Lecture
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Tuesday 15.09.2026
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
The French Enlightenment
Tuesday 15.09.2026
How to watch
This lecture starts on 15 September at 5:00pm (UK).
Summary
This lecture examines the intellectual revolution of 18th-century France through its three most influential thinkers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Each rejected feudal orthodoxy and religious intolerance. Each proposed a radically different vision for how societies should be governed.
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at New York University. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017); and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History (Hawaii University Press, 2023).