Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Montesquieu French social commentator and political thinker Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (;[2] French: [mɔ̃tɛskjø]; 18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man of letters, and political philosopher. He is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word "despotism" in the political lexicon.[3] His anonymously-published The Spirit of Law in 1748, which was received well in both Great Britain and the American colonies, influenced the Founding Fathers in drafting the United States Constitution.

en.m.wikipedia Italian author and poet Giovanni Boccaccio (, , Italian: [dʒoˈvanni bokˈkattʃo]; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375)[1] was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio wrote a number of notable works, including The Decameron and On Famous Women. Giambattista Vico Giambattista Vico (born Giovan Battista Vico /ˈviːkoʊ/, Italian: [ˈviko]; 23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744) was an Italian political philosopher and rhetorician, historian and jurist, of the Age of Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, was an apologist for Classical Antiquity, a precursor of systematic and complex thought, in opposition to Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism, and was the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics. The Latin aphorism Verum esse ipsum factum ("What is true is precisely what is made") coined by Vico is an early instance of constructivist epistemology.[1][2] He inaugurated the modern field of the philosophy of history, and, although the term philosophy of history is not in his writings, Vico spoke of a “history of philosophy narrated philosophically. Biography[edit]

www.britannica Giovanni Boccaccio, (born 1313, Paris, Fr.—died Dec. 21, 1375, Certaldo, Tuscany [Italy]), Italian poet and scholar, best remembered as the author of the earthy tales in the Decameron. With Petrarch he laid the foundations for the humanism of the Renaissance and raised vernacular literature to the level and status of the classics of antiquity. Youth. Joseph de Maistre Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre (French: [də mɛstʁ];[2] 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821[3]) was a French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat, who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution.[4] Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817),[5] and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821).[6] A key figure of the "Counter-Enlightenment",[7] Maistre regarded monarchy as both a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government.[8] He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and for the ultimate authority of the Pope in temporal matters. Biography[edit]

life1_en Boccaccio is born (July or August) in Certaldo or in Florence to an unknown woman and Boccaccino di Chellino, a wealthy merchant who officially and without hesitation recognizes him: an official document, dated November 2, 1360 with which Pope Innocent VI confers to Giovanni, then a Florentine ambassador at his court, the canonicatus, in other words ordains him as a priest specifically mentions his "birth-defect" ("super defectu natalium"), i.e. the fact that he was born of "mother unknown." In 1313, the Boccacci are among the official residents of the San Pier Maggiore quarter, one of the centers of Florentine mercantile life. In the same year, it appears from some documents (the Parisian livre de la Taille, a sort of tax and fee ledger) that Boccaccino and his brother were in Paris for business, lodging near the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. Boccaccio spent his childhood in Florence, in the House of San Pier Maggiore -- with a few trips to the countryside, to Certaldo.

Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald (2 October 1754 – 23 November 1840), was a French counter-revolutionary[1] philosopher and politician. Mainly, he is remembered for developing a set of social theories that exercised a powerful influence in shaping the ontological framework from which French sociology would emerge.[2][3][4][5] Life[edit] Bonald came from an ancient noble family of Provence. 02607a Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more — all for only $19.99... Italian novelist, b. in Paris, 1313; d. in Certaldo, 21 December, 1375. His father, a merchant from Certaldo and a man of some prominence in Florence, had gone into business in Paris. Shortly afterwards the elder Boccaccio deserted Giannina, the mother of Giovanni, and brought the boy to Florence where he put him to school until he was ten years old, when he took him into business.

Julien-Léopold Boilly Lithography by Julien Léopold Boilly : Cortège de l'empereur de Chine (Procession of the emperor of China). 1869 Julien-Léopold Boilly (30 August 1796, Paris – 14 June 1874), also known as Jules Boilly, was a French artist noted for his album of lithographs Iconographie de l'Institut Royal de France (1820-1821) and his booklet Album de 73 Portraits-Changés Aquarelles des Membres de I’Institute (1820) containing watercolor caricatures of seventy-three famous mathematicians, in particular French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre, the only known portrait of him. Jump up ^ Henry Harrisse, L. chaucer.fas.harvard Giovanni Boccaccio is, with the older Dante and his contemporary Francis Petrarch, one of the three great poets of the Italian fourteenth century. Chaucer knew the works of all three, and it has been speculated that he may even have met both Petrarch and Boccaccio (but see below). Of the three, Boccaccio was the one on whom Chaucer drew most heavily, and in some sense strove to emulate; Chaucer based Troilus on Boccaccio's Il Filostrato and his Knight's Tale on Il Teseida, and Chaucer's elaborate high style owes something to Boccaccio's attempt to emulate the classics in his own vernacular. In his Monk's Tale, Chaucer drew on Boccaccio's Latin works, his account of the falls of famous men and his book of illustrious women. A number of the Canterbury tales tell stories that also appear in Boccaccio's Decameron. There is a slim possibility that Chaucer met Boccaccio, who was living in Certaldo, just south of Florence, in the 1370s, when Chaucer was in Italy.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz[a][b] (;[11] German: [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈvɪlhɛlm fɔn ˈlaɪbnɪts][12][13] or [ˈlaɪpnɪts];[14] 1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a prominent German polymath and one of the most important logicians, mathematicians and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment. As a representative of the seventeenth-century tradition of rationalism, Leibniz developed, as his most prominent accomplishment, the ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton's contemporaneous developments.[15] Mathematical works have consistently favored Leibniz's notation as the conventional expression of calculus.[citation needed] It was only in the 20th century that Leibniz's law of continuity and transcendental law of homogeneity found mathematical implementation (by means of non-standard analysis). He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators.

en.m.wikipedia 14th-century Italian scholar and poet Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo La Casa del Petrarca (birthplace) at Vicolo dell'Orto, 28 in Arezzo Tacitus Roman senator and historian Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus ( TASS-it-əs, Classical Latin: [ˈtakɪtʊs]; c. AD 56 – c. 120) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.[1][2] He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and is known for the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics. www.britannica Petrarch, Italian in full Francesco Petrarca, (born July 20, 1304, Arezzo, Tuscany [Italy]—died July 18/19, 1374, Arquà, near Padua, Carrara), Italian scholar, poet, and humanist whose poems addressed to Laura, an idealized beloved, contributed to the Renaissance flowering of lyric poetry. Petrarch’s inquiring mind and love of Classical authors led him to travel, visiting men of learning and searching monastic libraries for Classical manuscripts. He was regarded as the greatest scholar of his age. Top Questions Why is Petrarch important? Petrarch was a scholar who laid the foundations for Renaissance humanism, which emphasized the study of Classical authors from antiquity over the Scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages.