Influence of historical context on philosophers: The case of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau

This three-part study aims to understand the impacts of the historical context of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the political theories of certain philosophers who lived in the respective centuries. The first part focuses on Renaissance Italy in the sixteenth century and its connection with Niccolò Machiavelli; the second part of the study looks at England in the seventeenth century and its association with Thomas Hobbes; and the third and final part analyzes France in the eighteenth century and its linkage with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In each part of the study both the historical context in the respective countries and the interaction of the related philosophers with this context are discussed through a review of the citations from the writings of the respective writers. The connection between the Renaissance, Humanism and Machiavelli; the association between Early Modernity, the Science Revolution and Hobbes; and the linkage between the Enlightenment and Rousseau are discussed in the first, second and third parts, respectively.