Reasons to Believe: Religions of Enlightenment

Is social life even possible without some form of religion? But which form should that be? What is the purpose of a profession of faith? To understand why these questions still matter today, we need to go back to the source of the process called "secularization." In eighteenth-century Europe, Enlightenment philosophers relentlessly questioned the moral, social and historical aspects of one of the most common human phenomena. This course will explore the multiple notions they devised to apprehend it--faith, ritual, deism, atheism, fanaticism, superstition, and how these concepts may inform today's public debate.