Enlightenment in Crisis

Set in Paris around 1750, The Enlightenment in Crisis places students amid the intellectual and political tension of the Enlightenment. France is Europe’s cultural powerhouse: Its language, fashions, and luxury goods shape tastes across the continent, and Paris draws artists, writers, and travelers from afar. Yet within this intellectual moment there lie deep contradictions. The monarchy projects strength while burdened by war debts, royal censors struggle to contain new ideas, and most ordinary people—peasants and urban laborers—live far from the elegant salons where elites debate philosophy. In this world of salons and print culture, knowledge itself is becoming a form of power. At the center of the game is the ambitious Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and with contributions from dozens of leading thinkers, which aims to gather and organize all human knowledge. By championing progress through reason and science, the project provokes fierce resistance from religious authorities and royal officials. In this game, students take on the roles of philosophers, writers, scientists, nobles, clergy, and patrons in a Parisian salon, debating freedom of thought versus orthodoxy, freedom of expression versus censorship, reform versus tradition, equality versus hierarchy, human rights versus empire and slavery. Ultimately, they consider how far reason should go in challenging the political and religious order.