- Lived:
- 1679–1754 · Breslau, Halle, Marburg — the German university world
- Tradition:
- German rationalism; the great systematizer of the early Enlightenment
- The Big Idea:
- All human knowledge can be organized into one connected system, where every term is defined, every claim is proven, and nothing is believed without a sufficient reason — and morality itself stands on reason, not revelation.
- In their words:
- "Do what makes you and your condition more perfect, and omit what makes it more imperfect."
- If you remember one thing:
- He was banished from Prussia on pain of hanging for a lecture praising Confucius — and came back seventeen years later in triumph, having taught philosophy to speak German along the way.