Enlightenment

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/22/2022
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: The Week
  3/21/2022
  

  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.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/11/2021
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  11/3/2021
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/7/2021
  

  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. 

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• 9/12/2021
  

  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. 

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• 6/20/2021
  

  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.

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• 6/20/2021
  

  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. 

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• 5/2/2021
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  1/18/2021
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: Harvard Magazine
  12/16/2020
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: The Economist
  12/11/2020
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/12/2020
  

  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. 

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• SOURCE: ArcDigital
  10/31/2020
  

  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."

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• SOURCE: Times of London
  9/14/2020
  

  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.

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• SOURCE: Foreign Policy
  8/31/2020
  

  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.

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• SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
  8/17/2020
  

  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.

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  8/30/19
  

  John Locke Breaks His Silence

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

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• 3/4/18
  

  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.

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• 12-11-16
  

  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.