Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot. There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historio ... Show More
Today
Shredding Capitalism with Sven Beckert (Paul Kramer, JP)
John is joined by the brilliant and affable Paul Kramer of Vanderbilt (The Blood of Government) to discuss Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin, 2025) by Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. With Christine A. Desan (Recall This Book adores her) he ... Show More
43m 10s
Mar 31
Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and British imperial literary and intellectual history. In The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa (Princeton UP, 2 ... Show More
1h 9m
Mar 30
Mark Pennington, "Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom by Mark Pennington This highly original and innovative book is the first to comprehensively engage the ideas of the French social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault from within the tradition of liberal po ... Show More
58m 30s
Feb 2024
Class 2: The Heritage of the Enlightenment
“Our Western heritage is reason—reason, analysis, action, progress!” –Settembrini the organ-grinder in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in mo ... Show More
47m 7s
Jul 2025
117: Max Horkheimer & Theodore Adorno - Dialectic of Enlightenment, Part 1
Foundations of Critical Theory, and an exploration of the chapters, "The Concept of Enlightenment", "The Culture Industry". We analyze how myth and enlightenment both contain one another, and why enlightenment negates itself. We explore what this means in concrete terms by examin ... Show More
2h 3m
Aug 2024
Oliver Traldi, "Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction" (Routledge, 2024)
The idiom of contemporary politics is a kind of philosophical hodge-podge. While there’s plenty of talk about the traditional themes of freedom, justice, equality, and autonomy, there is also an increasing reliance on ideas like misinformation, bias, expertise, and propaganda. Th ... Show More
1h 8m
May 2023
71: The History of European Nihilism
What does eternal recurrence mean in the historical sense? Nietzsche invites us to explore that question in his raising of the Problem of Science, and the notion of conflict as central to life. Today, in the penultimate episode of the season, we'll take a look into a section from ... Show More
1h 47m
Mar 2024
Surya Parekh, "Black Enlightenment" (Duke UP, 2023)
In Black Enlightenment (Duke UP, 2023), Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works of such Black writers as the free Jamaican Francis Williams (1697–1762), Afro-British thinker Ignatius Sancho (1729?–1780), and Afro ... Show More
1h 8m
May 2024
Sari Nusseibeh, "Avicenna's Al-Shifā': Oriental Philosophy" (Routledge, 2018)
Sari Nusseibeh's book Avicenna's Al-Shifā': Oriental Philosophy (Routledge, 2018) deals with the philosophy of Ibn Sina - Avicenna as he was known in the Latin West- a Persian Muslim who lived in the eleventh century, considered one of the most important figures in the history of ... Show More
1h 3m
Apr 2001
Literary Modernism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss literary modernism. In James Joyce’s Ulysses he writes, “Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man may lay down his wife for a friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius Professo ... Show More
42m 13s