October collection: Exploring the Enlightenment
Explore reason, rights and toleration through essays, Beyond the Text and Reading Club discussions.
PODCAST · EPISODE GUIDES · SEMINAR ARCHIVE
Ideas do not live on the page alone.
Listen and watch as Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore intellectual history and philosophy. Find recordings, episode context and reading references here, alongside guest articles and our seminar archive.
Rousseau: Self, Freedom and Education
Listen and watch the Rousseau series. Episodes one and two are available now, with episode context and reading references on their Beyond the Text pages.
Episode 1: life and the Confessions. Listen to episode 1 · Watch episode 1 · Episode context · Scholarly companion.
Episode 2: Can Society Make Us Free Again? Listen to episode 2 · Watch episode 2 · Episode context · Scholarly companion.
Samuel Woodall presents episode one solo and is joined by Jack Thomson for episode two. Join the shared Rousseau discussion: can we become free together?
The latest conversations
Listen to recent discussions of texts, thinkers and the historical settings that give ideas their force.
Listen directly on Buzzsprout, or choose an episode with reading notes and discussion links.
Explore Beyond the Text
Podcast
Free-form conversations, interviews and close engagement with major works in intellectual history and philosophy.
Seminar archive
Explore the completed Liberty, Heritage and Revolution programmes, built around primary texts and significant thinkers.
Articles
Short but scholarly essays that introduce important arguments, traditions and texts in their historical settings.
Ideas are better in company
Our completed seminar series made room for serious discussion without losing the pleasure of conversation. Liberty, Heritage and Revolution carried audiences from the ancient world to modern political and philosophical debate.
Latest writing
-
Can We Be Free Under Laws? Rousseau, Inequality and the General Will
Bring the origins of unequal dependence into conversation with the demand for legitimate government. Our reading route moves from property in the Discourse on Inequality to association, civic freedom and the general will in The Social Contract. Distinguish a common interest from the wishes of a ruler or a collection of private advantages.
-
Can We Tell the Truth About Ourselves? Rousseau and the Confessions
Begin with the opening of Rousseau’s Confessions, then the stolen ribbon episode in Book II. Notice how recollection, motive and an appeal for understanding can pull in different directions. The central question is how we judge a story told by the person whose conduct is at issue.
-
Who Gets to Call Whom Barbarous?
Montaigne on custom, cruelty and cultural judgement: Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson ask who gets to call another society barbarous.
SAMUEL WOODALL · RESEARCH · WRITING
From The Intellectual Historian
Follow Samuel’s individual academic work on eighteenth-century political thought, religion, faction and loyal opposition.
- A comparison of the social contract, natural rights, and popular sovereignty as foundational ideas of modern political life.
- Read Rousseau’s account of inequality alongside The Social Contract to examine dependence, citizenship and freedom under law.
- Rousseau’s Confessions makes sincerity a problem of memory, self-justification and the reader’s judgement.
Stay with the conversation
Join one free monthly newsletter across all three projects, normally sent at the end of the month. Your welcome email includes an essay, an episode and a discussion to get you started. You only need to subscribe once.
