A Tour of Dangerous Ideas: Radical Thinkers in Modern Europe

In this course we will examine ideas radical to their context in modern European thought, paying close attention to what it has meant to explain features of society, government, and politics in terms of power. What is power? What is human nature, and do all humans possess natural rights? How is human identity interwoven with the practice of power? What makes an idea radical? We will examine these and other questions through close readings of seven thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern period: John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, C.L.R. James, and Michel Foucault.