Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Philosophy

This course is an exploration of the eighteenth-century landscape of ideas starting with the scientific origin of the Enlightenment in Western Europe and the philosophical worldviews that it generated. The main topics are philosophy and natural science, reason and education.The main goal is to discern and evaluate models of engagement arising from new alternatives provided by natural philosophy. Natural philosophers, for instance, developed a new mode of engagement: both with the natural world, by developing new mathematical tools and experiments, but also with each other, by the rising of scientific societies and the Republic of Letters. The meaning of a `philosopher¿ also changed: from a solitary thinker to one engaged with the society. Finally, writers in general became more directly engaged with their (ever increasing) audience due to the rise of printing presses, the reactions to censorship, the expansion of societies, salons, and coffee shops.