Before Rosseau and Voltaire, France produced three influential thinkers that would also influence the enlightenment and the direction in which it carried itself. These three thinkers were Michel de Montaigne, Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal. Michel de Montaigne was a thinker who established and believed that everyone, no matter where they were from, had their own code of morality and ethics that they followed to perfection and made everyone different and unique in comparison to one another. Because of this, no one set of codes or values should be better than any other and no one should impose on any other persons set of codes or values. Rene Descartes introduced the phrase "i think, therefore i am". This was his way of showing us all that we had the ability, reasoning and logic within us to acknowledge our existence as well as that of god with some applied mathematics as well. Finally, Blaise de Pascal was more in tune with the emotions within someone and how natural and pure they were. He didnt believe one could apply mathematics, reason and logic to areas of faith and emotion as Descartes believed. Instead, he simply said "the heart has its reasons, which reason knows not".

-franchesko

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