Jonathan Elukin, Associate Professor Department of History, Trinity College

Introduction:

For most of human civilization, people thought the world was filled with the spirits of gods that directly affected their lives. This “enchantment” took the form of beliefs in magic, angels, demons, and miracles. Such a conception of an enchanted world thrived in the Christian society of pre modern Europe as well and continues to characterize many societies or sub cultures throughout the contemporary world. The process of secularization–that is, the shift away from thinking of the world as enchanted–should be studied systematically. Moreover, the impact of the process of secularization needs careful study as well. The disenchantment of the world affected many aspects of European society in the early modern period, including attitudes towards tolerance, nature, human identity, authority and government. In many ways, our contemporary debates about the nature of secular societies grow out of these medieval and early modern ideas about the enchantment or disenchantment of the world.

Week 1: Ideas of Secularization

• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007)
• Gabriel Vahanian, Praise of the Secular (University of Virginia Press, 2008)
• Robert Coles, Secular Mind (Princeton University Press, 2001)
• Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Wiley-Blackwell 2002)
• Owen Chadwick, Secularization of the European mind in the 19th century (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

The introduction to the course will survey attempts to understand what secularization means. Does it happen to different societies at different times? Is there one definition of secularization? Is it purely a post-Enlightenment European phenomenon? Are there secular or religious ways of thinking? Can we really divide society into sacred and secular?

Week 2: Christianity and the Miraculous

• Augustine, Confessions and City of God
• Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (Yale University Press, 1999).
• Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Penguin, 2006)
• Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press, 1994)

Week 3: Supernatural Beliefs in Medieval Europe

• Cuming and Baker eds., Popular Belief and Practice: Papers Read at the Ninth Summer Meeting and the Tenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Studies in Church History) (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
• John Arnold, Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (Hodder Arnold, 2005)
• Michael Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present (Critical Issues in History) (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006)
• John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as a Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986)
• C.S. Watkins, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge 2008)

Week 4: Miracles and Skepticism in the Middle Ages

• Susan Reynolds, “Social Mentalities and the Case of Medieval Skepticism” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Ser. 6, 1 (1991), 21-41
• John Edwards, “Religious Faith and Doubt in Late Medieval Spain:
• Soria, circa 1450-1500″ Past and Present no. 120 (August 1988), 3-25
• Stephen Justice, “Did the Middle Ages Believe in Their Miracles?” Representations 103 (2008) 1 -29
• Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 10001215 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987)
• Michael Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West (Ashgate, 2007)
• Gabrielle de Nie, Word, Image and Experience: Dynamics of Miracle and Self-Perception in Sixth-Century Gaul (Ashgate, 2003)
• Deirdre Jackson, Marvellous to Behold, Miracles in Illuminated Manuscripts (British Library, 2007)

This part of the course will survey the nature of religious belief in the ancient and medieval worlds. It is crucial here to note that the readings will introduce the problem of the extent and nature of belief in the miraculous in these societies. In other words, we will study the complicated reality of religious belief and challenge the idea of a uniformly religious medieval or pre-modern world. Secularization happened to societies that had been grappling with different levels and kinds of religious belief for centuries. The vocabulary of skepticism and un-belief had its origins in religious societies.

Week 5: Sacred and Secular in the Early Modern World

• Lawrence Besserman, Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: New Essays (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
• Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (Oxford University Press, 1997)
• Hill, English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (Penguin 1995)
• Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Harvard University Press, 1985)
• John Somerville, Secularization of early modern England: from religious culture to religious faith (Oxford University Press, 1992)
• Alan Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 1650-1729: The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief (Princeton University Press, 1990)

Week 6: Science and Secularism

• Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
• Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700 (Princeton University Press, 2001)
• Lorraine Daston, Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books, 2001)

This section of the course will study the development of secular thinking in the early modern period, with a particular focus on the evolution of critical attitudes towards the biblical text and the appearance of scientific modes of thought. In both cases, however, we will try to see these developments as arising out of a religious context rather than appearing as an alternative to religious mentalities.

