Crash Course
Enlightened Monarchs: Crash Course European History
Last time we learned about the Enlightenment, and the philosophers and thinkers whose ideas would shape governance for hundred of years. This week, we're learning how monarchs across Europe were influenced by those ideas. Adoption of...
National Constitution Center
The Constitutional Convention
The Founding Fathers are larger than life in history books, but an engaging video resource brings them up close to your pupils. As viewers meet the founders in the National Constitution Center's Signers' Hall, they learn about the...
National Constitution Center
Separation of Powers
After the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers were in a pickle. They needed to create a government, but how could they protect the people from a tyrant? The separation of powers was their answer! A video resource explores the history...
Crash Course
The New Chemistry: Crash Course History of Science #18
Chemistry was a bit of a late bloomer in terms of scientific progress! Discover the Age of Enlightenment and its effects on how researchers viewed matter with an engaging video. The narrator highlights the work of Antoine Lavoisier and...
The School of Life
Philosophy - René Descartes
Whether you say it in Latin (cogito ergo sum), French (je pense donc je suis), or in English (I think therefore I am), you are expressing the rationalism of French philosopher René Descartes. Learn more about Descartes's...
The School of Life
Philosophy - La Rochefoucauld
Entering and leaving a conversation with a witty one-liner is the clever conversationalist's goal. The Duc de La Rochefoucauld accomplished a lifetime of clever commentary with his collection of 504 philosophical aphorisms, The...
The School of Life
Philosophy - Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal's pessimism makes way for his readers' optimism, with his famous contemplative work, Pensées. High schoolers watch a short video that summarizes the historical philosopher's worldview and most popular aphorisms.
The School of Life
Philosophy - Montaigne
You can reach achievement with an ordinary, moral life without the proper education of past philosophy! So says Michel de Montaigne in a short analysis video that succinctly explains his views on academia, the virtue of a good...
The School of Life
Burke on: The Sublime
Feeling small and insignificant doesn't always have to be a negative sensation. Explore the sublime with a video analysis of Edmund Burke's 1757 work A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,...
Macat
An Introduction to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract
Introduce viewers to the ideas in The Social Contract with a short video that explains Rousseau's theories of personal and civil liberty, general will, and political authority.
The School of Life
Voltaire
Fascinated with the concept of good and evil, Voltaire formed his main character from the eponymous Candide, the most widely read text of the European Enlightenment. Learn more about Voltaire's life, beliefs, writing, and influence...