Lecture - The 18th-Century French Enlightenment: Misrepresentations of the “Age of Reason”

oct 20, 2022 at 4:00 PM

The "Enlightenment” of eighteenth-century Europe is often reduced to a handful of French philosophies (e.g., Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot), who applied “reason” critically to political and religious institutions of Old Regime France and paved the way for modernity (e.g., freedom, tolerance, democracy). By focusing on key contextual debates surrounding political and economic reform, sexuality, and racialized slavery, this talk will examine the limits of “enlightenment” and ask if “Age of Reason” is an appropriate label.

Dr. Joseph D. Bryan is an Assistant Professor in the MSUB History Department. He earned a Ph.D. in early modern French history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2016) and has published articles in French Historical Studies (2022), Punk & Post-Punk (2021), Contributions to the History of Concepts (2020), Journal of the Western Society for French History (2021), and L’Esprit Créateur (2015).

More Info ⟫

MSUB Liberal Arts Building, Room 205