The birth of the modern mind : the intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries

Description

In twenty-four lectures (each 30 minutes in length), Professor Alan Charles Kors focuses on the revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800, a revolution whose lights and shadows are all around us still. This course consolidates and enhances material from two of Professor Kors's earlier courses, The origin of the modern mind and The mind of the enlightenment. Abstract: In twenty-four lectures (each 30 minutes in length), Professor Alan Charles Kors focuses on the revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800, a revolution whose lights and shadows are all around us still. This course consolidates and enhances material from two of Professor Kors's earlier courses, The origin of the modern mind and The mind of the enlightenment Content: Part 1: Disc 1. Lecture 1. Introduction, intellectual history and conceptual change Lecture 2. Dawn of the 17th century, Aristotelian scholasticism Lecture 3. New vision of Francis Bacon Lecture 4. New astronomy and cosmology Lecture 5. Descartes's dream of perfect knowledge Lecture 6. Specter of Thomas Hobbes -- Disc 2. Lecture 7. Skepticism and Jansenism, Blaise Pascal Lecture 8. Newton's discovery Lecture 9. Newtonian revolution Lecture 10. John Locke, the revolution in knowledge Lecture 11. Lockean moment Lecture 12. Skepticism and Calvanism, Pierre Bayle. Part 2: Disc 3. Lecture 13. Moderns, the generation of 1680-1715 Lecture 14. Introduction to Deism Lecture 15. Conflict between Deism and Christianity Lecture 16. Montesquieu and the problem of relativism Lecture 17. Voltaire, bringing England to France Lecture 18. Bishop Joseph Butler and God's providence -- Disc 4. Lecture 19. Skeptical challenge to optimism, David Hume Lecture 20. Assault upon philosophical optimism, Voltaire Lecture 21. Philosophes, the triumph of the French Enlightenment Lecture 22. Beccaria and enlightened reform Lecture 23. Rousseau's dissent Lecture 24. Materialism and Naturalism, the boundaries of the Enlightenment.