Thread by @Helenreflects

The Enlightenment, which followed bitter religious wars, was concerned the question of how to have public conversations (including disagreement) where the validity of arguments is centered.
Enlightenment was very concerned with limits of rationality too.
Relevant today! 1/

(background: I am listening to this very interesting podcast.
Concern with how to argue well in all sorts of domains: politics, religion, art, etc.
Enlightenment authors were concerned with wider education of the public, and public discourse. 2/

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0…

Karen O'Brien mentions that J-J Rousseau, who argued that women ought only to be educated so they could be more useful to men was actually going against the grain, the emerging Enlightenment consensus was on women's education as important for women. 3/

This depended on the thought that rationality doesn't depend on gender (and relatedly, in some Enlightenment authors who fought against slave trade etc) on race, as well as on social position (learning should be available to a wider audience, e.g. in encyclopedia). 4/