Philosophy and the Modern Mind

In this course, we will survey some of the key issues that emerged in Philosophy during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, using classical texts from the period. Issues to be discussed may include authority, both political and intellectual, personhood and the individual, religion and science, free will, experience and reason, materialism and the mind, and the limits of human knowledge. Figures discussed may include Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Galileo, Spinoza, Locke, and Hume.