History 3281/Humanities 3281

Modern European Intellectual History I

Antiquity – 1750

Fall Semester, 2006

Assignment for Final Essay

Due Monday, December 18 Before 5 PM

Requirements:

Length: A typed paper of approximately 3000 words (c. 10 typed pages).

Source Material: Course material studied this semester as contained on the course syllabus and web page (http://www.hist.umn.edu/shank/hist3281/). You may consult other sources as well if you desire, but consultation of sources not on the syllabus is not required. If you do use outside sources be sure to document them through in-text citations and a bibliography (if necessary). For guidelines about citations see below.

Due: Monday, December 18 Before 5 PM.

Assignment:

Your assignment is very simple. I want you to:

1.) Pick a theme, topic, question, category, or other focus and use that to tie together the entire semester’s work. To be clear, your job is not to synthesize everything we have read; rather; your project is to trace a single thread throughout the entire semester and to use that thread to make an argument about this thread ties together the entire course. There are many, many threads that could accomplish this task, and your job is simply to isolate and use one effectively.

2.) Develop your essay through the use of at least four thinkers or texts studied this semester.

3.) Choose at least one thinker or text from the final third of the course in developing your essay. In other words, your paper will need to draw upon the writings of either Newton, Leibniz, Clarke (who can be read as speaking for Newton), John Toland, Diderot, or the anonymous author of The Three Impostors in building your analysis. You may use more than one of these if you want, but you must use at least one of these in your essay.

4.) Finally, choose at least one thinker or text from the first third of the course in developing your essay, and one from the second third. You are free to choose your fourth thinker or text from anywhere in the syllabus. For this assignment, the first third of the course will be defined as the readings between Plato and Machiavelli, and the second third as the readings between Columbus and Pascal.

There are many good ways to satisfy this assignment so here are some suggestions to help you in formulating your essay.

Suggestions:

Choose a category and trace its development and transformation over the course of the semester. Good categories would include broad terms like philosophy, religion, morality, science, ethics, politics, etc. Good papers could also be written about more precise categories like God, the self, the body, art, the supernatural, the state, the community, the “good life,” or experience.

A more social or historically defined category could also be used like the philosopher, the city, the philosophical text, the temple, modernity, Greek philosophy, Christianity, or the Bible.

A good historical paper could also be written by positing and then arguing for a particular turning point that you see in the course. Did a single text change everything, and if so how. Did a single event (the birth of Christ, the conversion of Constantine, the Columbian Encounter, the Protestant Revolution, etc.) change everything, and if so how? Even if its not reducible to a single turning point, was there a crucial shift in the course, so from non-Christian to Christian thought, or from the old to the new science? If you choose to write a transformation paper, be sure to both document fully the transition you see (in short, persuade a skeptic that this transition was in fact real and important) and develop a thesis that argues for the significance of this transition (in short, arguing for why this transition is important and significant.

Another possibility is to discuss the significance of a single author by tracing his prior influences and later legacies. What made Machiavelli (or Plato, or Augustine, or Descartes, or Galileo, or...) possible and what was the impact of his work on later developments? The same thing could be done for a single text, or a single type of text (like the dialogue form, or the utopian fiction, or the geometric form used by Spinoza and Newton, etc.).

A further historical approach would be to define and argue for a particular birth or original creation during this period. To develop this kind of paper you’d need to isolate the thing or idea that you see emerging anew in this period, and then argue that it was in fact new, and that this birth was significant. For example, did we witness the birth of modernity? If so, where when, and how did this happen? Or what about particular modern categories like modern subjectivity, modern politics, modern science, modern religion, or modern philosophy? Leaving the category of modernity aside, what about categories like secularism or the secular state, disenchantment, humanity, globalism, or the birth (or the death?) of God? When did these categories come into existence, and through what mechanisms or reasons.

These are only suggestions and I encourage you to think creatively and imaginatively about your project. I will be glad to talk with you individually about your paper topic and ideas so please feel free to consult with me.

Technical Requirements:

It is important that your essay be entirely your own work so please do not discuss the questions or your essay with anyone in the class. To do so is to violate the University Honor Code. Similarly we will not use class time to directly address the assignment. You can consult with me individually if you have any questions or concerns.

When citing source materials, use the following rule: if you use a text on the syllabus and the edition that is for sale in the bookstore, then simply cite the work from which you are quoting briefly in the text by noting the author’s name, the text, and the page number. (i.e. Newton, Principia, p.798). If you use another edition, use the same format but note the publication information for the edition you are using as well (Newton, Principia, Motte trans., Florian Cajori ed. (University of California Press, 1961), pp. 198). If you use other source material not on the syllabus at all then use a full citation of author, title, publisher, publication date, page number (i.e. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (W.W. Norton, 1968), pp. 320-35.)

You are encouraged to work exclusively with the course materials and to avoid external research. If you do consult other books or research materials, however, then be sure to cite these works in your essay. To fail to do so is to plagiarize, a very serious offense. The same rule applies for web sites, encyclopedias, and any other source material. To be safe, either restrict yourself to the course materials alone in making your arguments or meticulously cite all your sources in the text.

In-text citations are fine, so only add a separate bibliography if you have consulted outside sources.