Week 7: Secularism and Tolerance

• Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton University Press, 2005)
• Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005)

Week 8: Tolerance in the Medieval World

• Cary Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration (Penn State Press, 2000)
• Cary Nederman, Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment (Penn State Press, 1997)
• Gervers and Powell, Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades (Syracuse University Press, 2001)
• Laursen and Nederman, eds., Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996)
• Sophia Menocal, Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Back Bay Books 2003)
• Stroumsa and Stanton, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in early Judaism and Christianity Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Week 9: Tolerance in Early Modern Europe

• Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Harvard University Press, 2007)
• Stuart Schwartz, All
  Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2008)
• Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
• Hans Bödeker, Clorinda Donato, and Peter Hanns Reill, eds., Discourses of Tolerance and Intolerance in the Enlightenment (University of Toronto Press, Center/Clark Series, 2009)
• Alan Levine, ed., Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration (Lexington Books, 1999)
• B. J. Skopol, Shakespeare and Tolerance (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Secularization is often thought to have created the possibility of a new kind of tolerance. Human beings were no longer trapped in the religious mind-set of absolute truth that promoted or facilitated persecution of one faith by another. Recent scholarship on the nature of medieval and early modern religious relations has challenged that narrative. This section of the course will attempt to assess this new historiographical challenge to the narrative of secularization and tolerance.

Week 10: Whither Secularism?

• Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• Graham, The Re-enchantment of the World: Art versus Religion (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Ziolkowski, Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief (University of Chicago, 2007)

Week 11: Science Fiction or The Survival of Religion in Secular Forms

• Benjamin Plotinsky, “How Science Fiction Found Religion,” City Journal 19:1 (2009)
• Kraemer, et.al. The Religions of Star Trek (Basic Books, 2008)
• Readings of selected science fiction novels, including Frank Herbert, Dune
• Screening of selected science fiction films, including The Matrix.

Week 12: Return of Religion

• G. Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World (Penn State Press, 1994)
• Stephen Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Stephen Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford University Press, 2006)
• Mark Taylor, After God (University of Chicago Press, 2009)

Week 13: Conclusion

The final weeks of the seminar will study the resurgence of religion in the modern world and the creation of alternative modes of enchantment. Is religion or religious mentalities being preserved in art or science fiction? Can true secularism survive? How will new religious cultures in the developing world and in some western societies interact with modern secular ideology?

by Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of  History, Trinity College

Course Syllabus

The purpose of this course is to use the modern Jewish experience in order to introduce students to the complexities and challenges of understanding and defining the development of modern nationalism. The course will consist of two major parts. The first part will examine theories of nationalism and then survey the rise of modern nationalist ideologies in Europe. The second part will take up the Jews as a “case study”. In what ways does the development of modern Jewish nationalism conform to various topographies of nationalist ideology? How was modern Jewish Nationalism influenced by non-Jewish models and doctrines? By the same token, in what ways was the Jewish experience “sui generis” or unique? How can a case study of modern Jewish nationalism clarify wider aspects of nationalism as a political issue?

The course assumes that in studying the development of Modern Jewish Nationalism, and especially Zionism, the student will come to understand the complexities and apparent paradoxes that mark the rise of modern national identities. On the one hand Zionism strove to make the Jews a “normal” people, yet on the other hand modern Zionism drew much of its inspiration from the traditional conviction that Jews were a “special” people and that their modern liberation movement had to create a model state and not just, to quote Ahad Ha’am, a “kind of Jewish Latvia” (i.e., just another tiny ethnic nation state. We apologize in advance to any Latvians). In many ways Zionism was a strikingly modern movement that borrowed freely from the national awakenings of neighboring peoples and that offered new models of leadership and new modes of mobilization and propaganda. But on the other hand, Zionism also was inextricably linked to an ancient religious tradition, to the Bible and to powerful national memories and myths. While other national movements also appropriated and invented convenient “usable pasts” and fashioned stirring “imagined communities”, it was modern Jewish nationalism more than any other that had to renegotiate and redefine the complex interplay of religious and ethnic identities and motifs.

