Cornell University Fall 2010

Department of History S. L. Kaplan

History 477 : POLITICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Week 1 : The Project : Genesis, Ambitions, Methods

D. Outram, The Enlightenment, Cambridge U.P., ISBN 0521425344

[Read for background/context to ghet launched]

Week 2 : Towards a Critical Anthropology of Politics : The Unmasking of Absolutism in State and Church

Montesquieu, The Persian Letters, Viking Penguin, ISBN 0140442812 (or

0521369118)

Week 3 : The Laws of Behavior and the Behavior of the Laws

Montesquieu, Of the Spriti of the Laws, Hafner Press, ISBN 0028492706

[relevant « books » and pages to be indicated]

Week 4 : Ambiguous Anglomania ? An Eighteenth-Century Political Apprenticeship

Voltaire, The English Letters, Penuin, ISBN 0-14-044-36x

Week 5 : On the Political Menu : Enlightened Absolutism, Liberalism, Individualism, Republicanism, Pragmatism, Opportunism

Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-044257-x

Week 6 : Are Optimism and Pessimism the Left and the Right of Eighteenth-Century Politics ?

Voltaire, Candide, Bedford.St, Martin’s, ISBN 0312218168

Week 7 : From the State of Nature to the State and nature of Society

Rousseau, The Discourses from The Social Contract and the Discourses (ed. G. D. H. Cole), Everyman’s Library/Tuttle, ISBN 0460873571

Week 8 : Politics : From Theory to Practice, or Utopian Reverie

Rousseau, The Social Contract from the Cole edition just above (week 7).

Week 9 : Crafting a Man

Rousseau, The Emile

[If this is not available in papaberback, we will do week 10 in its place, continue the syllabus in the unfolding chronological order, and add as a final week at the end the week marked Alternative Week below]

Week 10 : A Woman’s Worldview

Françoise de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman, Penguin, ISBN 0-87352778-x.

Week 11 : From Emancipation to Re-Enslavement : The Problems of Capitalism

Diderot, Political Writings, Texts in the History of Political Thought, Cambridge U. P., ISBN 0-521-36911-8

Week 12 : Macro-Politics : The Problem of Existence

Diderot : Jacques the Fatalist, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford U.P., ISBN 0-19-283874-1

Week 13 : The Political Consequences of Moral Corruption

Diderot : The Nun, Oxford, ISBN, 0192804308

Alternative Week (if necessary)  : The Diffusion of Subversive Ideas

Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Bestsellers, Norton, ISBN 0393314421