The centre of the Enlightenment -- which had different renditions: English, Scottish, French, English, American, German -- was unquestionably Paris, France.
However, to go back to the beginning of the Enlightenment period which I will partly arbitrarly label as 1667, we need to go to England and the beginning of the philosophy of John Locke.
Now obviously, Locke's philosophy didn't fall out of the sky; there were many, many philosophers who could be called 'pre-Enlightenment philosophers' who carried the spirit of The Enlightenment long before 1667, opening the door of influence for special people like John Locke, Montesque, Jefferson, and Franklin to build from.
Enlightenment Philosophy was built partly from philosophers like Aristotle, Cicero, Epicurus, and Roger Bacon as well as William of Occam, Galileo, Kepler, Sir Francis Bacon, and Issac Newton -- even as far back as Thales if you wanted to go back that far -- back to any philosopher who was using science (empiricism), reason, and humanistic ethics in any down to earth, common sense fashion.
In this section, we will start with Locke's political philosophy whereas we will deal with his epistemology (study of knowledge) in the section on British Empiricism.
dgbn, June 5-6th, 2007, modified June 9th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
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