In this tenth episode of Sir Kenneth Clark‘s landmark 1969 BBC documentary series Civilisation we arrive at what is commonly known as ‘the enlightenment’.
We’ve travelled so far all the way from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and the ‘saving’ of what he regards as the fragile construct of civilisation ‘by the skin of our teeth’, thanks just to a few men, through to the 18th century. You can read my introduction to this extraordinary accomplishment that in the next three episodes takes into the 19th and 20th centuries and to Part 1 of the series here. The project involved an 80,00-mile journey, visiting 13 countries and 17 locations and resulted in 200,000 feet of film. Huw Weldon, then director of BBC Television, said of the series: ‘I believe it’s the first magnum opus attempted and realised in terms of TV. It is truly a great series, a major work’. Indeed it is.
Clich on the numbers for the earlier parts: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
It’s the Age of Enlightenment that Clark focuses on in this episode, tracing it from the polite conversations of the elegant Parisian salons of the 18th century to revolutionary politics; how thinkers and revolutionaries looked back to the Roman Republic for models of civic virtue and republicanism, seeing themselves as heirs to classical ideals. Voltaire, the key French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist and historian and his thinking, his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Catholic Church), his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state, features heavily. Also how this new focus on individual reason fuelled revolutionary politics of France and America. In the process Clark takes us through the great European palaces of the time of Blenheim and Versailles, and finally Thomas Jefferson’s residence Monticello.
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