Students will begin by surveying some of the recent scholarship on Nationalism and then discuss some of the major issues that have preoccupied scholars. Is nationalism a largely modern phenomenon, an invented instrument that uses modern forms of communication to create “imagined communities”, mobilize backward masses, facilitate industrial development and bolster the power of self anointed elites? Or must one modify this linkage of nationalism and modernity in order to admit such decidedly pre-modern antecedents and models as the Bible, the Reformation and atavistic ethnic bonds? The first part of the course will also examine and redefine the common distinction between “ethnic” or “civic” nationalism. It will consider the complex role of religion in modern nationalism, as well as the reasons why some nationalisms proved to be more aggressive and exclusive than others. Studies will then study the complex interplay of ideology and nationalism as they consider critiques from the Left and from the Right.

Part One: Defining a Nation

Week One

• Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, (Cornell University Press, 2009) Chapter One, pp. 1-8
• Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” excerpts in Omar Dahbour and Micheline Ishay eds. The Nationalism Reader (Humanity Books, 1995), pp. 143-156
• Walker Connor, “A nation is a Nation, is a State is an Ethnic Group” in Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism, pp..89-118

Week Two

• Anthony Smith, The Nation in History (Brandeis, 2000), entire(79 pp.) Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997) , pp.1-5, 14-34
• Miroslav Hroch, “Why did they win? Preconditions for successful national agitation”,
  • http://www.flwi.ugent.be/btng-rbhc/archive/2004-04/pp 645-655.html

Part Two: The ideological context of modern European Nationalism

Week Three

• From Omar Dahbour and Micheline Ishay eds. The Nationalism Reader:
  • Rousseau “On the Government of Poland” excerpt pp. 30-35
  • Kant Metaphysics of Morals pp. 38- 48
  • Fichte Address to the German nation pp, 62-71
  • Acton Nationality pp. 108-119
  • Mazzini Duties of Man 87-98
  • Herder Reflections on a Philosophy of History of Mankind 48-60

Week Four

Defining European nationalism from the Left

• Voltaire, “Jews” in Paul Mendes Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz eds. The Jew in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 304-305
• Marx ” On the Jewish Question” Excerpts from Paul Mendes Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz eds. The Jew in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 324-327
• Lenin “Right of Nations to National Self Determination” (excerpts) Omar Dahbour and Micheline Ishay eds. The Nationalism Reader, pp. 208-216
• Otto Bauer “The Nationality Question and Social Democracy” in Omar Dahbour and Micheline Ishay eds. The Nationalism Reader, pp. 183-192

Week Five

Defining European nationalism from the Right

• Hitler Mein Kampf excerpts in Paul Mendes Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz eds. The Jew in the Modern World,, pp. 637-640
• Mussolini “Fascism”, Omar Dahbour and Micheline Ishay eds. The Nationalism Reader , pp. 222-230
• Charles Maurras “The Future of French Nationalism” in Omar Dahbour and Micheline Ishay eds. The Nationalism Reader, pp. 216-222

Part Three Modern Jewish National: How Secular? How Modern?

In this section of the course we will chart the development of modern Jewish nationalism through a study of the interplay of Jewish and non-Jewish history in Modern Europe. We will begin with a special consideration of Pinsker and Herzl and survey the impact of growing disappointment in the prospects of long term integration of the Jews into European society. Our study will return to the theoretical suggestions of Miroslav Hroch as we examine the role of writers and historians in the growth of modern Jewish nationalism. We will then consider various tensions within Zionism and the various attempts to create socialist, religious and integral nationalist versions of the movement.

