Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries (TTC)

Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries - taught by Alan Charles Kors Modern science, representative democracy, and a wave of wars were caused by a revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800. Ideas and the Transformation of Human Life Shaking the minds of the continent like few things before or since, this revolution challenged previous ways of understanding reality and sparked what Professor Alan Charles Kors calls "perhaps the most profound transformation of European, if not human, life." Revolutions in thought (as opposed to those in politics or science) are in many ways the most far-reaching. They affect our entire sense of legitimate authority, of the possible and impossible, of right and wrong, and of the potentials of human life. The goal of these lectures is to understand the conceptual and cultural revolution of the Enlightenment. In them, you see the birth of modern thought in the dilemmas, debates, and extraordinary works of the 17th- and 18th-century mind. Professor Kors is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught for over 30 years. His courses on European intellectual history have won two awards for distinguished teaching. He is the editor-in-chief of the multi-volume Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment and has written and edited several books on European intellectual history. Course Lecture Titles 1. IntroductionIntellectual History and Conceptual Change 2. The Dawn of the 17th CenturyAristotelian Scholasticism 3. The New Vision of Francis Bacon 4. The New Astronomy and Cosmology 5. Descartes's Dream of Perfect Knowledge 6. The Specter of Thomas Hobbes 7. Skepticism and JansenismBlaise Pascal 8. Newton's Discovery 9. The Newtonian Revolution 10. John LockeThe Revolution in Knowledge 11. The Lockean Moment 12. Skepticism and CalvinismPierre Bayle 13. The ModernsThe Generation of 1680-1715 14. Introduction to Deism 15. The Conflict Between Deism and Christianity 16. Montesquieu and the Problem of Relativism 17. VoltaireBringing England To France 18. Bishop Joseph Butler and God's Providence 19. The Skeptical Challenge to OptimismDavid Hume 20. The Assault upon Philosophical OptimismVoltaire 21. The PhilosophesThe Triumph of the French Enlightenment 22. Beccaria and Enlightened Reform 23. Rousseau's Dissent 24. Materialism & NaturalismThe Boundaries of the Enlightenment