The Birth of the Modern: Ideas in Transition between 1776 and 1832

Dr Paul Kerry

This introductory course aims to survey key European and transatlantic ideas and themes with a particular emphasis on the intellectual history of political thought. As such, PKP students from all backgrounds are welcome. The course will also expose students to interdisciplinary primary sources of the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries to show how social and political ideas may be conveyed in them. The framework of modern democratic governments and the reasoning that informs their political and social cultures spring in large part from the intellectual ferment of these years, often called the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

During lectures we will survey the historical and cultural contexts in which these ideas were debated. In our seminars, we will explore in more detail how these ideas were configured and embodied in a range of interdisciplinary sources drawn from literature, music, and architecture in addition to political essays. At the end of this course students should be able to distinguish between ideas that illustrate Enlightenment and Romanticism, understand better the development of political thought and how modern forms of government and social institutions were shaped by the ideas studied in the course.

Required books:
Students must purchase these before arriving in Cambridge

• Isaac Kramnick, Enlightenment Reader
• Warrren Breckman, European Romanticism Reader

Pre-Arrival Reading
Strongly recommended but not mandatory

• Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern (HarperCollins, 1991)
• Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity (Yale, 1995)
• Iain Hampshire-Monk, A History of Modern Political Thought. Major Political Thinkers from Hobbes to Marx (Blackwell, 1992)
• Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (Vintage, 2005)
• Isaiah Berlin, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age (Princeton, 2008)

Recommended reading on method and historical context:

• J.G.A. Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge, 2009)
• Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics. Vol 1. Regarding Method (Cambridge 2002)
• Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, 2002)
• The Eighteenth Century: Europe 1688-1815, ed. Tim Blanning (Oxford, 2000)
• The Nineteenth Century: Europe, 1789-1914, ed. Tim Blanning (Oxford, 2000)

Assessment:

• 1 Final Exam: 45%
• 1 Final Essay: 45%
• Participation: 10%

Lecture Hours: 12 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 15 hours)

Seminar Hours: 8 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 10 hours)