a younger sister and two older brothers, one of whom, Étienne-François Turgot (1721–1789), was a naturalist, and served as administrator of Malta and governor of French Guiana. Anne Robert Jacques was educated for the Church, and at the Collège de Sorbonne, Sorbonne, to which he was admitted in 1749 (being then styled ''abbé de Brucourt''). He deliver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baron D'Holbach
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (; 8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), was a French-German philosopher, encyclopedist, writer, and 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). Biography Sources differ regarding d'Holbach's dates of birth and death. His exact birthday is unknown, although records show that he was baptised on 8 December 1723. Some authorities incorrectly give June 1789 as the month of his death. D'Holbach's mother, Catherine Jacobina (''née'' Holbach; 1684–1743), was the daughter of Johannes Jacob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
