Readings
Unit 1: Encounter and the modern predicament
Week 1: The new world as epistemic event
On what is “modern.” The shock of difference and the first crisis of universality.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Montaigne, “On The Cannibals” | 228–236 | |
| Montaigne, “On Coaches” | all |
Week 2: The Valladolid debate
Attempting to circumscribe the limits of the human.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| De las Casas, Destruction of the Indies, excerpt 1 | 1–6 | |
| De Las Casas, Destruction of the Indies, excerpt 2 | optional | |
| De Las Casas, Apologetic History | all | |
| Sepulveda, Democrates Alter | all | |
| Vitoria, De indis | optional — 247–251 |
Week 3: Method, doubt, and problems of solipsism
The conception of the subject that makes the problem of universality a problem.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Descartes, Meditation 1 | all | |
| Descartes, Meditation 2 | all | |
| Scudery, Knowledge of Others | 62–80 |
Week 4: Mind across the color line
Subjectivity in a diverse world.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Amo, On the Impassivity of the Human Mind | 159–169, 173–189 | |
| Cruz, “The Answer” | 39–63, 73–97 |
Unit 2: Perception, monads, and the birth of “aesthetics”
Week 5: Leibniz
Every subject is a windowless monad, but all are expressions of the same pre-established harmony.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Leibniz, Principles of Nature and Grace | all | |
| Leibniz, Monadology | all | |
| Leibniz, Novissima Sinica (preface) | optional — 68–71, 74–75 |
Week 6: Baumgarten and the founding of aesthetics
The science of “sensitive” (confused, sensory) cognition.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Baumgarten, Aesthetica | all | |
| Baumgarten, Reflections | 37–53, 76–79 | |
| Gregor, “Baumgarten’s Aesthetica” | optional |
Week 7: Ideas, perception, and property
The mind a receiver of ideas, and a labor theory of property that converts “unimproved” land into potential for empire.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Locke, Essay, bk. I | all | |
| Locke, Essay, bk. II | all | |
| Locke, Essay, bk. III | all | |
| Locke, Essay, bk. IV | all | |
| Locke, Second Treatise | all |
Week 8: The standard of taste
The central puzzle of the course: a universal standard of taste derived from particular sentiment.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Du Châtelet, Discourse On Happiness | all | |
| Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste” | all | |
| Hume, “Of Tragedy” | all |
Unit 3: Taste, beauty, the sublime, and empire
Week 9: The standard of taste redux
We consider Hume’s infamous footnote on race against the backdrop of the essay on taste.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste | all | |
| Hume, “Of National Characters” | all |
Week 10: The beautiful and the sublime
Terror, obscurity, power: an aesthetics arranged around what overwhelms* the subject.*
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Burke, Enquiry, prefaces and introduction | all | |
| Burke, Enquiry, pt. 1 | all | |
| Burke, Enquiry, pt. 2 | all | |
| Burke, Enquiry, pt. 3 | all | |
| Burke, Enquiry, pt. 4 | all | |
| Burke, Enquiry, pt. 5 | all |
Week 11: The picturesque
The sublime landscape and the picturesque emerge as ways of owning. Relatedly, Wollstonecraft demolishes Burke’s aesthetic-politics.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye | all | |
| Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Man | all | |
| Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman | all |
Week 12: Kant’s aesthetics
An attempt to earn subjective universality without any hope for pre-established harmony.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Kant, Critique of Judgment (“Analytic of the Beautiful”) | all | |
| Kant, Critique of Judgment (“Analytic of the Sublime”) | all |
Unit 4: Universality and its others
Week 13: Kant on race
The roots of racial hierarchy in Kant.
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Bernasconi, Critical Philosophy of Race | all | |
| Kant, Physical Geography pt. 2 | all | |
| Kant, Physical Geography, pt. 1 | all |
Week 14: The savage and the critique of civilization
Primitivism romanticizing the “savage.”
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality | all |
Week 15: The Black Atlantic counter-canon
The Haitian Revolution as Enlightenment
| Reading | Read | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments | all | |
| Equiano, Interesting Narrative | all | |
| Equiano, Letters | all | |
| Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History | optional |
Week 16: Hegel and the end of history
Teleology in aesthetics and in empire.