The Enlightenment and the Birth of the Modern World
COL 110
Fall 2014 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
HIST 124 |
The Enlightenment is said to have given birth to democracy, human rights, feminism, emancipation, and secularism--in short, to the characteristic strivings of Western modernity. Yet it has also at times been attacked for paving the way for totalitarianism, racist universalism, and modern bureaucratic genocide. In this course we will study key texts and ideas from the Enlightenment, placing them in their historical and social context of the 18th century. We will look at revolutions in thinking about history, economy, society, crime and punishment, government, and religion. A key theme will be the encounter of Enlightenment thought with popular religious practice and the persistence of traditional religious institutions. How did the mind of the Enlightenment seek to shape the future of European society? If traditional religious and political structures were to be superseded by secular culture and forms of governance, how was virtue to be preserved in a modern commercial society? How did the Enlightenment react to its successes and, more important, its failures? Finally, we will look at a few key interpretations of the Enlightenment in recent times. Did Enlightenment thinkers refashion Christianity in their construction of a heavenly city, or were they agents of the rise of modern paganism? Was the Enlightenment exclusively a Western phenomenon? How are conceptualizations of the Enlightenment today being employed in debates about the nature of modernity and pressing questions about religion, secularism, and human rights, both at home and abroad? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS COL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Moses Mendelssohn, JERUSALEM, OR ON RELIGIOUS POWER AND JUDAISM, trans. Allan Arkush (Brandeis University Press, 1983) ISBN: 978-0-87451-264-9
Voltaire, CANDIDE (Bedford-St. Matins, 1999) ISBN: 0-312-14854-2
Voltaire, LETTERS ON ENGLAND (Penguin, 1980) ISBN: 0140-44386X
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DIDEROT, trans. Richard Schwab (University of Chicago Press, 1995) ISBN: 0226134768
Robert Darnton, THE GREAT CAT MASSACRE, AND OTHER EPISODES IN FRENCH CULTURAL HISTORY (Basic Books, 1984, 2009) ISBN: 0465012744 [First ed. OK]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, THE DISCOURSES AND OTHER EARLY POLITICAL WRITINGS, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN: 0521424453
Mary Wollstonecraft, A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN (Oxford, 2009), ISBN: 019955546X
Dorinda Outram, THE ENLIGHTENMENT (Cambridge, 2005) ISBN: 0521546818
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Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
THIS SECTION IS A FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR (FYS) CLASS. |
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