Enlightenment books

Kant connects independent thought with the courage to question authority and the freedom to use reason publicly.

Through essays shaped as letters, Voltaire examines English religion, government, trade, science and literature as connected subjects of inquiry.

Spinoza places human thoughts and emotions within nature, presenting understanding as a path toward freedom rather than an escape from nature.

An inquiry into knowledge asks what reason can establish alone and how the mind helps make experience possible.

Moral duty takes centre stage as Kant seeks principles grounded in reason rather than personal wishes or expected rewards.

Berkeley challenges matter's independence from perception, using minds and ideas to examine doubts about knowledge, the world and God.

Locke grounds political authority in consent, arguing that government exists to protect the lives, liberty and property of free people.

Women's education becomes a question of reason and independence as Wollstonecraft challenges upbringing designed chiefly to please men.

Property, dependence and law shape Rousseau's inquiry into how human differences become social inequality and whether that inequality is justified.

Beginning with human desires and fears, Hobbes argues that a common authority must prevent conflict from turning into war.

Hamilton, Jay and Madison defend the proposed United States Constitution through essays explaining the case for a stronger national government.

A young man's hopeful beliefs meet war, slavery and religious persecution in a story that tests his inherited assumptions.

Visitors from other worlds encounter human thinkers, setting the smallness of their bodies against the scale of their philosophical claims.

Suzanne's account of unwanted religious vows turns a young woman's search for release into a story of resistance to imposed authority.

A servant's interrupted love story unfolds during travels with his master, while their conversations repeatedly return to questions of fate.

Family history, explanations and opinions continually interrupt a man's attempt to tell his life, making digression the story's central pleasure.