The Radical Enlightenment

What are the prospects for radical thought in our own times? Some of the most eminent and interesting historians in the world come to the Heyman Center for the Humanities on March 1 for a daylong conference, to focus on some of the radical and dissenting voices of the Enlightenment in both Europe and America. At this conference, Joyce Appleby, Eric Foner, Jonathan Israel, Margaret Jacob, Phyllis Mack, and Deborah Valenze discuss subjects ranging from the relation between science, religion and politics to Jefferson's radicalism, and lessons will also be drawn for the prospect of radical thought and politics for our own times by tracing the roots of the radical tradition in the western world. That the range of ideas and innovations that emerged in Europe and in America over this period, which we have come to label the "Enlightenment," was far more varied than either that single label or the standard scholarship on the subject might suggest is made vibrantly clear.