İstanbul Şehir University
Spring 2015
SYLLABUS
SOC 560: Europe: The Enlightenment & Modernity
Monday 13:00 – 16:00
West Campus # 2008
Instructor: Prof. Dr. Şerif Mardin
Office: West Campus # 2039
TA: M. Emin Tak emintak@std.sehir.edu.tr
Course Description
This course covers the spread of knowledge in the Western World. We shall first give a
description of pedagogy in the Medieval West. We shall go on to examine the sociopolitical impact of moveable print following its emergence. We shall then study the
propagation of knowledge through scientific societies, with a particularly close look at
the so-called “republic of letters”. We shall unfortunately leave out Marx, since we
cannot in a single meeting cover the extraordinary variety and richness of his
contribution to knowledge.
We will look closely as well into another development, namely the rise of a number of
theories, which together may earn the name of positivism, with Auguste Comte as
primary theoretician. We then take up the means that had its roots in the
Enlightenment as did positivism but came to provide ideas that challenged positivism
as an approach to knowing and understanding as well as in arts and literature. Thus,
we will cover the development of new theories of art with Baudelaire as initiator.
In two instances, that of print and cartography, we shall look at developments in the
Ottoman Empire to provide a comparative perspective and as a means to debate the
universalistic appeal of the rise of new approaches to learning, knowing and art.
Student Responsibility
Students both registered and auditors are expected to write two ten page papers
chosen each from the four following areas, Diderot, Positivism, Baudelaire and
Dilthey. The first of these papers will count as midterm and the second as the final.
Weekly Readings:
The following is a tentative reading list intended to give you a better idea about the
course. The final reading list will follow.
Feb 16 (Week 1): Introductory remarks
Feb 23 (Week 2): Popular Education in the Middle Ages in the West
 Olson, David R., The World on Paper, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1998, pp. 1-19.
 Bowen, James, The History of Education, v. 2, Routledge, 1975, pp. 1-36.
 Demirel, Hamide, Türk Destanlarında Güzellik, Destan, Masal ve Din
Unsurları ile Yabancı Destanlarda Türk Kahramanları, Ötüken Yayınları,
1995, pp. 43-44.
Further Readings:
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Crosby, Alfred W., The Measure of Reality, Cambridge University Press,
1997, pp. 21-47.
Costello, William T., The Scholastic Curriculum at Early SeventeenthCentury, Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass, 1958.
Grafton, A. and L. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education
and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe, 1986.
March 2 (Week 3): Enlightenment and its Adversaries
 d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of
Diderot, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995, pp. 9-52.
Further Readings:

Olson, David R., The World on Paper, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp.
160-179.
March 9 (Week 4): Romanticism
 Berlin, Isaiah, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Princeton University
Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2000, pp. 168-242.
Further Readings:

Honour, Hugh, Romanticism, Harper & Row, New York, 1979, pp. 21-56.
March 16 (Week 5): The Universities
 Ridder-Symoens, H. de (ed.), A History of the University in Europe: The
Middle Ages, v. 1, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 1-30, 280-299.
Further Readings:
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Kearney, H., Scholars and Gentlemen: Universities and Society in
Preindustrial Britain, 1500–1700, 1970, pp. 15-46.
Post, G., “Masters’ Salaries and Students’ Fees in the Medieval
Universities”, Speculum 7 (1932), pp. 181–98.
March 23 (Week 6): Print and the Book in the West and in the Ottoman Empire
 Eisenstein, E., The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, v. 1, Cambridge,
1979, pp. 3-43.
 Sabev, Orlin, İbrahim Müteferrika ya da İlk Osmanlı Matbaa Serüveni
(1776-1746), Yeditepe Yayınevi, 2006, pp. 233-245, 305-312.
Further Readings:
 Raven, J., “Selling Books across Europe c. 1450–1800: An
Overview”, Publishing History 34, 1993, pp. 5–20.
 Martin, H-J, The French Book: Religion, Absolutism, and Readership 1585–
1715. Baltimore, 1996.
 Johns, A., The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making.
Chicago, 1998.
 Chartier, R., The Order of Books: Readers, Authors and Libraries in Europe
between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge, 1992.
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Gellrich, J. M., The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, 1985.
March 30 (Week 7): Scientific Societies
 Hall, M. B., “The Royal Society’s Role in the Diffusion of Information in the
Seventeenth Century”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 29, 1975, pp.
173–92.
Further Readings:

McClellan, J. E., Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth
Century, Columbia University Press, New York., 1985, pp. XVII-67.
April 6 (Week 8): The Republic of Letters
 Fumaroli, M., “The Republic of Letters”, Diogenes 143, 1988, pp. 129–52.
Further Reading
 Klaits, J., “Men of Letters and Political Reformation in France at the End of
the Reign of Louis XIV: The Founding of the Académie Politique”, Journal of
Modern History 43, 1971, pp. 577–97.
 Goodman, D., The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French
Enlightenment. Ithaca, 1994.
 Burke, P., “Erasmus and the Republic of Letters”, European Review 7, no. 1,
1999, pp. 5–17.
April 13 (Week 9): Cartography in the West
 Harley, J. B., “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in
Early Modern Europe”, Imago Mundi 40, 1988, pp. 57–76.
 Biggs, M., “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory and
European State Formation’”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 41,
1999, pp. 374–405.
April 20: Spring break / No classes
April 27 (Week 10): Cartography in the Ottoman Empire
 Brummett, Palmira, “Imagining the early modern Ottoman space, from
world history to Piri Reis”, in The Early Modern Ottomans, Aksan, Virginia
H. and Goffman, Daniel (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 15-58.
Further Readings:

