Short Course Description
The rise of the New Sciences in seventeenth-century England to about a phasing out of a number of long-standing religious, political, and philosophical traditions. From the expunging of Aristotelian physics to the radicalization of English Protestantism and the bolstering of constitutional monarchy, the intellectual landscape of England was swiftly changing. The seminar will take a look at the manner in which the competing notions of science, personal identity, and tradition manifest themselves in Daniel Defoe?s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders and Jonathan Swift?s political writings as well as in his great novel Gulliver?s Travels. Readings will include a selection of contemporary philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley, and Thomas Hobbes, Giambattista Vico, and more.
Full syllabus is to be published
