Enlightenment

What Conservative Justices Get Wrong About the Founders

by Timothy C. Leech

It's preposterous to argue that the Founders, men of the Enlightenment generation, would have intended for the constitution they drafted to be immutable and unchanging. 

The Thrill of Teaching Mill

by Samuel Goldman

Mill was prescient in focusing attention not only on the restriction of speech by the state, but on the cultural and social obstacles to dissenting opinion.

Allen Guelzo: Critical Race Theory Started with Kant, Who Also Enabled Marxism and Nazism

by Marc Thiessen

Post columnist Marc Thiessen presents excerpts from his interview with historian Allen Guelzo, who offers a new explanation for where critical race theory originated. 

After Paine, Why Did American Secularism Fail?

by Chris Lehmann

Historian Leigh Eric Schmidt chronicles the decline of American secularism; the fate of Thomas Paine's looted corpse stands as a tidy metaphor for the mismatch of secular rationality with the desire for communal ritual. 

History Won't Judge: Joan C. Scott and Passing the Buck

by Kirsten Weld

Poor Clio, the muse of history, has been tasked with the passing of retrospective judgments that we in the here-and-now are unwilling to make. Unfortunately, that's not how history works. 

Scammed From the Beginning: Rejecting Expertise as an American Value

by Guy Lancaster

When Americans demand and take unauthorized medications to treat COVID-19, they aren't indulging a new conspiratorialism but are tapping into currents of American cultural and religious history that have always rejected established authority. 

Recovering the Stories of Pioneering Frenchwomen of Science

by Nina Gelbart

The stories of six French women of science show that women have been part of the scientific revolution from the beginning, and that moving toward gender parity in professional science is imperative.

Liberty, Freedom, and Whiteness: Reviewing Tyler Stovall's "White Freedom"

by Alan J. Singer

Tyler Stovall's book is a searching examination of the historical connections between a developing white identity, the Enlightenment concepts of liberty, and the political practice of racial hierarchy. 

Another Bite at the Apple: Isaac Newton's Time as a Man of Politics and Economics

by Patricia Fara

Isaac Newton's life has been retold according to the values of successive historians. Until now, most have shied away from Newton's second career at the Royal Mint, during which he was part of the growth of a British prosperity that was rooted in colonialism and slavery. 

When Black Humanity is Denied

by Edna Bonhomme

Enlightenment institutions – the prison, science, and asylums – are organized through binaries that draw boundaries between people who are and are not able to exercise freedom. Black artistic work supports Black freedom by challenging those boundaries. 

The American Exception: How Faith Shapes Economic and Social Policy

by Benjamin M. Friedman

Historian Benjamin Friedman's new book examines the importance of changing religious ideas in American Protestantism as influences on the development of social and economic policy. Part of the concluding chapter is excerpted here. 

An Inspiring History of the Enlightenment

A new book focuses on the generation of the body of Enlightenment thought through debate and dispute which foreshadows many of today's debates about the merits of universal humanism and liberal democracy. 

Newton’s Daunting Masterpiece had a Surprisingly Wide Audience, Historians Find

Two historians of science have traced the ownership and sharing of Sir Isaac Newton's first edition of "Principia" to conclude that the book was more widely read and influential among Enlightenment thinkers than previously believed. 

Is History Now Our Judge?

by L.D. Burnett

"Warning someone that they will face the judgment of history and the shame of opprobrium seems much more rational than warning them that they will face the judgment of God and the fires of hell."

Edinburgh University Ditches David Hume over Slavery Link

The University of Edinburgh will rename a tower in response to charges that philosopher David Hume endorsed racism.

Voltaire Spread Darkness, Not Enlightenment. France Should Stop Worshipping Him.

by Nabila Ramdani

Nabila Ramdani argues that the French Enlightenment thinker's abstract defenses of free speech and inquiry should not overshadow the concrete content of what he said and wrote, which included historically influential racist and antisemitic bigotry cloaked in the language of reason and science.

Liberté, Equality, #ICantBreathe! Teaching the Age of Revolutions Using the NBA’s 2020 Summer Restart

by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

The slogans NBA players are wearing on their jerseys can help lead students to understand the objectives of 18th century revolution and the incompleteness of attempts to secure the rights and dignity of all humanity.

John Locke Breaks His Silence

A new manuscript is located in Maryland. But do Americans care what the philosophers have to say?

It Wasn’t Just the Philosophers Like Diderot Who Invented the Enlightenment

by Paola Bertucci

So did the practical people known as artisans. We should acknowledge their contribution.

Do We Really Have to Learn All Over Again What the Enlightenment Taught Us About the Downsides of Trade Wars?

by Andrew J. Hamilton

Walling off neighbors has horrible consequences.