This course is currently booked to capacity.
The Enlightenment and Its Discontents
April 16 – May 7, 2022
$350/person
The Enlightenment (1680-1815) argued that humans are rational creatures, capable of reforming all existing habits and institutions, of looking beyond narrow self-interest to embrace commonwealth ideals. The Enlightenment had a powerful belief in science. Some Enlightenment thinkers, like Condorcet in France and Thomas Jefferson in America, believed that we could create something like rational utopia on earth, in which mild-mannered citizens worked in concert to create a just and equal society that pursued enlightened happiness.
Others, including Jonathan Swift and Voltaire in Europe, and John Adams in America, believed that all utopian dreams must shatter on the bedrock of human nature—fallen or problematic, depending on your religious outlook. Swift said that man is capax rationis (capable of rationality) but unlikely to achieve it on any given day.
After appreciating the principles and the achievement of the Enlightenment, we will first read Gulliver's Travels, one of the most delightful and yet savagely satirical books ever written. Most people know only book one (the diminutive Lilliputians) and possibly book two (the gigantic Brobdingnagians), but not the more intensely disillusioned books three (the utopian scientific colony) or four (exposing humankind as a species of vicious excremental primates).
Then we will read Voltaire's famous response to the Enlightenment's idea that we "live in the best of all possible worlds."
Throughout we will contrast the critique of the Enlightenment (as represented by Candide and Gulliver's Travels) with Yuval Harari's airy optimism about the human project as we move deeper into the twenty-first century.
All of this reflects, of course, on the current crisis: whether today’s humans are capable of pursuing a scientifically based enlightenment that would enable us to rationally address fundamental social and environmental problems, choosing to do the enlightened thing before the planet chokes to death or the Bastille gets sacked.
Class sessions will be held via Zoom on Saturday mornings for four weeks, April 16 – May 7, 2022 (time TBD). Zoom office hours Wednesday evenings.
Note: If you are age 35 or younger, have an interest in participating, and are experiencing economic difficulties preventing your ability to pay the course fee, please contact us at dakotaskyeducation@gmail.com for information on scholarship opportunities.
