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Selfhood and Sensibility in The European Enlightenment

Key information

  • Module code:

    7AAH2032

  • Level:

    7

  • Semester:

      Autumn

  • Credit value:

    15

Module description

This module focuses on the history of selfhood in the ‘long Enlightenment’ (c.1670-1800), looking at philosophical approaches to the nature of the self, literary and cultural explorations of human emotional responses to the feelings of others (‘sensibility’), and the political ramifications of these cultural and intellectual changes. Core readings will split roughly evenly between primary texts (mostly influential works of philosophy but including some fiction) and notable recent historiographical studies. Starting with some key late seventeenth-century texts by John Locke and Baruch Spinoza that were hugely influential in the following century, we then look at the emergence of materialist understandings of the self in the early eighteenth century, and at the explosion of interest in ‘sentiment’ in both fiction and in moral and economic thought in the latter half of the century. We will conclude with a consideration of the significance of changing concepts of the self in the political and cultural upheavals of the American and French Revolutions. Two themes will recur at various points in the course: the development of individualist approaches to ethics and belief as an alternative to traditional religion, and the formation of notions of selfhood in juxtaposition to ‘others’, whether across the gender divide or in contrast to non-Europeans or minorities such as Jews.

Assessment details

1 x 3,500 words essay (100%)

 

Teaching pattern

10 x 2 hour seminars (weekly)

Subject areas

Department

Module description disclaimer

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Please note that modules with a practical component will be capped due to educational requirements, which may mean that we cannot guarantee a place to all students who elect to study this module.

Please note that the module descriptions above are related to the current academic year and are subject to change.