Gertrude Himmelfarb, distinguished professor of history emeritus at the City University of New York, delivered the ninth of the 2003-2004 Bradley Lectures on May 10. Edited excerpts follow. The ...

While scholarly interest in the French Enlightenment remains high, Himmelfarb finds that it has no popular resonance except as a “cautionary tale.” The British Enlightenment, too, has suffered a slide ...

Among neoconservatives, especially since the Iraq war, French bashing has become quite a popular sport. The French, so the sentiment goes, are appeasers, elitists, cowards and (worst of all) ...

Courtesy of Britain’s Enlightenment and its “moral philosophers,” the religious virtue of compassion has become a secular one, and a private duty has become a public responsibility, writes Gertrude ...

The Roads to Modernity: The British, French and American Enlightenments , by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Alfred A. Knopf, 272 pages, $25. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French and American ...

WHEN I was in college I took a course in the Enlightenment. In those days, when people spoke of the Enlightenment, they usually meant the French Enlightenment – thinkers like Descartes, Rousseau, ...

When I was in college I took a course in the Enlightenment. In those days, when people spoke of the Enlightenment, they usually meant the French Enlightenment — such thinkers as Descartes, Rousseau, ...

On Sunday, David Brooks discussed theories of the French and Scottish Enlightenments and their relevance to contemporary American politics. In his definitions, he lumped Edmund Burke with Scottish ...