Week Six

The Rise of Modern Jewish Nationalism: some general issues

1. Hedva Ben Israel ” Zionism and European Nationalisms: some comparative aspects” in Israel Studies 8.1 (2003) 91-104
2. Aviel Roshwald “Jewish Identity and the paradox of Nationalism” in Michael Berkowitz Ed. Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of Jews in 1900 and Beyond(Brill, 2004) pp. 11-25
3. Mitchell Cohen, “A Preface to the Study of Jewish Nationalism” in Jewish Social Studies, The New Series, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 73-93

Week Seven

The role of the historian Heinrich Graetz:

• “Judaism can be understood only through its History” in Michael Meyer ed. Ideas of Jewish History(Wayne State, 1987) pp. 217-247
• Simon Dubnow “Letters on the Old and the new Judaism”, Letters One, Two, Three and Four in Koppel Pinson ed. Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History (Jewish Publication Society, 1958), pp. 76-142

Week Eight

The role of the writer

• Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg eds. A Treasury of Yiddish Stories(Penguin, 1990)
  • Yitzhak Leybush Peretz
    • “Bontshe the Silent”;
    • “Devotion Without End”;
    • “Roads that l
      ead away from Jewishness”;
  • Mendele Moykher Sforim,
    • “The Calf”;
  • Sholem Aleichem,
    • “Dreyfus in Kasrilevke”,
    • “Hodl”
  • Y.L.Gordon
    • “Awake my People”,
    • “For Whom Do I toil”;
• H.N. Bialik, “City of Slaughter” in Paul Mendes Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz eds. The Jew in the Modern World , pp. 384-386, 410-412

Week Nine

Rediscovering Language

• Benjamin Harshav, Language in a Time of Revolution (Stanford, 1999), entire

Week Ten

The Zionist Project

• Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea(Harper and Row, 1959),
  • Introduction, pp. 15-100
  • Pinsker Autoemancipation pp. 181-198
  • Herzl The Jewish State pp. 204-222
  • Ahad Ha’am “Flesh and Spirit” pp. 256-261

Week Eleven

Labor Zionism

• Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea
  • Ber Borochov, “Our Platform” pp. 360-368
  • Aaron Dovid Gordon, “People and Labor” pp. 372-375
  • David ben Gurion, “The Imperatives of the Jewish Revolution” pp. 606-620
  • Joseph Hayim Brener, “Self Criticism” pp. 307-314
• Hayim Hazaz, “The Sermon” in Robert Alter ed. Modern Hebrew Literature(Behrman, 1975), pp. 267-291

Week Twelve

Religious and Revisionist Zionism

• Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea
  • Rabbi Samuel Mohilever, “Message to the First Zionist Congress”, Hertzberg pp. 398-401
  • Rabbi Yehile Michael Pines, “Jewish nationalism can not be Secular”, Hertzberg pp. 411416
  • Abraham Isaac Kook, “Lights for rebirth”, Hertzberg, pp. 427-432
  • Zeev Jabotinsky Testimony before the Peel Commission pp. 559-572

Week Thirteen

Diaspora nationalism: the case of the Bund Film:

• Image Before My Eyes Excerpt from Bronislav Grosser’s “From Pole to Jew” in Lucy Dawidowicz ed. The Golden Tradition (Syracuse, 1996), pp. 435-441
• Bund Decisions on the Nationality Question, 1899-1910 in The Jew in the Modern World pp. 419-423

Week Fourteen

America: a New Zion?

• Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea
  • The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 p468
  • Louis Brandeis “Zionism is consistent with American patriotism” pp. 496-497
  • Mordecai Kaplan, “The Reconstruction of Judaism” pp. 499-502

The Jew in the Modern World

• Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea
  • Horace Mayer Kallen “Jewish Life is National and Secular” pp. 526-528
  • Mordecai Kaplan, “The Future of the American Jew” pp. 534-542
  • Solomon Schaechter. “Zionism: A Statement” , pp. 502-504

by Suzanne Obdrzalek, Philosophy Department, Claremont McKenna College

Required Texts:

• Cooper, ed.–Plato: Complete Works

Course Description:

Plato is considered the first philosopher in the Western tradition to propose significant theories in ethics, moral psychology and political philosophy. This course will focus on a close reading of Platonic dialogues such as the Protagoras, the Republic and the Statesman. We will examine Plato’s views on virtue and vice, psychological conflict, our moral obligations to others, and the political role of the philosopher. We will assess Plato’s views for their philosophical merit, as well as discuss their influence on subsequent philosophers.

