Seminar 1 (Week 0/ Induction Week)

MAEL700

Seminar 1 (week 0/ Induction Week)

Thursday, 24th September 2015

‘What is modernity?’

Session aims

This session aims to introduce you to important critical and theoretical ideas about the ‘long modern’ period which all of you will be studying in one form or another. Using these texts, we will begin the module with an informal opening seminar addressing how we think each author is defining the idea of ‘modernity’ and modern culture, and what explanatory frameworks they are using to do this. The idea is to begin with a big picture and some ambitious ideas to get your teeth into!

Kant and Foucault both offer versions of what they take to be modern intellectual attitudes. Sennett looks back over a sweep of history to discuss ‘modern’ formulations of the self. Reading them in conjunction with one another, how do you think it is reasonable to define ‘modernity’?

The texts we are reading this week are fairly dense, so do take time to read through them thoroughly.

Reading

This reading is supplied on the module website at

Immanuel Kant, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (1784) in Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, ed. and trans. Lewis Beck White (Chicago UP, 1949).

Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, from Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (Penguin, 1984), pp. 32-50.

Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (Faber & Faber, 1986), selections.

Questions to consider

Kant

What is ‘the public’ for Kant? Who are considered to be members, and where does it exist or occur?

What is the role of the scholar or cultural critic?

What does ‘progress’ mean?

Eighteenth-century writers of various stripes are often accused of using ‘Whig history’ models or teleological models of history. What do these terms mean to you, and do you think it is reasonable to apply them to Kant?

Foucault

What does Foucault identify as Kant’s new problem and why is it a distinctively ‘modern’ question?

In what sense can modernity be considered an ‘attitude’ rather than a chronological period?

What do you think Foucault means when he says we have to be ‘at the frontiers’ or ‘at the limits of ourselves’?

Why is it necessary to eschew ‘global’ projects?

Sennett

What do you think Sennett means by the terms ‘public domain’ and ‘intimate’?

What is the modern relation between the intimacy and the market? Do you think he sees this as corrupting?

What does he mean by his concluding statement that ‘the nineteenth century is not yet over’?