Kors A.C. The birth of the modern mind: the intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries

Chantilly: Teaching Co, 2003. — 92 p.In twenty-four lectures (each 30 minutes in length), Professor Alan Charles Kors focuses on the revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800, a revolution whose lights and shadows are all around us still. This course consolidates and enhances material from two of Professor Kors's earlier courses, The origin of the modern mind and The mind of the enlightenment.
Abstract: In twenty-four lectures (each 30 minutes in length), Professor Alan Charles Kors focuses on the revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800, a revolution whose lights and shadows are all around us still. This course consolidates and enhances material from two of Professor Kors's earlier courses, The origin of the modern mind and The mind of the enlightenmentIntroduction, intellectual history and conceptual change
Dawn of the th century, Aristotelian scholasticism
New vision of Francis Bacon
New astronomy and cosmology
Descartes's dream of perfect knowledge
Specter of Thomas Hobbes
Skepticism and Jansenism, Blaise Pascal
Newton's discovery
Newtonian revolution
John Locke, the revolution in knowledge
Lockean moment
Skepticism and Calvanism, Pierre Bayle
Moderns, the generation of
Introduction to Deism
Conflict between Deism and Christianity
Montesquieu and the problem of relativism
Voltaire, bringing England to France
Bishop Joseph Butler and God's providence
Skeptical challenge to optimism, David Hume
Assault upon philosophical optimism, Voltaire
Philosophes, the triumph of the French Enlightenment
Beccaria and enlightened reform
Rousseau's dissent
Materialism and Naturalism, the boundaries of the Enlightenment