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 ...

In David Graeber’s slim posthumous book, Pirate Enlightenment: Or the Real Libertalia, the anthropologist argues that 18th-century pirate society inspired and influenced European Enlightenment ...

A principled approach to polemics requires that the arguments of an opponent be presented accurately. The fact that you are unable to do this, that you feel compelled to mislead and misrepresent—in ...

Just recently, Shoshana Liessmann and Antje Herzog wrote about Immanuel Kant in honor of his 300 th birthday and explained how the celebrated “revolutionary thinker and one of the most prominent ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

The academic left did not critique the Enlightenment. It declared it morally tainted and beyond repair. That declaration has become ritualized. It is repeated often enough to feel settled. It is ...

The age of Enlightenment provided the backdrop for eighteenth century European theories about human difference. Exploration of Africa, Asia and the Americas brought Europeans in contact with people ...

One of the foundational tragedies of human history has been our recurrent temptation to treat designated victims among our fellow humans as less than us, to reify, exploit and “other” them. The cruel, ...

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 ...