What is Enlightenment?
History 104 / February 6, 2013

I. A new category of thinker: the philosophe
II. Basic Enlightenment themes
          A. Disseminating knowledge: Diderot and the Encyclopedia
          B. Relating science to human institutions
                   1. Montesquieu and the law
                   2. Adam Smith and the economy
                   3. Marie-Jean de Condorcet: human perfectibility
                   4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the odd man out
          C. Questioning religious certainty
                   1. Voltaire’s espousal of tolerance – with an edge
                   2. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: natural religion
                   3. The Baron d’Holbach: unadulterated atheism
                   4. Immanuel Kant: forms of revelation
III. Experiencing the Enlightenment
          A. Casual sociability
          B. The limits of Enlightenment: the position of women
                   1. The philosophes preach inequality between genders
                   2. Mary Wollstonecraft
          C. Escaping the Enlightenment: Methodism
          D. The Jewish Enlightenment in Berlin