HIST 341
The European Enlightenment Spring 2025
Division II

What was the Enlightenment? More often invoked than understood, the European Enlightenment can seem like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Although a product of pre-revolutionary Europe’s old monarchical regime, it has become a symbol of modernity. Though secular, its exponents thought natural science compatible with the existence of God and with (certain forms of) religion. Even as the world became increasingly interconnected, Enlightenment thinkers posited that European culture was different than–and superior to–any other. And, in the bitterest irony of all, Enlightenment writers produced powerful new theories of natural rights during the high-water mark of the Atlantic slave trade. Despite or because of these complexities, the Enlightenment remains a crucial chapter in the intellectual history of Europe, and an unavoidable legacy for anyone interested in secular traditions of Western thought. Combining methods from intellectual history, the history of knowledge, and the history of the book, this seminar will take the Enlightenment’s measure. Our fundamental commitment will be to reading primary sources, and whenever possible to studying original printed editions in Williams College’s Chapin Library. We will consider both the material form that authors and printers gave both massive tomes and slender pamphlets, and the new publics that spaces such as coffeehouses, print shops, and salons generated. A special focus will be Chapin’s newly acquired copy of the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, the first modern encyclopedia and a triumph of intellectual collaboration as well as of printing. Throughout, we will ask: what were the Enlightenment’s achievements and its limits? Sources to be read include Spinoza, Leibniz, Bayle, Madame du Châtelet, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Cugoano.