HIST 6381 - The Enlightenment, 1650-1815

Credit Hours: 3

Description Considers the nature and impact of Enlightenment thought, including its role in both the invention of modern political freedom and the establishment of new forms of oppression; its justifications and critiques of empire; and its relationships to an age of global revolutions. The Enlightenment has been described as a “revolution of the mind” and also as a “crisis of the mind,” a century when Europeans’ understanding of themselves, their societies, and their place in the world was irrevocably transformed. In this course we will consider the nature of this intellectual and cultural revolution. Did Enlightenment thinkers invent modern political freedom or lay the groundwork for new forms of colonial oppression, slavery, and political terror? Did the Enlightenment justify empire or critique it? What role did religion and religious thought play in the Enlightenment? What was the relationship between the Enlightenment and the revolutions that convulsed the British, French, and Spanish empires at the end of the eighteenth century?