FREN 6540

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  • Schedule of Classes - January 31, 2019 7:14PM EST
  • Course Catalog - January 31, 2019 7:15PM EST

FREN 6540
Montaigne and Skepticism

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2018-2019.

How does philosophy respond to widespread and continuous disaster? The Wars of Religion in France and throughout Europe offer the context of continual violence, trauma, and social upheaval, and the Essais of Michel de Montaigne respond to this context by elaborating a new form of skepticism, based on classical models, which creates a space for more humane ethics (including some of the earliest discussions of religious and racial tolerance) and for freedom of thought (a relatively new concept in the Western World), by means of radical questioning of the functioning of political, religious, and intellectual authority. What Montaigne offers is both a practical and intellectual model for coping with extreme and omnipresent violence and social conflict, a model that presents difference as a necessary condition of physical and psychic survival.

When Offered Fall.

Comments Co-meets with FREN 4540.

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Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session.  Combined with: FREN 4540

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • 16189 FREN 6540   SEM 101

  •  

  • Prerequisites: FREN 2310, or CASE Q++, or permission of instructor.