There's Hobbes, who understood in the 1640s that the sovereign is not an appointee of God, or even a figure of superior virtue and wisdom, but just a functional device whose role is to keep people from hurting and killing each other.
Catherine WilsonEpicureanism did inspire libertine culture in isolated sects, but Epicurus himself rejected an ethics of sensory indulgence, and he would have disowned latter-day 'Epicureanism' as a fussy, expensive, unphilosophical approach to eating and drinking.
Catherine WilsonThe Epicureans denied that the gods had created the world and also denied that they played any role in it.
Catherine WilsonThe higher the coefficient of inequality (Gini coefficient) in a society, the worse things tend to be for those at the bottom.
Catherine Wilson