Menu
Idea

Enlightenment

94
Filter by:

Filter by published date

A drawing of a bust of Abraham Lincoln sitting on philosophy books.

From Königsberg to Gettysburg

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.
by Allen C. Guelzo via Claremont Review of Books on June 15, 2024
Aerial view illustration of a slave ship

‘Who’s Black and Why?’

A new book by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran examines how 18th-century academics understood Black identity.
by John Samuel Harpham via The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 31, 2022
Portrait of William Small, by Tilly Kettle, c. 1765.
partner

The Revolution Whisperer

The overlooked first mentor of Thomas Jefferson.
by Greg Shaw via HNN on February 20, 2022
Painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, "Africa: A European Merchant Bartering with a Black Chief"

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.
by Andrew S. Curran, Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on November 24, 2021

The Enlightenment’s Dark Side

How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it.
by Jamelle Bouie via Slate on June 5, 2018
Drawings of King George III and George Washington.

Parallel Lives

King George and George Washington, featured in an upcoming exhibit.
by Julie Miller via Library of Congress Blog on February 6, 2025

The Surprising Origins and Politics of Equality

Should equality, instead of another political ideal, should be at the center of our politics?
by Samuel Moyn via The Nation on August 27, 2024
A painting of Napoleon Bonaparte standing in the center of the National Assembly.

Liberalism and Equality

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.
by Gregory Conti via American Affairs on August 20, 2024
People swimming and standing in water.

On the Time Benjamin Franklin, American Show-Off, Jumped Naked Into the Thames

On our millennia-long love-hate relationship with getting in the water.
by Vicki Valosik via Literary Hub on June 27, 2024

How America’s Rich Legacy of Fear and Hatred Fuels the Conspiracy Theories of Today

Panic about Catholics, Freemasons, and, later, Jews, is deeply woven into American history, and forms the basis of our fertile culture of conspiracy theorizing.
by Arthur Goldwag via Talking Points Memo on June 21, 2024
A sheet of Thomas Jefferson stamps.
partner

Thomas Jefferson Fights for the Metric System

A story of math and political stasis.
by Amir Alexander via HNN on June 5, 2024
Painting of man finding woman seated at table writing
partner

A Kind of Historical Faith

On the history of literature masquerading as primary source.
by Emma Garman via HNN on May 21, 2024
Prehistoric people seen through a pair of glasses.

The Abuses of Prehistory

Beware of theories about human nature based on the study of our earliest ancestors.
by Udi Greenberg via The New Republic on May 10, 2024
Coral polyps.
partner

Will the Sun Ever Set on the Colony?

Tracking the history of a curious scientific term.
by Whitney Barlow Robles via HNN on February 13, 2024

Dangers and Enemies Everywhere

How Cold War liberalism abandoned the vocabulary of hope—and how we still live with the consequences.
by George Scialabba via Democracy Journal on September 14, 2023
Painting by Henri Testelin of Colbert Presenting the Members of the Royal Academy of Sciences to Louis XIV in 1667 (17th century).

The Dawn of Scientific Racism

In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade.
by Christy Pichichero via Public Books on October 25, 2022
Illustration of Samuel Adams writing a document, with images of the American revolution behind him.

How Samuel Adams Helped Ferment a Revolution

A virtuoso of the eighteenth-century version of viral memes and fake news, he had a sense of political theatre that helped create a radical new reality.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on October 24, 2022
Painting of Jedidiah Morse with the Illuminati pyramid symbol over one eye.

Why the Founding Generation Fell So Hard for the Illuminati Story

They looked at France and said: “Make it make sense.”
by Jordan E. Taylor via Slate on October 24, 2022
Yellow book cover reading "The Dawn of Everything" in red text.

As Deep as it is Vast: An Introduction to "The Dawn of Everything" in Early America

A new book provides a framework that engages with “big history” or “deep history” while avoiding explanations that flirt with forms of determinism.
by Gordon Sayre, Robbie Ethridge, Keith Pluymers, Sean P. Harvey, Barbara Alice Mann, Daniel Richter via Commonplace on October 4, 2022
Picture of the many different people that make up the US.

The Right to Leave

Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of open migration. But who qualified as a refugee?
by Stephanie Degooyer via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 29, 2022
Painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. By John Turnbull, 1818.

Why the American Founding Must Remain Central to Conservatism

An American conservatism which subtly or directly marginalizes the Founding is on a fast track to a conservatism at odds with America’s roots itself.
by Samuel Gregg via National Review on February 6, 2022
Statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse.

Reëxamining the Legacy of Race and Robert E. Lee

The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading.
by Allen C. Guelzo, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on November 24, 2021

The Failure of American Secularism

How the secular movement underestimated the endurance of religion.
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on November 3, 2021
Painting of the Continental Congress

The Pursuit of Happiness: New Approaches to the American Revolutionary Past

A new way to think about the American Revolution.
by Kevin Diestelow via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on June 28, 2021
Toussaint Louverture proclaiming the Constitution of the Republic of Haiti

Contagious Constitutions

In her new book, Colley shows how written constitutions developed both as a way to further justify rulers and to turn rebellions into legitimate governments.
by Jenny Uglow via New York Review of Books on June 3, 2021
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Poetics of Abolition

For poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, as for the Black Romantics, history is the repetition of anti-Black violence that has yet to be abolished.
by Manu Samriti Chander via Public Books on March 16, 2021
A collage featuring Thomas Jefferson and passages cut from the Bible.

What Thomas Jefferson Could Never Understand About Jesus

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.
by Vinson Cunningham via The New Yorker on December 28, 2020
Washington takes the oath of office surrounded by Founders.

The Faith of the American Founders

What were the religious beliefs of the American founding generation? What do they mean for us today?
by Steven Green, Thomas S. Kidd, Mark David Hall, Brooke Allen via Cato Unbound on June 16, 2020
Colonial men holding a copy of the 1649 Maryland Toleration Act.

Five Ways We Misunderstand American Religious History

From religious liberty to religious violence, it helps to get our facts straight.
by Thomas S. Kidd via Christianity Today on November 21, 2019

The False Narratives of the Fall of Rome Mapped Onto America

Gravely inaccurate 19th-century depictions of the destruction of Rome are used to illustrate parallels between Rome and the U.S.
by Sarah E. Bond via Hyperallergic on July 3, 2019
View More
30 of
94

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History