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Duke - SECULARIZATION AND MODERNITY

While it is common to hear the present era described as “secular” and “modern,” these twin epithets often lack a clear meaning. This new course will explore the relationship between these two key concepts from a variety of disciplines and genres of writing—in particular literature, theology, sociology, and philosophy. Among the questions we will take up are the following: a) How does the notion of a “secular” world relate to the rise of experimental science and to the reorganization of knowledge as a system of “professions” embodied in the modern research university? b) What kinds of narratives (of progress, of decline) have helped consolidate the widespread notion that we now inhabit a “secular modernity”? c) Often the process of secularization is causally linked to the rise of modern disciplines and their notion of knowledge as a professional commodity (a.k.a. “information”). If we accept that claim (which, implicitly, we seem to do just by being here and doing what we do), what vantage-point is left for us from which to evaluate the “secular” and the “modern”? Isn’t any such perspective already prepossessed by those very disciplines and methods associated with a secular modernity? d) Are there limits to the project of nineteenth-century Liberalism and its commitments to pluralism, social progress, and an overwhelmingly economic idea of human flourishing? Is it sufficient to conceive of modern society strictly in terms of “horizontal” (utilitarian) relations between anonymous individuals and in a language of efficient causes? Or is there something profoundly wrong with that model, as has been argued by a number of major intellectuals and writers who have dissented from the majority view in creative and uncompromising ways (e.g., Goethe, Schopenhauer, Newman, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche et al.). e) What are the consequences of a radical critique of modern, secular, and liberal society as these writers have variously proposed it? Is it that modern society still requires some “vertical” point of reference to the “sacred” (Newman, Dostoevsky), or that it has simply not succeeded in shedding its metaphysical, Christian baggage (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche)? -- A syllabus for the class has already been posted at a website for this course (see below for the URL). Readings will mostly be selections from a wide array of major voices in a) literature (Lessing, Goethe, Coleridge, Blake, Hölderlin, G. M. Hopkins, Dostoevsky); b) philosophy (Hume, Kant, Nietzsche); sociology (Comte, Weber, Durkheim); cultural criticism (Coleridge, M. Arnold, Nietzsche); and theology (Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, Newman).
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Duke - SOUTH ATLANTIC WORLD 1500-2000

THE SOUTH ATLANTIC ROOTS OF THE GLOBAL ORDER (1500-2000).
Score: 12.331297 Details | Listing | Web page

Duke - LOVE, WAR, CORSAIRS, EMPIRE

Re-Imagining the Early Modern Mediterranean:
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Duke - DECOLONIAL THINKING

De-colonial Thinking
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Duke - SEM ROMANCE STUDIES(TOP)

Introduction to Kreyòl Studies
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Duke - SOCIAL SCUL. LATIN AMERICA

"Acciones y pensamiento plásticos: Contemporary (Latin) American Art and/as Theory"
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Duke - FROM LOIRE VALLEY TO VERSAILLE

Subjects, areas, or themes that embrace a range of disciplines or art historical areas. Instructor: Staff
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