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The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries

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Learn about the age of Newton, Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Rousseau, and more from one of world’s leading intellectual historians.

Syllabus

  • 01: Introduction—Intellectual History and Conceptual Change
  • 02: The Dawn of the 17th Century—Aristotelian Scholasticism
  • 03: The New Vision of Francis Bacon
  • 04: The New Astronomy and Cosmology
  • 05: Descartes's Dream of Perfect Knowledge
  • 06: The Specter of Thomas Hobbes
  • 07: Skepticism and Jansenism—Blaise Pascal
  • 08: Newton's Discovery
  • 09: The Newtonian Revolution
  • 10: John Locke—The Revolution in Knowledge
  • 11: The Lockean Moment
  • 12: Skepticism and Calvinism—Pierre Bayle
  • 13: The Moderns—The Generation of 1680-1715
  • 14: Introduction to Deism
  • 15: The Conflict Between Deism and Christianity
  • 16: Montesquieu and the Problem of Relativism
  • 17: Voltaire—Bringing England To France
  • 18: Bishop Joseph Butler and God's Providence
  • 19: The Skeptical Challenge to Optimism—David Hume
  • 20: The Assault upon Philosophical Optimism—Voltaire
  • 21: The Philosophes—The Triumph of the French Enlightenment
  • 22: Beccaria and Enlightened Reform
  • 23: Rousseau's Dissent
  • 24: Materialism & Naturalism—The Boundaries of the Enlightenment
  • By This Professor

Taught by

Alan Charles Kors

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4.6 rating at The Great Courses Plus based on 157 ratings

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