Social Foundations I

This course introduces the primary questions of philosophic, religious, political, social, and historical discourse. The texts raise the enduring questions of the relationships between the individual person, the environment, the community, the polity, and the divine. Special attention is paid to the development of analytic techniques and the language of critical discussion. Texts are chosen from among the major writers of antiquity and the Middle Ages such as Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Cicero, Seneca, St. Augustine, Einhard, and St. Thomas Aquinas and from historic texts such as the Koran and the Bible.

Social Foundations II

This course continues the examination of philosophic, religious, political, social, and historical ideas from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and the revolutions of the 18th century. This course studies the clash of ideas and values as the Renaissance and Reformation confront the medieval heritage, as science confronts religious cosmology, and as notions of liberty and equality confront traditional authority. Texts are chosen from among the major writers of the period such as Petrarch, Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Galileo, Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists.