Perhaps it is easier to argue that the problem (Muslim anger) has a solution (change of foreign policy), rather than recognize that our belief in rationality and our optimism about human nature are ...

Islamic terror has been trending down for five years. Some American officials said this would never happen. America has failed to properly fight terrorism, said ...

David Hume, the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, was born in Edinburgh in 1711. There he lived for many years, and there he died, perhaps the most famous Scot in history. It was thus ...

Value is established on the margins. That is a central insight of both Austrian and neoclassical economics, but it is useful in thinking about history as well. Consider the ostracized, marginalized ...

Log-in to bookmark & organize content - it's free! Professor Hadley Arkes talked about the enlightenment ideas that contributed to the concept that power should be derived from the consent of the ...

Log-in to bookmark & organize content - it's free! Author Caroline Winterer (The Culture of Classicism) discussed how America's founders were influenced by Greek and Roman philosophies as well those ...

On this week’s episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke to Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and author of the new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism ...

The Renaissance is conventionally dated from the 14th to the 17th centuries, but the French term “Renaissance” was coined in the 19th. The major events of the “Scientific Revolution” are usually ...

Most people would agree that progress is a good thing, and few would deny that there has been extraordinary progress over the course of human history, or that human existence has improved in ...

The Enlightenment provided a philosophical framework for challenging British authority, emphasizing reason, individual ...