Dr Alexander Wragge-Morley

Enlightenment thought, with its twin emphases on the universality of nature and the universal power of reason, has often been seen as anti-historical. How was it possible for a philosopher like Montesquieu to fully appreciate historical difference – and historical change – if he thought that people everywhere basically had the same nature? Thomas Carlyle, for example, worried that Enlightenment historiography lacked an adequate conception of past mentalities and contingencies because of its emphasis on cool reason. ‘Enlightenment Histories’ invites students to challenge this characterization by considering the rich and multifaceted engagement with the past in eighteenth-century thought and culture.

This course examines the role of representations of the past in the thought and culture of eighteenth-century Europe. It will lead students to engage with the intellectual culture of a period that is taken to be crucial in the formation of the modern intellectual disciplines, while encouraging critical discussion of the uses and practices of history today. Moreover, the course will foster the use of a wide range of textual, visual and material sources, creating opportunities for students to widen their skills and experience of working with different historical sources, and within different modern and early modern disciplines. Students may wish, for example, to think about the effects of geological investigations on concepts of historical time and change by reading Cuvier’s Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813). But equally they might consider focusing on the aesthetics of historical representation in novels such as Marmontel’s Bélisaire (1767) or artworks including David’s Oath of the Horatii.