Assignments

Attendance and class participation is mandatory. Students will write two five-page papers and one ten-page. There will be a cumulative final exam at the end of the term. I will hand out instructions for these assignments later in the semester. Each assignment will be weighted as follows in the calculation of the final grade, although these calculations will also take into account improved performance during the course of the semester:

Requirements

• Please write a five-page paper in response to ONE of the topics below. The text should be double-spaced.
  
• Your paper must be computer-processed. Please give your paper a title, and write your name on the back of the last page. Do not write your name elsewhere on the paper. All pages should be numbered.
  
• Citations to texts read in this course should be made in parentheses in your paper. For example, if you refer to a passage on page 13 of Descartes' Discourse on Method, indicate this in the following manner at the end of your sentence, after the period: (Descartes, 13) Full citations to any work not assigned in class should be made in footnote or endnote form.
  

Topics

1) How did Descartes convince himself that his perceptions of his mind, his body, and the world external to his body were true? Why did this epistemology (this way of knowing) constitute an intellectual revolution in the seventeenth century?
2) Was the Roman Catholic Church hostile to science in the seventeenth century? Consider the evidence from the Galileo case AND the history of church meridian lines as told by J.L. Heilbron.
3) The year is 1610. Imagine you are one of the following: the Duke of Tuscany, a male or female courtier at the court of the Duke, the Pope, a literate Tuscan laborer who likes to browse local bookshops, an astrologer, or a wealthy Dutch Protestant merchant or his wife. You have just read a pamphlet entitled The Starry Messenger, by a mathematician at the University of Padua named Galileo Galilei in which the author reports remarkable observations about the heavens. Write a letter to an acquaintance or a family member in which you express your reaction to this pamphlet.

Requirements

• Please write a five-page paper in response to ONE of the topics below. The text should be double-spaced.
  
• Your paper must be computer-processed. Please give your paper a title, and write your name on the back of the last page. Do not write your name elsewhere on the paper. All pages should be numbered.
  
• Citations to texts read in this course should be made in parentheses in your paper. For example, if you refer to a passage on page 13 of Descartes' Discourse on Method, indicate this in the following manner at the end of your sentence, after the period: (Descartes, 13) Full citations to any work not assigned in class should be made in footnote or endnote form.
  

Topics

1) Follow in the footsteps of Fontenelle. Write a dialogue between the Philosopher and the Marquise in which the former explains some aspect of science in our times, such as chaos theory or artificial intelligence, to the latter. Keep in mind that your explanation must be made with the same sort of Cartesian clarity and simplicity employed by Fontenelle.

2) "Voltaire wrote his Letters Concerning the English Nation to criticise the French, not to praise the English." Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with this statement. Use specific evidence from the Letters to support your argument.

3) Descartes wrote that "the mind has no sex". By this he meant that the minds of women and men are equally capable of reasoning about themselves and the world they inhabit. How far had Europeans accepted this view by the beginning of the eighteenth century? Consider at least two of the following three examples in your response: Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Madame Tiquet, the fictional character of the Marquise in Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. (Reminder: Descartes did not argue that the bodies of women and men were equal.)

4) Analyze any of the articles from the Encyclop??die that you have read except "Asparagus". In what ways does this article follow the intellectual program laid out by d'Alembert in the Preliminary Discourse? (You may choose to include a discussion of a second article in your analysis, if it will help you develop your argument about the first article. Do not discuss more than two articles.)

Requirements

The third paper for this course is due at the twenty-first class. It must be typewritten or computer-processed, it must be double-spaced, and it must be at least ten pages in length. You must submit the paper in hard copy format. Write on one of the five topics below. You must submit a one-paragraph summary of your paper three weeks before the paper is due. The summary should indicate which of the options below you have chosen, and, when appropriate, specify the work you will read. I will comment on your summary and return it to you, but I will not grade it. Have fun with this final essay! I encourage you to explore themes in the class that interest you in a creative fashion.

Topics

1) Analyze a primary source from the 1600-1820 period. Possibilities include literature, plays, essays, paintings, sculpture, or architecture of the period. You may wish to visit the Burndy Library at the Dibner Institute, or the Houghton Library (rare book collection) or the Fogg Museum at Harvard to get some ideas. Do not hesitate to ask me for recommendations if you wish to work on a primary source but do not have a specific one in mind. Discuss the content and style of the work, and place it within the context of themes we have discussed this semester.

2) Read a secondary monograph on a topic of interest that you would like to explore in greater depth. For example, you may wish to read more about the life of a writer, artist, or political figure from the period. Or you may want to learn more about natural philosophy or political thought during the Age of Reason. Once you have read the monograph, write a paper in which you summarize the work's argument in not more then three or four pages, then place it within the context of the themes we have discussed this semester. DO NOT WRITE A BOOK REPORT! To locate a secondary work, consult the selected bibliography in Jacob (225-7), or ask me for suggestions.

3) Eighteenth-century Europeans used the genre of travel literature to imagine a more humane society with a more just political system. Compare and contrast the critique of eighteenth-century Europe found in two or three of the following examples from our class readings: Voltaire's England, Montague's Turkey, Cr??vecoeur's North America, or Diderot's Tahiti.

4) How revolutionary was the Encyclopedia edited by Diderot and d'Alembert? Summarize its content, and then describe the extent to which it might have provoked the revolutionary upheavals at the end of the eighteenth century. (Hint: you may wish to consider the work's circulation in print.)

5) What were the political and moral arguments made by Europeans and others against slavery after 1750? Why did no European nation abolish slavery or the slave trade before 1800? Consider the evidence from the Encyclopedia, The Letters from an American Farmer, and from Equiano's autobiography.