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HIST / HUMN 407: The Enlightenment (Rev. C4/C3) Report a Broken Link

Unit 1: Introduction

Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” In Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, 17–23. Yale UP, 2006.
“Enlightenment’s Wake: The End of Reason?” In Institute of Art and Ideas: Cutting Edge Debates and Talks from the World’s Leading Thinkers. TVF International, 2015.

Watch Segments 1 to 4.

Unit 2: Changing Knowledge of the World

Fara, Patricia. “Marginalized Practices.” In The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 4: Eighteenth-Century Science, edited by Roy Porter, 485–508. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
d’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond. “Preliminary Discourse.” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009.

Read Parts I and II.

Unit 3: Religious Toleration

Voltaire. Treatise on Tolerance, 1763.

Read from “Short Account of Jean Calas’s Death” to the end of “How Tolerance May Be Admitted,” pp. 1–13.
Locke, John. “A Letter Concerning Toleration.” In A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, edited by Mark Goldie, 7–67. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2010.

Unit 4: The Religious Enlightenment

Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch). “Chapter 8.” In Treatise on Theology and Politics, 73–79. Version by Jonathan Bennett presented at earlymoderntexts.com, 2017.
Paley, William. Natural Theology: Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Read:

•    Chapter I: “State of the Argument,” pp. 46–49
•    Chapter II: “Stare of the Argument Continued,” pp. 50–54

Unit 5: Doubts and Dangerous Ideas

Anonymous, and Jean Maximilien Lucas. A Treatise on the Three Impostors.

Read Chapters I, II, and paragraphs 1–9 of Chapter III.
Baron d’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry. System of Nature (1770). Batoche Books, 2001.

Read:

•    Author’s Preface, pp. 7–10
•    Chapter I: “Of Nature,” pp. 10–16
•    Chapter XIII: “Of the Immortality of the Soul—Of the Doctrine of a Future State—Of the Fear of Death,” pp. 131–145
•    Chapter XVIII: “The Origin of Man’s Ideas Upon the Divinity,” pp. 184–196

Unit 6: Human Nature and Morality

Schiebinger, Londa. “The Philosopher’s Beard: Women and Gender in Science.” In The Cambridge History of Science Vol. 4: Eighteenth-Century Science, edited by Roy Porter, 184–210. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Diderot, Denis. A Letter on Blindness (1770 translation). London: Britannia, 1770. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Read pages 56–66 (pages 69–79 if printing).

Unit 7: Sociability and Social Settings

Burrows, Simon, Mark Curran, Vincent Hiribarren, Sarah Kattau, and Henry Merivale. The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project, 1769–1794. Western Sydney University, 2014.

Unit 8: Innovation and Public Happiness

Beccaria, Cesare. On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings. Edited by Jeremy Parzen and Aaron Thomas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Read the following sections and chapters: “To The Reader”; Introduction; and Chapters 1 (I), 2 (II) 11 (XI), 12 (XII), 16 (XVI), 19 (XIX), 24 (XXIV), 28 (XXVIII), 33 (XXXIII), 41 (XLI), 45 (XLV), 47 (XLVII).

Unit 9: Society and Political Economy

Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. London: Electric Book Company, 2000.

Read:

•    Book One, Chapter V, pp. 50–72
•    Book One, Chapter X, pp. 142–202

Unit 10: Enlightenment Histories

Macaulay, Catharine. A History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line. Vol. 1, 3rd ed. London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly; and Dublin reprinted, for A. Leathly, and J. Exshaw, 1770.

Read Chapter 2 (The Gunpowder Plot), pp. 24–36.
Gibbon, Edward. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 2. London: ElecBook, 1998.

Read Chapter XXIII (The Religion of Julian), pp. 327–340. (You might need to download the chapter as a PDF in order to view the pages properly.)

Unit 11: Cross-Cultural Encounters

Montagu, Mary Wortley. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W———y M———e. Vol. 1, 3rd ed. London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A. de Hondt, 1763.

Read Letter XXVI: Adrianople, April 1, O. S. 1717, pp. 170–178 (the last letter in volume 1).

Unit 12: Theories of Government

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Version by Jonathan Bennett presented at earlymoderntexts.com, 2017.

Read:

  • Read all of Books 1 and 2
  • Book 3, Chapter 1 (“Government in general”) and Chapter 4 (“Democracy”)
  • Book 4, Chapter 1 (“The general will is indestructible”), Chapter 2 (“Voting”), Chapter 7 (“Censorship”), and Chapter 8 (“Civic religion”)

Unit 13: Revolutions and Rights

“The Law of Suspects.” Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution.
“The Law of 22 Prairial Year II (10 June 1794).” Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution.

Unit 14: Legacies of the Enlightenment

“Enlightenment’s Wake: The End of Reason?” In Institute of Art and Ideas: Cutting Edge Debates and Talks from the World’s Leading Thinkers. TVF International, 2015.

Watch Segments 5–8.

Assignment 2: Chapter Analysis

Fitzpatrick, Martin, Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf, and Iain McCalman, eds. The Enlightenment World. London: Routledge, 2004.