First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Modernity and its Discontents

Catalog description

What does it mean to be modern? The Enlightenment birthed a world of scientific confidence and material abundance which challenged prevailing superstitions and traditional hierarchies. Yet it also entailed the breaking down of long-standing religious, cultural, and ethical certainties. Ever since, thinkers have attempted to make sense of the moral and spiritual deficiencies of the modern commercial society that rose up in its wake. Their arguments raise questions about meaning, community, freedom, and nature which help us think through key features of our world—including technology, consumption, rationality, and bureaucracy. Moving chronologically and reading perceptive thinkers that have explored these themes from different angles, this course will address questions about the experience of modernity including: Why do we think of ourselves as individuals, and are we really that individual? In what way do we experience our freedom? How should we think about the relation between means and ends? Why does meaning often feel so elusive to us?