Sally Charnow, Hofstra University professor of modern European and postcolonial history, traced the intellectual currents that shaped the Enlightenment and helped lay the groundwork for revolution during a Dec. 11 lecture at Raynham Hall Museum, emphasizing the era’s deep commitments to liberty alongside its enduring contradictions around race, gender and power.
Charnow’s talk, titled “From Enlightenment to Revolution: Men, Women, and the Public Sphere,” examined how 17th and 18th century thinkers challenged political and religious authority while often reproducing the stereotypes of their own time. The program was part of Raynham Hall’s Townsend Talks lecture series, which features historians giving presentations on topics from Gothic architecture to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
“The big question I’m kind of bringing to the table tonight is, how could these philosophers be ardent abolitionists and also embrace the stereotypes; the racial stereotypes, the gender stereotypes, the religious stereotypes of their own day,” Charnow said. “How do they sort of hold both of those things together?”
Charnow opened with an overview of the Enlightenment as a transnational movement rooted in the scientific revolution and political changes such as England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 or the Renaissance. She described it as an era defined by confidence in human reason, progress and the belief that both nature and society were governed by discoverable laws.
“The Enlightenment was a complex movement of the 17th and 18th century,” she said, noting that it crossed borders and generations. Central to the movement, she added, was a rejection of tradition and superstition and a willingness to challenge authority. “Criticism was their central project.”
She pointed to philosopher Immanuel Kant’s exhortation to “dare to know” as emblematic of Enlightenment thought, stressing that thinkers believed individuals were capable of reason only when freed from tyranny. For many philosophers, she said, those tyrannies were embodied by the Catholic Church and absolutist monarchy.
Charnow focused much of her talk on two major figures, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom she described as radically different in temperament and political outlook. Voltaire, she said, was a biting satirist and public intellectual who believed in reforming institutions rather than overthrowing them.
“He was really complicated figure,” Charnow said. “He was a kind of we might call him an intellectual activist, or public intellectual in our terms.”
She highlighted Voltaire’s critique of slavery in his novella “Candide,” reading aloud a passage in which an enslaved man describes mutilation endured while working in sugar mills.
“It’s at this price you eat sugar in Europe,” the character says in the text, a line Charnow described as “one of the most poignant critiques of slavery.”
At the same time, she said, Voltaire’s writings are filled with racial, religious and gender stereotypes.
Rousseau, a generation younger, offered a different vision. Charnow described him as a precursor to later Romanticism, who emphasized emotion, authenticity and civic participation over detached reason. Unlike Voltaire, Rousseau inspired revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic through works such as “The Social Contract.”
She noted that Rousseau defined liberty as essential to humanity itself, while simultaneously accepting Linnaen climate-based theories that ranked different races hierarchically.
A significant portion of the lecture focused on the role of women in spreading Enlightenment ideas. Though barred from formal education, women created salons that became hubs of intellectual exchange and criticism of monarchy and church authority.
“They saw it as their work,” Charnow said of salon leaders. “They didn’t see it as fun or teatime or any of that.”
These salons, she said, formed a parallel public sphere known as the Republic of Letters, where ideas circulated through conversation, pamphlets and extensive correspondence. Letters, often read aloud or shared publicly, allowed thinkers to debate across borders.
“They didn’t cancel each other,” Charnow joked. “They talked to each other, they tried to convince each other about their ideas.”
