Derided or revered, there is no question that the Enlightenment is important. But what was the Enlightenment? This course will investigate the Enlightenment in all its complexities and contradictions. As an era defined by radical critique, Enlightenment thinkers rejected the authority of religion, tradition, and aristocracy, and sought to transform our understanding of nature, culture, and history by grounding these fields on the transparent rational principles of freedom, progress, and universality. In doing this, the Enlightenment embroiled itself and us in a contradiction. It both created the fundamental terms, ideals, and institutions that frame our contemporary understanding of the world while also establishing a discourse of universality and eurocentrism that serves as the object of our greatest critique. Yet far from being one thing, the Enlightenment also possessed the tools for its own self critique. Or, in the words of Johann Gottfried Herder, "What is universal reason but a cover for our favorite, whims, idolatry, blindness and laziness?" Following, Herder, Rousseau, and Goethe, this course will also investigate the alternative conceptions of nature, culture, and history that rejected the universalist and imperialist strand of Enlightenment thinking in favor of a dynamic, process-oriented understanding of history and nature as eternally unfolding. With this conception, the Enlightenment perhaps offers an alternative to help us in our quest to think beyond it. Readings and persons of engagement may include, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Rousseau, Herder, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, Defoe, Alexander von Humboldt, Haydn, Mozart, and Schiller.
No prior knowledge of the texts or the period will be assumed in instruction. By the end of the course, students will have a solid understanding of the historical, cultural, and intellectual context of the period we call The Enlightenment as well as the fundamental problems and questions that were addressed at that time. Students will also have a solid understanding of the divergent ways in which these questions were answered and the different conceptions of culture, history, and literature that arose out from these answers. Additionally, students will develop an understanding of the various legacies of the Enlightenment and have an opportunity to grapple with the positive and negative aspects of that legacy in the contemporary cultural context.