Philosopher, was born at Malmesbury, the son of a clergyman, and educated at Oxford. Thereafter he travelled as tutor through France, Italy, and Germany, with William Lord Cavendish, afterwards 2nd Earl of Devonshire, with whom he remained as secretary after the completion of the tour. While engaged in this capacity he became acquainted with Bacon (whose amanuensis he is said to have been), Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson. In 1629 he published a translation of Thucydides. After the death of his patron, which took place in 1626, he went in 1628 to Paris, where he remained for 18 months, and in 1631 he assumed the position of tutor to his son, afterwards the 3rd ...

Philosopher, son of a landsteward, was born at Wrington, near Bristol, and educated at Westminster School and Oxford In 1660 he became lecturer on Greek, in 1662 on Rhetoric, and in 1664 he went as secretary to an Embassy to Brandenburg. While a student he had turned from the subtleties of Aristotle and the schoolmen, had studied Descartes and Bacon, and becoming attracted to experimental science, studied medicine, and practised a little in Oxford At the same time his mind had been much exercised by questions of morals and government, and in 1667 he wrote his Essay on Toleration. In the same year he became known to Lord Ashley (afterwards 1st Earl of Shaftesbury), in ...

Aristotle (Greek: ???????????, Aristoteles) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.
Together with Plato and Socrates, Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence ...

Political and anti-Christian writer, son of a stay-maker and small farmer of Quaker principles at Thetford, became with large classes perhaps the most unpopular man in England. After trying various occupations, including those of schoolmaster and exciseman, and having separated from his wife, he went in 1774 to America where, in 1776, he published his famous pamphlet, Common Sense, in favour of American independence. He served in the American army, and also held some political posts, including that of secretary to a mission to France in 1781. Returning to England in 1787 he published his Rights of Man (1790–92), in reply to Burke’s Reflections on the French ...

Statesman, orator, and political philosopher, was the son of an attorney in Dublin, where he was born His father was a Protestant, but his mother, whose maiden name was Nagle, was a Roman Catholic. He received his early education at a Quaker school at Ballitore, and in 1743 proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1748. His father wished him to study for the law, and with this object he, in 1750, went to London and entered the Middle Temple. He, however, disliked law and spent more time in literary pursuits than in legal study. In 1756 his first published work appeared, A Vindication of Natural Society, a satire on the views of Bolingbroke, but so ...