The Age of Enlightenment is often considered the origin of the modern world. It has been held responsible for representative democracy, women’s rights, and free trade as well as totalitarianism, scientific racism, and the Holocaust. In order to understand why one historical period could generate such wildly different outcomes (or interpretations), we will first of all seek to understand the Enlightenment on its own terms, as a cultural, political, and intellectual movement in eighteenth-century Europe and its colonies. What kinds of people participated in the Enlightenment, and who was excluded? How did this inclusion and exclusion shape Enlightenment debates about race, gender, and other forms of human difference? About the best kind of economy to put into practice? The best way to reform and re-organize society, church, and state? The existence and attributes of God? The Enlightenment was nothing if not a period of intense reflection and lively debate: critical practices which we will adopt in this seminar, as we then seek answers to some of the most difficult and controversial questions about the Enlightenment’s legacy. How radical was the Enlightenment? Did it in fact pave the way for the revolutions of the 18^th and 19^th centuries? Did the Enlightenment create the modern world — and if so, is this something to celebrate? What kind of world did it create?