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Cover of The Birth of the Modern: Readings from the Enlightenment
The Birth of the Modern: Readings from the Enlightenment
World Classics, Season 2—from Galileo to the US Constitution
Completed · 74 episodes
Buy for ¥128.00
Audio in Chinese
Yang Zhao: The Enlightenment Found Light and Illuminated Darkness Liu Suli: Use Classic Thought to Illuminate Our Present Condition Leung Man-tao: Without the Enlightenment, We Could Not Have Reached Today Today We Need Enlightenment More Than Ever 1. The Meaning of Instruments | Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius 1 2. A Scientist Unable to Stand Tall | Galileo 2 3. A Method That Changed Europe | Descartes's Discourse on Method 1 4. Science Has No Absolute Truth | Descartes 2 5. The Scientific Revolution Prepares the Enlightenment 6. Scientific Utopia and Politics | Bacon's New Atlantis 1 7. Seventeenth-Century Faith in Science | Bacon 2 8. Does Science Necessarily Create a Good Society? | Bacon 3 9. A Foundational Work of Science Fiction? | Cavendish's Blazing World 1 10. An Early Feminist Declaration | Cavendish 2 11. Utopian Fiction and Political Philosophy | Cavendish 3 12. What Sustains “Social Stability”? | Cavendish 4 13. Why Should People Obey Rulers? | Hobbes's Leviathan 1 14. Autocratic States and Governing Authority | Hobbes 2 15. Freedom and Rule of Law under Autocracy | Hobbes 3 16. Taming Wolfish State Power | Locke's Two Treatises 1 17. Human Nature, Freedom, and Politics | Locke 2 18. Why Must Government Protect Property? | Locke 3 19. Just Enforcement: What Can People Do against Unjust Government? | Locke 4 20. A Pessimistic Life and Positive Aspiration | Pascal's Pensées 1 21. Fragile Reason and Inner Strength | Pascal 2 22. Guilt as Medicine and Poison: Spiritual Growth and Personal Damage | Pascal 3 23. Human Beauty and Ugliness, Greatness and Misery | Pascal 4 24. Barbed Truth and Comforting Wisdom | La Rochefoucauld's Maxims 1 25. Performing Meaning and Writing in Miniature | Maxims 2 26. Aphoristic Philosophy and the Dissection of Human Nature | Maxims 3 27. Freedom Is an Idea—and an Action | Milton's Areopagitica 1 28. The Marketplace of Ideas and Self-Correcting Opinion | Milton 2 29. Unfreedom Creates Intellectual Slaves Who Enslave Themselves | Milton 3 30. Corrupt Lilliputians and Noble Giants | Gulliver's Travels 1 31. Fantastical Science and Noble Animals | Gulliver's Travels 2 32. Three Satires: Are Humans Still Creation's Crown? | Gulliver's Travels 3 33. How Do People Survive Plague and Disaster? | A Journal of the Plague Year 1 34. Witness Narrative and Personal Responsibility | Defoe 2 35. Remembering Natural and Human-Made Disaster | Defoe 3 36. Are Corruption and Vice Prosperity's Lubricants? | The Fable of the Bees 1 37. Is Good Evil? How Can We Distinguish Them? | Mandeville 2 38. Is Evil Good? Can Bad Acts Produce Good? | Mandeville 3 39. Public Charity and Its Motives | Mandeville 4 40. Sympathy and Compassion | Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments 1 41. The Two Adam Smiths | Moral Sentiments 2 42. An Orderly Society That Treats the Poor Well | Moral Sentiments 3 43. The Two Burkes | Reflections on the Revolution in France 1 44. Is Opposing the French Revolution Anti-Enlightenment? | Burke 2 45. Can Conservatism Simply Be Reused? | Burke 3 46. Enlightened Spectatorship and Harem Despotism | Persian Letters 1 47. Eunuch Politics under Despotic Rule | Persian Letters 2 48. Despotism Is Evil; Absolute Despotism Absolutely Evil | Persian Letters 3 49. Deism and Rational Religion | Voltaire's Candide 1 50. A Just God and a Suffering World | Candide 2 51. Evil in the World: How Can People Live? | Candide 3 52. Civilization and Corruption | Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality 1 53. Natural Man and Free Man | Rousseau 2 54. How Can We Surrender Freedom Yet Remain Free? | The Social Contract 1 55. General Will, Will of All, and Defending Freedom | The Social Contract 2 56. Kant and Rousseau on Moral Philosophy | What Is Enlightenment? 1 57. Public, Private, and Practical Reason | Kant 2 58. Enlightened Action and Universalism | Kant 3 59. What Does Nathan the Wise Have to Say? | Lessing 1 60. Why Be a Good Person Who “May Truly Be Called Good”? | Lessing 2 61. Does a Late Enlightenment Have Latecomer's Advantage? | Lessing 3 62. The Declaration of Independence and American Values 63. The People Are the Constitution's Foundation | US Constitution 1 64. Constitution, Core Values, and Civic Education | US Constitution 2 65. The American Enlightenment and The Federalist Papers 1 66. Liberty and Democracy, Conflict and Compromise | Federalist Papers 2 67. Humanistic Enlightenment and Human Nature | Federalist Papers 3 Xu Ben: Enlightenment Does Not Belong Only to the Eighteenth Century Xu Ben's New Year Wish: Stop Asking Me What 2020 Is Xu Ben × Liu Qing × Leung Man-tao: Why Read Classics in the Age of AI?