Kant goes on to advance free speech, “the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters”, as the prerequisite of progress and enlightenment, and praises his king, Frederick the Great, “a shining ...

On Sunday, David Brooks discussed theories of the French and Scottish Enlightenments and their relevance to contemporary American politics. In his definitions, he lumped Edmund Burke with Scottish ...

Wisdom gives us a better understanding of how to handle externalities. But, enlightenment gives us a better understanding of ...

Wherever we look today in academia, scholars are rushing to defend the Enlightenment ideas of political and individual liberty, human rights, faith in scientific reason, secularism, and the freedom of ...

Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro admires Tom Paine, the English-born American revolutionary whose 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense” galvanized support for independence from Great Britain, whose ...

David Hume, the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, was born in Edinburgh in 1711. There he lived for many years, and there he died, perhaps the most famous Scot in history. It was thus ...

The Renaissance is conventionally dated from the 14th to the 17th centuries, but the French term “Renaissance” was coined in the 19th. The major events of the “Scientific Revolution” are usually ...

Why can’t religion and the Enlightenment be friends? What’s that, you say? They were friends? Why didn’t anyone tell us? Well, David Sorkin has. A professor of history and Jewish studies at the ...

The Age of Enlightenment brought us crucial inventions and discoveries in many areas including the circulation of blood, optics, scientific classification, calculus, the microscope, gravity and more ...