Western Civilization II / Unit 6 WC2 0519 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Radical Enlightenment: Freemasons, Smugglers, Pirated Books
Captions available
The idea
Historians' term for ideas too scandalous for the mainstream, atheism above all: Freemasonry's lodges for male elites, illegal publishers in the Netherlands and Switzerland, banned works, dumbed-down pirated Encyclopedia articles, attacks on Christianity, pornography. The underground made mainstream ideas accessible to far more people.
In practice
The smuggler as the Enlightenment's distributor.
Where people slip
Radical describes the ideas' distance from the mainstream, not a program.
Your place on the trail
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Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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