General Introduction
– Is Nathan a Quaker?
– What’s on the blog?
– How to read the Great Books on your own
Historicize! Historicize!
– Where did the Renaissance leave off?
– The rise of the monarch and the fall of the Church
– Five centers of the Enlightenment
– Fleeing nationality and sectarian questions
Generalize! Generalize!
– Whiggish history
– The Reformation and the Enlightenment
– How coffee created the modern world
Epistemology
– Reactions to the Medieval past
– Diminished Thomisms
– Empiricism and Rationalism
– Enlightenment thinkers as compartmentalizers
– The postmodern critique
– Blaming the Renaissance and the Reformation
– The need for change
Enlightenment Religion
– Calvin vs. Hume
– The major players
– Alchemy and heresy
– Scientifically credible religion
– Godwin’s (Other) Law
– Open hostility to institutional religion
– The birth of Religion and tolerance
– The Village Square
The Rise of Modern Science
– Francis Schaeffer’s compartmentalization
– Rationalist vs. empiricist science
– Science and politics
– Paleontology
Political Changes
– Locke’s contribution
– Where do rights come from?
– The French Revolution blows up
– Why Jefferson is boring
– Founding Fathers as popularizers
– Original Sin and Balance of Powers
Breaking the Mold
– Jonathan Edwards
– Emmanuel Swedenborg
– Blaise Pascal
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, Mortimer J. Aristotle for Everybody. New York: Touchstone, 1997.
Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2009.
Diderot, Denis. The Nun. Trans. Leonard Tancock. New York: Penguin, 1974.
Edwards, Jonathan. The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography and Other Writings. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.
Godwin, William. Caleb Williams. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Hazen, Craig James. The Village Enlightenment in America: Popular Religion and Science in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana-Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2000.
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2009.
Jefferson, Thomas. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: The Jefferson Bible. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2011.
—. Political Writings. Ed. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead, 2008.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2010.
McEntyre, Alistair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. South Bend, Ind.: U of Notre Dame P, 2007.
Newton, Isaac. Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2011.
Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2011.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Trans. W.F. Trotter. Oxford: Benediction, 2011.
Schaeffer, Francis. How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Simon and Brown, 2011.
Spinoza, Baruch. Trans. Edwin Curley. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Suarez, Francisco. Metaphysical Demonstration of the Existence of God. New York: St. Augustine’s, 2004.
Swedenborg, Emmanuel. Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell. Seattle: CreateSpace, 2011.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Christian Classics, 1981. 5 volumes.
Voltaire. God and Human Beings. New York: Prometheus, 2010.
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