Courses

Purpose: In studying the history of ancient and modern debates over “enlightenment” it is conventional to focus on theories of knowledge.  Yet every debate about the nature and value of knowledge is also, explicitly or implicitly, a debate about the nature and value of ignorance: what it is, how it arises, its psychological and social effects, and its relation to happiness. Strangely, there is very little scholarship on the intellectual history of ignorance (the most popular English-language encyclopedias of philosophy contain no entries on it).  This seminar is intended to foster reflection in this area, and will examine some influential theories of ignorance in the Western intellectual tradition, from ancient myth to contemporary rational choice theory.  Each semester we will focus on a different aspect of this subject. This seminar will focus on ignorance and innocence.  Among the topics to be discussed will be the history of ideas about virginity, animals, children, and “primitives.”