Early Modern Thought

Early Modern Thought

JPI 961
3 Credits

This course will seek to assess ‘the meaning of modernity’ by examining its founding ontological commitments; by considering how these commitments are operative in modern conceptions of nature and scientific knowledge, politics and the state, and freedom and anthropology; and by evaluating their theological significance, especially in light of developments at the Second Vatican Council and in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI regarding the meaning of the human person. The course will center largely on primary sources which may include Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Vico, and Newton.

Selected Texts

Faculty

Michael Hanby portrait

Michael Hanby

Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science

Dr. Hanby is author of No God, No Science?: Theology, Cosmology, Biology (Wiley-Blackwell 2013) which reassesses the relationship between the doctrine of creation, Darwinian evolutionary biology, and science more generally. He is also author of Augustine and Modernity (Routledge 2003).

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