Renowned philosophers who do engage with criticism of the Enlightenment, such as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, do not catch the imagination of a wide public in the way Foucault did 40 years ...

Something quite extraordinary happened in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries: the diversified intellectual explosion called the Enlightenment. Philosophers, natural scientists (the divide ...

In “The Enlightenment’s Most Dangerous Woman,” Andrew Janiak, a professor of philosophy at Duke University, challenges the way Du Châtelet is remembered today.

The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding, Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott, Yale University Press, 247 pages ...

For instance, several of the major Enlightenment philosophers — including Hume, Voltaire and Kant — developed elaborate justifications for anti-Semitic views.

In “The Enlightenment’s Most Dangerous Woman,” Andrew Janiak, a professor of philosophy at Duke University, challenges the way Du Châtelet is remembered today.

Enlightenment philosophers recognized that the crown, guild, church and village sometimes acted as rent-seekers stripping away the rewards for work, thrift and innovation, ...

The nature of modern-day scientific research can be traced back to proto-Enlightenment philosophers like Descartes, who died in 1650. Just as Descartes—who coined the iconic phrase cogito, ...

Crucially, she argues, their thinking “laid the theoretical foundation for the universalism upon which all struggles against racism must stand.” Neiman is clear-eyed about the historical limitations ...