Denis Diderot
French
Writer and philosopher. One of the founders and leading lights of the French Enlightenment, he wanted to "Ecrasez l'infame," by which he meant ignorance, superstition, and injustice. Diderot and his friends hoped that empirical knowledge, logic, and science would eventually free humans from the chains that bound them, chains often reinforced by conventional social institutions such as family, church, and state.