Common Good in 16/17c England

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

While the rise of the individual has long been understood as a defining aspect of early modern England (16th and 17th century), this period is also a time when the ideas of the common good and the commonwealth (res publica) became central topics of intellectual conversations. In this course, we will examine how early modern contemporaries in England attempted to understand, define, and reconcile the idea of the individual with the promotion of the common good. This course focuses on the works of English Renaissance humanists from Thomas More to John Milton who sought to comprehend the present and imagine a better future by looking back toward the classical past. In examining these scholars' attitudes toward antiquity, students are encouraged to reflect on their own relationship with the past in order to navigate the current political climate where values of the common good are perceived as antithetical to individual rights and freedom.