Montesquieu’s Persian Letters at 300 — an Enlightenment story that resonates in a time of culture wars
- Written by Knox Peden, Senior Lecturer in European Enlightenment Studies, The University of Queensland

We have recently seen a spate of books defending the Enlightenment, that period of efflorescence, in 18th-century Europe, which helped shape the modern world.
At the vanguard has been the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who titled his most recent monument to scientific progress Enlightenment Now. The book earned Bill Gates’s endorsement b...





