TRN199H: Classical Social & Political Thought
TRN199H: Classical Social and Political Thought from the 18th Century Enlightenment to the 20th Century
Course Description
This seminar explores some of the most influential debates in social and political thought from the Enlightenment to the early twentieth century, framed as a series of critical encounters with modernity. Modernity shattered inherited sources of authority — divine law, custom, tradition — and set its sights on the future: progress, reason, and emancipation. But this forward movement also brought upheaval. Revolution, industrialization, and mass society disrupted traditional forms of belonging, giving rise to new patterns of alienation, conflict, and inequality. This tension — between the promises of modernity and the crises it unleashed — led to what some nineteenth-century thinkers called the social question: how can society hold together once its old foundations have been dissolved? We examine how modern thinkers responded to this fractured world — some sought to restore lost sources of meaning, others to reconstruct society on new foundations, and still others to push modernity to its radical conclusion. This course invites students to explore these competing visions at the advent of modernity, a moment whose unresolved tensions still structure our social and political world.
Course Instructor
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David Carvounas Lecturer on the history of political thought at the University of Toronto and Glendon College. Interests include the history of political thought, theories of democracy, political ethics, modernity and temporality, globalism and the rise of post-globalist politics. |
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