Rachel Fulton
Department of History
The University of Chicago

Winter 2003

 

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION II


 

Books

 

Required

Mary Wollstonecroft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) [Penguin Books, 1993; ISBN: 0140433821]

Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819) [Penguin Books; ISBN 0-14-043658-8]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I&II (1808; 1832), ed. and trans. Stuart Atkins [Princeton, 1994; ISBN 0-691-03656-X]

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847) [Pathfinder Books, 1989; ISBN 0-87348-140-2]

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) [Hackett Publishers, 1978; ISBN: 0915144433]

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871) [Prometheus Books, 1998; ISBN 1573921769]

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1929), trans. James Strachey [Norton, 1961; ISBN 0-393-30158-3]

 

Recommended

Readings in Western Civilization 7: The Old Regime and the French Revolution, ed. Keith Michael Baker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)

Readings in Western Civilization 9: Twentieth Century Europe, ed. John W. Boyer and Jan Goldstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)

 

 


Course Requirements

1.       Careful study of the assigned readings.  As one of the main purposes of this course is to enable you to read different kinds of texts from different historical periods and to develop your confidence in approaching unfamiliar texts in the future, it is very important that you read each of the assigned selections as carefully as possible before coming to class each day.   As you read, keep in mind not only our larger questions about the nature and development of European civilization, but also what makes the particular text you are reading distinct.  It will help if you ask yourself the following questions: what does the author tell us about why he or she was writing?  Why was the author’s subject so important that he or she considered it worth writing about?  What does the author’s interest in the subject tell us about the historical circumstances in which he or she was writing? 

 

2.       Participation in class discussion and comments on the texts discussed (30% of your final grade).  To help you prepare for the discussions and to give me some indication of how you are reading, you will be required over the course of the quarter to type and turn in eight comments.  These comments should address questions that occurred to you in the course of your reading (e.g. about the problems you had understanding the text, about things that surprised you in the text, about issues or particulars about which you would like to know more having read the text), as well as answers to the general questions posed above concerning the author’s purpose and interest.  I will also at times suggest further questions specific to particular assignments depending on how our discussion is going.  These typed comments should be no more than one page each (single- or double-spaced) and will be due at the beginning of class on the day on which we discuss the assigned texts.

 

3.       Mid-term essay (30% of your final grade).  This piece (5-6 pages) will be due in class on February 11.  It will consist of a formal analysis of one of the texts that we will have read thus far in the quarter.

 

4.       Final exam (40% of your final grade).  This exam will cover the material that we have read throughout the course and will consist of a take-home essay of 8-10 pages.  I will post the questions on the last day of class (March 13), and your papers will be due in my office (HM-E 686) on March 20 by 5 pm.

 


Reading and Discussion Assignments

 

January 7  Introduction

 

January 9  Enlightenment

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “The Education of the Human Race” (1778) [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1778lessing-education.html]

Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kant-whatis.html]

Mario Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1793), trans. June Barraclough (New York: Noonday Press, 1955), pp. v-vi, 3-13, 124-34, 136-37, 140-42, 143-47, 162-65, 168-72, 173-75 [B1993.E772B3]

 

January 14  Revolution

Peasant Grievances, Reports of Popular Unrest, Decrees of the National Assembly, The “October Days” (1789) [RWC7, pp. 208-37]

“Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” (1789) [RWC7, pp. 237-39]

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) [RWC7, pp. 428-45]

 

January 16  Rights of (Wo)man

Mary Wollstonecroft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), pp. 79-174, 223-30, 257-69, 307-28 [HQ1596.W60 1975b; also Harper HQ1596.W61 1988]

 

January 21 Terror

“Make Terror the Order of the Day” (5 September 1793) [RWC7, pp. 342-53]

The Law of Suspects (17 September 1793) [RWC7, pp. 353-54]

Maximilien Robespierre, “Report on the Principles of Political Morality” [RWC 7, pp. 368-84]

The Festival of the Supreme Being (8 June 1794) [RWC7, pp. 384-91]

 

January 23  Egyptomania

Description de l'Égypte, ou, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l'empereur Napoléon le Grand, 9 vols. (1809-1828) [Special Collections f DT46.D44] [Meet in Special Collections]

 

January 28  Longing for the Past I

Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819), pp. TBA [PR5322 .W4 1995]

 

January 30  Longing for the Past II

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I&II (1808; 1832), ed. and trans. Stuart Atkins, pp. 1-23, 32-52, 60-68, 79-82, 88-92, 99-112, 114-19, 121-31, 154-61, 163-79, 216-53, 279-305 [PT1891.F83 v.2]

 

February 4  The Essence of Religion

Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799), trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 77-95 [BL48.S330 1988]

Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (1854) (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 1-32 [BL51.F426]

 

February 6  The Essence of History

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847)

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) [RWC8, pp. 242-66]

 

February 11  The Essence of Liberty

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), ed.Elizabeth Rapaport [Harper JC585.M60 1978]

 

February 13  The Essence of Man

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), chaps. 3, 4, 5, 19 and 21 (pp. 66-151, 576-606, 629-43) [QH365.D20 1981]

 

February 18  The Industry of Man I

Arnold Toynbee, “Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England” (1884) [http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/toynbee/indrev]

 

February 20  The Industry of Man II

Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin and Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism (1922), trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), ch. 2, #18; ch. 3, ##19-25; ch. 9, ##70-75; ch. 11, ##89-92; ch. 25, #120 (pp. 66-91, 220-27, 247-57, 331-36). [HX632.B9 1966]

 

February 25  The Civilization of Man

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1929), trans. James Strachey [BF1400.F88776]

 

February 27  When civilization fails…

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925) [RWC9, pp. 191-218]

Arthur Koestler, The God that Failed (1949) [RWC9, pp. 352-67]

Bruno Bettelheim, Deposition before the U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (July 1945) [RWC9, pp. 466-82]

 

March 4  A New Humanity

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949), trans. H. M. Parshley, pp. xv-xxxiv, 157-223 [HQ1206.B382 or HQ1208.B35213 1993 or HQ1208.B35213 1989]

 

March 6  A New Europe

Jean Monnet, “A Red Letter Day for European Unity” (1950) [RWC9, pp. 553-59]

Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing” (1959) [RWC9, pp. 560-83]

 

March 11  A New Church

Selected Constitutions and Declarations from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) [http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/v1.html]

 

March 13  The End…

Francis Fukyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest  16 (Summer, 1989), pp. 3-18 [E840.N34]

 

 

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