GE Cluster 21A,B,CW
The History of Modern Thought
| Lecture Schedule: | Monday, Wednesday 2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. – DeNeve Auditorium |
| Faculty: | Lynn Hunt, History Margaret Jacob, History Theodore Porter, History M. Norton Wise, History |
This course examines classics of Western social, political, philosophical, and scientific thought from the 17th century to the present. We will read works by such authors as René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. These thinkers address enduring questions about the modern world – questions about human nature, the natural world and our place in it, the source and legitimacy of political authority, the meaning and limits of human freedom, the status of women, the dynamics of capitalist markets, the workings of the human psyche, and the limits of reason. All these thinkers tried to engage these problems in a scientific manner, and one aim of the course is to know the interrelatedness of all forms of intellectual inquiry.
The course invites students to engage in these questions – and to join in a dialogue across the centuries. Our distinguished teaching team does not seek to provide authoritative interpretations of the texts. Instead, we have designed the course to bring students into direct and sustained engagement with these classic works. There are no definitive interpretations of these texts, no single or simple right answers to the questions we explore. The books we read are complex and full of inner tensions. We encourage students to grasp these tensions and to come to terms with the complexities.
We welcome all students, whatever their prospective major, who are interested in exploring fundamental issues in the history of modern thought. We particularly welcome students with an interest in social and political theory or in scientific and philosophical ideas. However, we discourage students from taking the course if your primary interest is in efficiently satisfying GE requirements. This is a demanding course, and readings are difficult and complex. Students should not take the course unless they are prepared to grapple seriously with this material.
Course Format
During fall and winter quarters, the course meets twice each week for lectures and once a week for a two-hour section discussion. During spring quarter, students choose a seminar that allows them to explore a particular topic in greater depth.
Spring Seminars – Previous seminar topics have included:
- I Feel, Therefore I Am--I Think: History of Emotions
- Utopia and Dystopia in Western Thought
- Tyrants and Tunesmiths: Music and State in Modern Europe
- Minds and Machines: From Descartes to Pinker
- Uses of Past: Collective Memory in Contemporary Thought
- Thought, Reason, and Soul
Foundation Area General Education Credit
Upon completion of all three quarters of the cluster, students will satisfy 3 course requirements in the following foundational areas: 2 courses in the Foundations of Society and Culture (1 in Historical Analysis and 1 in Social Analysis) and 1 course in the Foundations of Arts and Humanities—Philosophical and Linguistic Analysis.
