Age of Enlightenment

Catalog description

A contextualized discussion of major developments in European thought during the eighteenth century. Topics include rationalism and the notion of the social applicability of science, the idea of progress, the critique of established religion, economic theories such as those of the Physiocrats, and epistemological interests as expressed in the Encyclopedie of Diderot and d’Alembert, as well as the increased cosmopolitanism and the importance of extra-European models (especially the Chinese Confucian model).