Schedule of Readings and Assignments:

Week One: Introduction (no assigned reading)

Week Two

1. Euthyphro
2. Vlastos, “Socratic Piety”

Week Three

1. Gorgias
2. Vlastos, “Does Socrates Cheat?”

Week Four

1. Protagoras
2. Penner, “The Unity of Virtue,”
3. Santas, “Plato’s Protagoras and Explanations of Weakness”

Week Five

1. Irwin, “Recollection and Plato’s Moral Theory”

Week Six

1. Vlastos, “The Individual as Object of Love in Plato,”
2. Nussbaum, “The Speech of Alcibiades: a Reading of the Symposium”

Week Seven

1. Phaedrus
2. Nussbaum, “‘This Story Isn’t True’: Madness, Reason and Recantation in the Phaedrus,”
3. Ferrari, “Platonic Love”

Week Eight

1. Republic, Books I&II
2. White, “The Classification of Goods in Plato’s Republic,”
3. Kirwin “Glaucon’s Challenge”

Week Nine

1. Republic, Books II-IV

Week Ten

1. Cooper, “Plato’s Theory of Human Motivation”

Week Eleven

1. Sachs, “A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic,”
2. Kraut, “The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic”

Week Twelve

1. Republic, Books V-VII
2. Santas, Goodness and Justice: Plato, Aristotle and the Moderns, chs. 3-5

Week Thirteen

1. Republic, Books VIII-X
2. Williams, “The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato’s Republic,”
3. Lear, “Inside and Outside the Republic”

Week Fourteen

1. Statesman
2. Dorter, “Justice and Method in the Statesman”

Week Fifteen

1. Laws, selections
2. Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, ch. 2

by Todd Ryan, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Trinity College

Course Description

In the minds of most contemporary proponents of Liberalism, one of the most attractive and far-reaching achievements of the Early Modern period, is the is the articulation and defense of the value of civil toleration. Throughout the 17th- and 18th Centuries a number of disparate argumentative strategies were developed to defend what has come to be seen as one of the signature components of Western liberal democracy. Some based their rejection of religious intolerance on largely pragmatic considerations of the welfare of the state. Others offered a more principled defense of toleration, often on the grounds of the inviolable rights of persons. In this course will examine another strategy for defending religious toleration, namely an appeal to moral and religious skepticism. Among our central concerns will be to answer the question, what, if any, is the conceptual connection between philosophical skepticism and religious toleration?

Historically, there has been a close association between proponents of some form of philosophical skepticism and advocacy of religious toleration. And indeed there are obvious affinities between the two. To the extent that religious intolerance is predicated on a firm conviction that one possesses the truth about theological matters, the skeptical attack on dogmatism may prove a welcome ally. As Montaigne observes “It is putting a very high value on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them (“On Cripples”). So, psychologically, the rejection of dogmatism may indeed be conducive to acceptance of religious difference. Yet, at first glance, skepticism seems particularly ill-suited to the task of mounting a robust philosophical defense of skepticism. For if one holds with the Academic skeptics that the only thing that can be known is that we know nothing, or with the Pyrrhonian skeptics, that even that is unknowable, it is difficult to see how one is any position to argue for the positive value of toleration. How can a denial of the possibility of genuine moral knowledge lead to the positing of toleration as an indispensable political value? Moreover, few people today are prepared to accept the radical skepticism of a Pyrrho or a Carneades; such wholesale rejection of the very possibility of knowledge might strike many as a rather desperate measure in the struggle against intolerance.

