Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History

Welcome to The History Guide's Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History: Abelard to Nietzsche. These lectures were written over the past five years and served as the basis for my upper division European intellectual history and history of European socialism classes at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton and Davie, FL) and Meredith College (Raleigh, NC).

The lectures presented here are between five and ten pages in length and are meant to be downloaded and printed. Of course, you can read them online if you wish. Please keep in mind that these lectures are intended for your education and edification and not for publication by anyone but myself. If you would like to link any of these pages to your own or use them in a classroom exercise or as a citation in one of your essays, please be courteous enough to let me know about it by sending email to . You should also read my Conditions of Use statement for particulars. If you are looking for my credentials, please consult my curriculum vitae.

The primary thrust of the lectures is the history of the western intellectual tradition from Abelard to Nietzsche. The lectures, furthermore, are broken down into rather traditional categories, ie. Reformation, Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and so on. I make no claim to originality in any of these essays. The opinions expressed here are my own but I am sharing them with you because I believe that education is something much more than a classroom and grades. If I appear to have contributed something to your own knowledge of yourself and others, please share that knowledge with me.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lecture 1: Modern European Intellectual History: An Introduction

Lecture 2: The Medieval World View (1)

Lecture 3: The Medieval World View (2)

Lecture 4: The Medieval Synthesis and the Renaissance Discovery of Man

Lecture 5: The Medieval Synthesis Under Attack: Savonarola and the Protestant Reformation

Lecture 6: The Medieval Synthesis and the Secularization of Human Knowledge: The Scientific Revolution, 1543-1642 (1)

Lecture 7: The Medieval Synthesis and the Secularization of Human Knowledge: The Scientific Revolution, 1642-1730 (2)

Lecture 8: The New Intellectual Order: Man, Nature and Society

Lecture 9: Écrasez l'infâme!: The Triumph of Science and the Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophe

Lecture 10: The Vision of Human Progress: Vico, Gibbon and Condorcet