The Enlightenment: Culture, Society, and Politics in Europe, 1680-1800

4 credits · Undergraduate

New philosophies, new economies, new visions of politics, new imperialisms, new forms of natural science, new relations between the sexes, new forms of racial difference, new understandings of the human: the European Enlightenment marks a threshold to a modern era that many still call their own. This course emphasizes the history of ideas, balanced by the political, economic, and social history of the period roughly 1680-1800. Readings will include works of literature, history, economics, political theory, natural science, and philosophy written by well-known authors of the period (including John Locke, Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant) as well as by many writers who should be known better.