Humanities Core: The Renaissance in Europe

The Renaissance in Europe saw a cultural flowering founded on the achievements of pagan antiquity, a new humanism founded on the conviction that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality, and the foundation of the modern state. We start with those "Renaissance men" Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. We then turn to Martin Luther's rejection of Papal Rome and his erection of a competing, Protestant ideal. Montaigne and Shakespeare invent our modern sense of subjectivity before our eyes. And Machiavelli and Hobbes create a science of power politics. Each week, during the first class meeting, we will focus on these issues in Europe. During the second class meeting, we will participate in a collaborative conversation with the other students and faculty in Humanities Core classes, about other regions and issues. This course is taught in English . This course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Mondays you meet in your own course, and on Wednesdays all the HumCore seminars (in session that quarter) meet together: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.