PERSPECTIVES ON MODERNITY I: INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Instructor: Dr Sorana Corneanu

SCHEDULE

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2: Intellectual history among other varieties of history

Reading: Collini, ‘The Identity of Intellectual History’, in Whatmore and Young, eds., Blackwell Companion

Week 3: Some core concerns (1): context

Reading: Cowan, ‘Intellectual, Social, Cultural History’, in Whatmore and Young, eds, Palgrave Advances

Week 4: Some core concerns (2): continuity and agency

Reading: Burrow, ‘Intellectual History in English Academic Life’, in Whatmore and Young, eds, Palgrave Advances

Week 5: Origins

Reading: Lovejoy, ‘Reflections on the History of Ideas’

Week 6: Discussion

Reading: Lovejoy, ‘The Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas’

Week 7: Agency revisited: Cambridge Contextualism

Readings: Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’; ‘What Intellectual History Teaches Us’

Week 8: Discussion

Reading: Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, Introduction and chap. 3 (Machiavelli), 5 (Shakespeare)

Week 9: Continuity revisited: History of Science

Reading: Clark, ‘Intellectual History an History of Science’, in Whatmore and Young, eds., Blackwell Companion

Week 10: Discussion

Reading: Shapin, Social History of Truth, chap. 3 (A Social History of Truth-Telling), 5 (Epistemological Decorum)

Week 11: Cultural identity revisited

Reading: Condren et al., Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, Introduction and chap 1 (philosophical persona).

Week 12: Discussion

Reading: Condren et al., Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, chap. 10 (feminine philosophical persona), 11 (Locke)

Week 13: Contextualism to the trial

Readings: McMahon, ‘Return to the History of Ideas?’; Wickberg, ‘In the Environment of Ideas’

Week 14: Tutorial for final exam

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Condren, Conan et al., The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Lovejoy, Arthur O., ‘Reflections on the History of Ideas’, Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940)

Lovejoy, Arthur O., ‘The Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas’, JHI 2 (1941)

McMahon, Darrin, ‘The Return of the History of Ideas?’, in eds. McMahon and Moyn Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History, Oxford, 2014.

Shapin, Steven, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, in Visions of Politics, vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Skinner, Quentin, ‘What Intellectual History Teaches Us’, Governance Podcast, 2019.

Skinner, Quentin, From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Whatmore, Richard and Brian Young, eds, Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Whatmore, Richard and Brian Young, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Intellectual History, Wiley Blackwell, 2016.

Wickberg, Daniel, ‘In the Environment of Ideas: Arthur Lovejoy and the History of Ideas as a Form of Cultural History’, Modern Intellectual History 11 (2014).

REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION

  • A minimum of 50% attendance
  • Participation in class discussions, counting for 25% of the final mark
  • An end-of-term written essay or written test, counting for 75% of the final mark