Further, from an historical point of view, ancient Greek skeptics professed to be social conservatives: the reasoning being that if we cannot know whether a certain thing is really good or just, then we have no reason to militate for political change. To the extent that the goal of ancient skepticism is ataraxia, or tranquility of mind, the best and most prudent course is simply to follow the prevailing mores of one’s own society. In the Early Modern period this tendency of radical skepticism to issue in social conservatism is displayed in the move by some of the most radical skeptical figures (Montaigne, Bayle) to ally skepticism with a fideistic conception of religious faith. Although both are in some sense proponents of religious toleration, it is not clear to what extent blind acceptance of religious dogma provides a firm ground for rejecting intolerance of dissent. For, as Edwin Curley has pointed out, if the best we can do in the face of a radical inability to attain to truth is to humbly submit to the teachings of the church, and the church itself has made intolerance of heretics a fundamental dogma, then a right-minded skeptic would do best to follow a course of intolerance.

The course will be structured as follows. We shall begin with a brief examination of Greek skepticism as articulated in Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Skepticism. This will provide students with the historical and philosophical background required to assess the skepticism of modern thinkers. Next, we will turn to Montaigne’s Essays, especially the Apology for Raymond Sebond. As I have indicated above, Montaigne’s dual reputation as a fideist and an early proponent of religious toleration pose the question of the relation between skepticism and toleration in a particularly acute form. Background for this section of the course will be provided by Richard Popkin’s excellent discussion of the influence of skeptical thought (and specifically the rediscovery of Sextus’ text) on Protestant and Catholics alike during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

Then, after a brief examination of Descartes and Spinoza, we will turn to the two most prominent defenses of religious toleration, Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration and Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary. Of particular interest here will be two relevant contrasts: first, the contrast between the relatively modest skepticism of Locke, as articulated in the Essay, with the far more radical and corrosive skeptical attacks on reason and religion to be found in Bayle. With respect to the latter, we shall look not only at the well-known attack on the rationality of Christian religion in the article Pyrrho, but also at Bayle’s efforts to dissociate individual morality from religious belief through his notorious “paradoxes” (e.g. the upright atheist, the untenability of a society of true Christians, the irrelevance of abstract religious beliefs in determining behavior, etc ). The second contrast between Bayle and Locke concerns their very different defenses of toleration itself. Whereas Locke effectively treats the separation of church and state as an axiom from which religious toleration immediately follows, Bayle argues at length for the impropriety of state interference in the private beliefs of individuals. Yet what is most revealing is that Bayle’s grounds for establishing tolerance as a moral and religious value are far removed from the skepticism of the Historical and Critical Dictionary. On the contrary Bayle appeals to the rights of individual conscience as the sacred and inviolable point of contact between God and the believer. This again raises the viability of a skeptical defense of toleration in an especially acute form.

Texts

All of the primary texts for the course are now readily available in modern translations. This includes both Bayle’s Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet translated by Robert C. Bartlett (SUNY, 2000) and the Philosophical Commentary, edited by John Kilcullen (Liberty Fund, 2005). However, the unavailability of modern translations of several works has precluded their inclusion in the syllabus. Central among these are Sanchez, Quod Nihil Scitur; Pierre Jurieu, Des droits des deux souverains en matière de religion; and Pierre Jurieu, Le Philosophe de Roterdam accusé, atteint et convaincu.

Among the secondary literature I have found several texts to be especially useful. Perhaps the best philosophical discussion of ancient skepticism is Barnes and Annas, The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (Cambridge, 1985). Despite its execrable production values, Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration, edited by Alan Levine (Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999) contains useful articles on many of the central figures of the Early Modern period. Also useful, although somewhat broader in scope, is the collection of essays in Justifying Toleration, edited by Susan Mendus (Cambridge, 1988). Considerations The development of a course on skepticism and toleration raises a number of issues, two of which have been foremost in my mind. The first concerns the nature of the course as whole. Much of the course is given to the examination
of the historical alliance between skepticism and toleration in the Early Modern period. Needless to say each of these defenses of toleration arose in a specific historical context as a reaction to the prevailing political and social circumstances in which they were written. Often their aim was as much the establishment of concrete political change as the expression of abstract philosophical principle. Obviously, a proper understanding of the texts cannot safely ignore these historical contexts. Further, one of the main contentions of the course is that the purported conceptual connections between these two movements prove, upon examination, to be much more tenuous than has been commonly supposed. But this raises the question as to the extent to which such a course is a course in Philosophy at all (as opposed to, say, what used to be called history of ideas). This concern is neatly illustrated by Popkin’s enormously influential History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Bayle, which contains a first-rate analysis of the historico-political context in which skepticism was rediscovered, but comparatively little by way of philosophical analysis of those skeptical ideas themselves.

