The Enlightenment. By Ritchie Robertson.Allen Lane; 1,008 pages; £40. To be published in America by Harper in February; $45. IN SEPTEMBER THE University of Edinburgh expunged the name of David Hume ...

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 ...

In this interview, exclusive for CounterPunch, Richard Whatmore discusses his latest book, The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis (Penguin, 2023). In a world that demands highly rational ...

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 ...

Civilization A New History of the Western World By Roger Osborne Illustrated. 532 pages. Pegasus Books. $30. For some years now a theatrical troupe called the Reduced Shakespeare Company has made its ...

The churches relationship to the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment is an entangled history. Margaret Jacobs (“The Enlightenment critique of Christianity,” in The Cambridge History of ...

In a study with chilling modern resonance, the history don contends that the age of reason was betrayed by the greed, corruption and barbarism of Britain’s ruling elite Britain, thought Thomas Paine, ...

John Keane receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The disintegration of Europe that the world is witnessing, and in some quarters beginning to fear, no doubt has multiple causes ...

In recent decades, Jonathan I. Israel writes, the Enlightenment has emerged as “the single most important topic, internationally, in modern historical studies, and one of crucial significance also in ...

At the beginning of July 1973, my wife and I arrived in London from Chicago to spend a year doing research in the British Library. Many things conspired to show us that we were not in Kansas anymore: ...