Customer Reviews

Just the Facts - Age of Enlightenment [VHS]

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Well, there is nothing else out there in which a teacher can use on the Enlightenment, so I guess this will have to do! Don't expect an engrossing, History Channel like video. It is mostly college professors discussing the various philosophes. It's O.K. to use for 20-30 minutes, but no more!

As a high school history teacher, I have rarely been so disappointed with a video series. Each title in the "Just the Facts" series (Ancient Rome, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment) is deadly boring, relying on "talking heads", simplistic narration, and haphazard visuals. Save your money. Any lecture you give will be more captivating than this series.

Just wanted to echo the earlier review... fortunately I didn't pay anything for this video; it was given to me. Still, it's not worth the price. Not only is it deadly dull and the talking heads overly pretentionous, but the piano music is the most annoying background music I've ever heard in a documentary. I wouldn't even think about showing this to my high school students.

It's difficult to find a good summary of the many swirling currents that constitute The Enlightenment. This does much better than most. Sure, it's an educational video. But in 50 minutes, whether viewed at one sitting or broken into two parts, the raw material is provided for an excellent discussion of the motivations, key personalities, and resulting legacy of the "philosophes," the thinkers of the 17th century who gave us many of our common assumptions about rights, morality, knowledge, the American republic, and the French revolution. I enjoyed the three professional philosophy scholars featured and thought they taught fairly and insightfully. They uncomplicated The Enlightenment, which has been a morass of too much inference and invective. I am going to buy the DVD personally so I can show it in my college classes and ask my college librarian to buy it so my students can watch it again.