Professor Alice Behnegar
behnegaa@bc.edu
Stokes South 247, ext. 2-1923
HONR1201-1204: WESTERN CULTURAL TRADITION V-VIII
1500 CE - 1900 CE: Modernity
FRAMEWORK
The four centuries of thought and action to which we devote the Sophomore Honors Seminar
bring us to “modernity” – but what exactly is “modernity”?
If we step back and look at the big picture of this period, we see a familiar but still
extraordinary transformation. In 1500 CE the communities of Europe are hierarchical,
traditional, communitarian, agrarian, unscientific, Catholic, intolerant, superstitious; their
language is the language of inequality, duty, virtue, devotion, God, and the soul (its sins and its
salvation); they like the pagans before them experience the world as inspirited and full of the
immaterial, the unseen, the supernatural. By 1900 CE the American and French revolutions are
a century old and a very different language – of freedom and rights and self-preservation – and
outlook – egalitarian, individualistic, materialist-scientific, skeptical, this-worldly – are on the
march throughout Europe and its colonies. A hundred years later industrialized liberal
democracy has crushed all political and economic alternatives in the West, while virtually no
corner of the globe remains untouched by the modern western ideas of equality and individual
rights or by modern scientific materialism and the technology it spawns.
How on earth did this happen? What are the pieces of this puzzle and how do they fit
together? What does it mean for us, that is, what does it mean to be “modern”? What is the
good and what is the bad of it; what is true and what is false? We cannot do justice to these
questions in the limited time we have, but we will explore at least some key moments, following
especially the back-and-forth between the advocates of the modern project and the critics.
READINGS and ASSIGNMENTS
Your task in this class is to try to grasp and explore the central questions and arguments in
each text and the major themes of modernity, and to bring the texts into debate with each
other. In your papers you will be asked to write clearly and formulate structured, cogent
analyses, and in class you will be asked to discuss difficult questions in a rigorous but
respectful way. Presence and participation (regular and thoughtful contributions that
advance our conversations about texts and themes) are crucial to the success of the seminar
and constitute an essential part of the work of this course for each student – and note, it is
work that cannot be made up.
In short, whether preparing for class or writing a paper or reflection, you need to read, re-read,
and think! What’s the point or the argument of the text? What’s puzzling, unclear,
problematic, interesting, illuminating, shocking? What needs to be unpacked and worked
through?
Two notes: No electronic devices are permitted in class, and I take Academic Integrity seriously.
BEHNEGAR -- HONR120102: WESTERN CULTURAL TRADITION V-VIII
1500 CE - 1900 CE: Modernity
SOME POSSIBLE TEXTS (NB assignments may also include movies, music, art, live
performances)
This list is representative of what I have assigned or thought about assigning in the past; it is
not comprehensive (I might choose other works of these or others among the great thinkers),
and I certainly would never assign all of these works in one year!
Fall – Rebellion: Modern Doubts, Hopes, Visions, Arguments
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Thomas More (1478-1535)
Luther (1483-1546)
Calvin (
1509-1564)
Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
Montaigne (1533-1592)
Cervantes (1547-1616
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Bacon (1561-1626)
Hobbes (1588-1679)
Descartes (1596-1650)
Locke (1632-1704)
Rousseau (1712-1778)
Madison, Hamilton, Jay
Things Fall Apart
The Prince
Utopia
“The Freedom of a Christian”
selections from Institutes of the Christian Religion
Spiritual Exercises
selections from The Essays
Don Quixote
Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest, Henry IV parts I &
II, Henry V, Richard III, As You Like It, Measure for Measure
The New Atlantis
selections from Leviathan
Discourse on Method, Meditations
Second Treatise, Letter Concerning Toleration
Social Contract
Federalist 10, 51
Spring – The Problem of the Modern Soul
John Milton (1608-1674)
Pascal (1623-1662)
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Rousseau (1712-1778)
Inequality,
Paradise Lost
Kant (1724-1804)
The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Perpetual
Peace
Austen
(1775-1817)
Stendhal (1783-1842)
Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Melville (1819-1891)
selections from the Pensées
Gulliver’s Travels
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Discourse on
selections from Emile
Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park
The Red and the Black
selections from Democracy in America
Lyceum Address, Temperance Address
Fear and Trembling
Benito Cereno
Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Underground,
The Demons, Brothers Karamazov, Notes from
Tolstoy(1828-1910)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Idiot, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
Anna Karenina, War and Peace
Huckleberry Finn, Connecticut Yankee at King
Henry James (1843-1916)
Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The Turn of the Screw
The Use and Abuse of History, Genealogy of Morals
Arthur’s Court