The Modern Scholar

Enlightenment: Reason, Tolerance, and Humanity

The Enlightenment stands at the threshold of the modern age. It elevated the natural sciences to the preeminent position they enjoy in modern culture. It inaugurated a skepticism toward tradition and authority that decisively shaped modern attitudes in religion, morality, and politics. And it gave birth to a vision of history that saw man, through the unfettered use of his own reason, at last escaping that state of "immaturity" to which superstition, prejudice, and dogma had condemned him. The world in which we live is, for better or worse, in large part the result of the Enlightenment.

This course will explore this remarkable period. It will discuss the work of such influential thinkers as Voltaire, John Locke, Denis Diderot, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and Benjamin Franklin. It will also spend some time with less well-known, but no less influential, figures such as Joseph Priestly - a clergyman, scientist, and philosopher who was one of the most passionate defenders of the American Revolution in England - and the remarkable John Toland, a man whose writings on religion changed the way many Europeans thought about the Scriptures

©2005 James Schmidt (P)2005 Recorded Books

An Undiscovered Gem

I’ve accessed several lecture series on the Enlightenment, but Professor Schmidt’s is clearly the best. You cannot understand today’s world, or tomorrow’s, without a firm understanding of the Enlightenment. Here Professor Schmidt can save you a heck of a lot of very difficult reading.

We join the lectures after Protestantism poured a river of blood across Europe and opened the floodgates of empiricism to Christian doctrine. Professor Schmidt takes us down the winding back alleys of the Enlightenment, into the salons, the coffee houses, the private libraries -- and the secret societies. We learn of a spate of revolutions as we see the ardor for liberty catch and spread, the rule of kings give way to the rule of law, and the domination of religion give way to reason and conscience.

He covers the very important subject of the influence of aboriginal Americans on the European Enlightenment: What counts as men? Women? People of color? How did it affect the Enlightenment to discover that the so-called savages who haven’t even been exposed to Christianity can be happier and more moral than Europeans? Does civilization create misery?

Finally, Professor Schmidt leaves us with the understanding that toleration was the great ideal of the Enlightenment, and “Where reason rules, toleration is possible.”

Brilliant--nearly flawless

Nicely read, well thought out. Connects the dots on many points in history. An important series of lectures.