Rachel Hammersley, a Professor of Intellectual History, Richard Whatmore, a Professor of Modern History, and Tom Hopkins, a Senior Teaching Associate, dive into the life and ideas of Nicolas de Condorcet, a prominent figure of the French Enlightenment. They discuss Condorcet's unwavering commitment to social progress, equal rights, and the abolition of slavery. His ambitious visions of human perfectibility and republican governance amid the chaos of the French Revolution reveal the powerful influence his work continues to have on modern thought.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) whose works on liberty, monarchism, despotism, republicanism and the separation of powers were devoured by intellectuals across Europe and New England in the eighteenth century, transforming political philosophy and influencing the American Constitution. He argued that an individual's liberty needed protection from the arm of power, checking that by another power; where judicial, executive and legislative power were concentrated in the hands of one figure, there could be no personal liberty. With Richard Bourke Professor in the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of LondonRachel Hammersley Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at Newcastle UniversityAndRichard Whatmore Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual HistoryProducer: Simon Tillotson.