Sarıcaoğlu, Fikret, “Harita- Osmanlı Dönemi”, DİA, c.16, TDV İSAM, 1997,
pp. 210-216.
May 4 (Week 11): The Propagation of Knowledge in Europe
 Levy, F., “How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550–1640”, Journal
of British Studies 21, 1982, pp. 11–34.
Further Reading
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Geertz, C., “Common Sense as a Cultural System”, rpr. in his Local
Knowledge (New York, 1983), 1975, pp. 73–93.
Clapp, S., “The Beginnings of Subscription in the Seventeenth
Century”, Modern Philology 29, 1931, pp. 199–224.
Stewart, L., The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and Natural
Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750. Cambridge, 1992.
Böhme, G. and N. Stehr (eds.) The Knowledge Society. Dordrecht, 1986.
May 11 (Week 12): A Positivist Century
 Auguste Comte, “Introduction to Positive Philosophy (“The Nature and
Importance of the Positive Philosophy”)”, in Nineteenth-Century
Philosophy, Baird, Forrest E. and Kaufmann, Prentice Hall, New Jersey,
2003, pp. 129-138.
 Hayward, Jake E. S., “Comte, Isidore Auguste [1798-1857]”, in The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Political Thought, ed. David Miller et al., Blackwell
Publishing, Oxford, 2004, pp. 90-93.
 Chabal, Emile, “Renan, Ernest [1823-1892]”, in Encyclopedia of Political
Theory, Mark Bevir (ed.), SAGE, 2010, pp. 1183-1185.
 Capek, Milic, “Taine, Hippolyte-Adolphe [1828-1893]”, in Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Donald M. Borchert (ed.), Thomson Gale, v. 9, 2nd edition,
2006, pp. 364-366.
May 18 (Week 13): Slipping Away from Positivism: Art
 Harrison, Charles et al., “Feeling and Nature”, in Art in Theory 1815-1900,
Blackwell, 1998, pp. 11-15.
 Eugene Delacroix [1798-1863], “on Romanticism”, in Art in Theory 18151900, Harrison, Charles et al., Blackwell, 1998, pp. 26-30.
 Eugene Delacroix, “on Modernity”, in Art in Theory 1815-1900, Harrison,
Charles et al., Blackwell, 1998, pp. 326-331.
 Gustave Courbet [1819-1877],” Statement on Realism”, in Art in Theory
1815-1900, Harrison, Charles et al., Blackwell, 1998, pp. 372-373.
 Charles Baudelaire [1821-1867], “Critical Method – on the Modern Idea of
Progress as Applied to the Fine Arts”, in Art in Theory 1815-1900, Harrison,
Charles et al., Blackwell, 1998, pp. 485-489.
 Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”, in Art in Theory 18151900, Harrison, Charles et al., Blackwell, 1998, pp. 493-506.
 Myers, Bernard S. (ed.), “Manet, Edouard [1832-1883]”, in Encyclopedia of
Painting, Crown Publishers, New York, 1979, pp. 316-317.
 Myers, Bernard S. (ed.), “Monet, Claude [1840-1926]”, in Encyclopedia of
Painting, Crown Publishers, New York, 1979, pp. 345-346.
Further Reading
 Pichois, Claude, Baudelaire, Trans. Graham Robb, H. Hamilton, London,
1989.
 Malpas, James, Realism, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997.
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Rewald, John, The History of Impressionism, Museum of Modern Art, New
York, 1961.
Tucker, Paul Hayes, Claude Monet: Life and Art, Yale University Press,
1995.
Brombert, Beth Archer, Edouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat, University
of Chicago Press, 1997.
May 25 (Week 14): The end of the century anti-positivism
 Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900], “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, in NineteenthCentury Philosophy, Baird, Forrest E. and Kaufmann, Walter, Prentice Hall,
New Jersey, pp. 476-478.
 Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Will to Power”, in Nineteenth-Century
Philosophy, Baird, Forrest E. and Kaufmann, Walter, Prentice Hall, New
Jersey, pp. 495.
 Hattiangadi, Jagdish, “Philosophy of biology in the nineteenth century”, in
The Nineteenth Century, Routledge History of Philosophy v. 7, Ten, C. L.,
Routledge, London, 2002, pp. 272-296.
 Brown, Richar Harvey, “Dilthey, Wilhelm [1833-1911]”, in Encyclopedia of
Social Theory, George Ritzer (ed.), SAGE Publications, London, v. 1, 2005,
pp. 201-203.
Further Reading
 Lessnoff, Michael, “Dilthey [1833-1911]”, in The Nineteenth Century,
Routledge History of Philosophy v. 7, Ten, C. L., Routledge, London, 2002,
pp. 206-241.
 Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber [1864-1920] An Intellectual Portrait, Anchor
Books, New York, 1962, pp. XIX-13, 30-41, 50-55.
 Deleuze, Gilles, Bergsonism, Zone Books, New York, 1991.
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