History of Ideas I: The Enlightened World

The course provides a basic history of ideas survey from the early 16th century until the French revolution with a focus on conceptions of nature, society, and humanity. The science revolution and the European intellectual development in early modern times are treated in relation to changing societal and global conditions. One focus area concerns significant intellectual movements such as the Enlightenment, another the emergence of the colonial world order and its ideologies. The emphasis is on European thinking and how it changed in the encounter between the coloniser and the colonised. Instruction is in the form of lectures, presenting overviews of essential content, and mandatory seminars on course content in the light of course literature, in which students discuss their understanding orally and in writing.