Definition of "philosophes" [philosophes]

• Plural form of philosophe. (noun)

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• "..first conjured up in the Age of Enlightenment by that gang of mediocrities otherwise known as the philosophes, not one of whom, by the way, was the intellectual equal of those medieval men -- Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Nicole Oresme, and so on -- whom they saw fit to impugn ..."
• "An Italian scholar, Luciano Guerci (a pupil of Franco Venturi), published in 1979 a well-documented essay, Libertà degli antichi e libertà dei moderni: Sparta, Atene e i 'philosophes' nella Francia del Settecento, in which he did show how complex the background of Constant's idea was apart from Condorcet."
• "He has sometimes been presented as a man of flabby character whose historical part was that of intermediary between impracticable French "philosophes" and the ruffians and swindlers that Martin Chuzzlewit encountered, who were all "children of liberty," and whose "boastful answer to the Despot and the Tyrant was that their bright home was in the Settin 'Sun.""