Selfhood, Sensibility and the Poltics of Difference in the European Enlightenment
Adam Sutcliffe
The aim of the module is to trace the contours of this multi-faceted and highly contested process of change. It will explore the intellectual substance of debates concerning the nature of knowledge and the social institutions and practices that underwrote different forms of inquiry and knowledge production. The module brings together three main historiographical strands: early modern intellectual history, the history and sociology of early modern science, and the social and cultural history of the circulation of ideas. Starting with the challenge to theology posed by the sixteenth-century revival of scepticism, it will explore the origins and procedures of the "scientific revolution" and the intellectual impact in Europe of the non-European world. It will conclude by examining information flows, hierarchies and rituals in the eighteenth-century public sphere and their relationship to the definition of knowledge in the Enlightenment.
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