RELG 225 - Religion, Power, and Knowledge I: the Early Modern West

Semester Offered: First Semester
Full Course
Credits: 4 credits
Attribute: 4HU

This course analyzes the development of Western religious thought from the end of the Thirty Years War to the mid-19th century. It explores the ways religious thinking reimagines God, scripture, political sovereignty, and the nature of religious experience in conversation with an emerging scientific worldview. Attention will be paid to the ways these intellectual developments put in play a set of definitions and distinctions that are internal to, and historically entangled with, colonialism, rights-discourse, and the rise of nation-states. Some of the thinkers to be studied include Vico, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Lessing, Montesquieu, and Schleiermacher.

Enrollment Limit: 25
Instructor: D. Schultz