Rousseau
...bered him so well. Rousseau posed a contrast to the intellectual style typified by Voltaire and David Hume, skeptical, sarcastic, cold. He presented a style that was earnest, introspective, distrustful of the cosmopolitan high culture of the Enlightenment, of wealth and urban life, and of sophistication. He was hopeful about the prospects for advancement based on the glory of the state of nature, and his study and expression of emotions ushered in a new intellectual period.Immanuel Kant, writing during the late eighteenth century, is often considered the writer whose work ended the Enlightenment. Kant took the philosophy of skepticism to new heights, laying out his philosophy in his 1781 Critique of Pure Reason. Kant stated that there are two types of statements, or propositions: empirical and a priori. Empirical propositions depend solely on perception, while a priori propositions have a fundamental validity based upon a previously established truth. The difference is as that between the statement 'the grass is green' and 'three plus three is six...