This year’s program began with a series of four talks on the Enlightenment, the seventeenth and eighteenth century intellectual movement that transformed European and North American societies, a movement that both its critics and supporters acknowledge played a central role in shaping modern Western civilization.

We have decided to follow up these discussions with an online project that aims to explore the issues raised in much greater depth and detail and to open up some fundamental questions about the future of our society.

Why this level of attention, you might ask?

Our answer is that this is much more than an arcane debate about the history of ideas. References to the Enlightenment are cropping up with increasing frequency in debates about current political issues, particularly when these concern freedom of speech and the legitimate constraints on it, and the vexed matter of “identity politics”.

If people remember nothing else about the Enlightenment, they might recall the statement famously (but erroneously) attributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with everything you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it”. Some might also recall John Stuart Mill’s dictum that someone “who understands only his own side of a case has a poor grasp of that”. Two extremely clear-cut statements on the importance of free speech and open debate and the importance of hearing points of view different to your own.

Until quite recently, these ideas were almost universally accepted as core features of our civilization, if sometimes honored in the breach. Yet in more recent times these have propositions have come to be seen by some – especially in academia – as contentious.

Furthermore the Enlightenment notion that we are all, first and foremost, members of a common humanity has been challenged by identity politics, which holds that we are essentially defined by our membership of one or more categories based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on.

There is obviously a great deal to explore here. Over the next few months we hope to engage a wide range of people from varied backgrounds in a detailed consideration of these issues, and their implications for current political and intellectual controversies.

If you would like to be part of this initiative register on this page by clicking the Join us link on the right. As a first step, we will soon be posting texts and videos of the four talks delivered to the Blackheath Philosophy Forum.