The second issue is a pedagogical one. Given the pervasiveness of our contemporary commitment to toleration, there is a serious threat that students will fail to engage the chosen texts critically. This, of course, is a familiar problem to those who attempt to teach the intellectual origins of a revolution that has achieved such overwhelming success that its once radical ideas have become the received wisdom. In these circumstances it is imperative that the instructor find a method of making as plausible as possible the intellectual case against toleration. This task, I fear, is complicated by the specifically religious nature of the debate. My own experience suggests that today’s philosophy undergraduates have relatively little sympathy for the religious dogmatism of an Augustine or Jurieu. Those who are not openly hostile to religion are mostly indifferent to it. How then can we offer a compelling case on both sides of the issue?

Required Texts

1. Sextus Empiricus, Selections from the Major Writings on Scepticism, Man, and God
2. Montaigne, Essays
3. René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations
4. Pierre Bayle,
   1. Historical and Critical Dictionary
   2. Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Comet
   3. Philosophical Commentary
5. John Locke
   1. , An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
   2. A Letter Concerning Toleration
6. Michael Walzer, On Toleration

Schedule

Ancient Greek Skepticism (Weeks 1-3)

1. Sextus Empiricus,
2. Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Rediscovery of Skepticism

Week 4

1. Popkin, History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Bayle, Ch. 2
2. Montaigne, Essays (Apology for Raymond Sebond)

Week 5

1. Montaigne, Essays (On Cannibals, On Coaches, On the Liberty of Conscience)

Week 6

1. Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations

Skepticism and Toleration

Week 7

1. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Chs. 19 and 20

Week 8

1. Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (Pyrrho, Simonides, Zeno of Elea)

Week 9

1. Bayle, Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Comet

Week 10

1. Bayle, Philosophical Commentary

Weeks 11-12

1. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
2. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Toleration: A Contemporary Perspective

Week 13

1. Walzer, On Toleration

by Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA

The rejection of religion…is, in fact, almost as old as human thought itself. -James Thrower

The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice. -Emma Goldman

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest. -Emile Zola

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The world seems more religious than ever these days. But in the midst of all this holiness and piety, there are dissenting voices: people who reject religious doctrines and deny a faith in God. And there have always been such voices, going back to the earliest Greek and Indian philosophers. This course will examine major critiques of religion and theism as posited by significant doubters and skeptics — from classical thinkers all the way up to the contemporary work of atheists such as Richard Dawkins. We will explore the following questions: why critique religion? What motivates skeptics, secularists and those who reject religion? What are the strongest arguments posited against theism? The weakest? What are the sociological characteristics of secular people? Why is secularity relevant to today’s socio-political-religious situation? How is religious faith – or rather, its absence – linked to larger social and cultural developments?

REQUIRED READING:

1. Euthyphro, by Plato (will be handed out in class)
2. The Future of an Illusion, by Sigmund Freud
3. Why I am not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell
4. The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
5. The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
6. God is not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
7. Infidel, by Ayann Hirsi Ali

COURSE OUTLINE:

Week 1 Introduction to class

Week 2 Definition of Terms; Skepticism and Doubt in Antiquity

Week 3 Skepticism and Doubt in Antiquity, continued

1. Freud, first half

Week 4-6 Critiques of Theism and Religion

1. Freud, second half
2. Russell

Week 7 Secularization

1. Harris, first half

Week 8 Atheism, Secularism, and Societal Health

1. Harris, second half

Week 9-10 Non-believers: a sociological and psychological portrait

1. Dawkins

Week 11-1 The Bible Under Skeptical Scrutiny

1. Hitchens
2. Ali, first half

Week 14 Personal Journeys from Faith to Reason

1. Ali, second half