HSHU 204 Christian Culture/Secular Age
This course explores the conflict between Christian thought and the secular age, from 1750 to the present. Beginning with Pietism and the Enlightenment of the 18th century, it concludes with a living defender of the Enlightenment, J¸rgen Habermas, in dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger, shortly before he became Benedict XVI. This course does not propose a linear reading of Western culture. Instead, it traces the tension between Christianity and Secularism through several distinct historical phases: the pre-history of the French Revolution and the Revolution; the early 19th century, with its abiding revolutionary energy, which engendered enthusiasm and antipathy; the late 19th century, as shaped by the anti-Christian Nietzsche, the proto-Christian Wagner and the Christian Dostoevsky; the early 20th century and its revolutions (Nazi, Bolshevik and Freudian); and the later half of the 20th century, traumatized by Holocaust and Gulag, though alive with cultural radicalism, spiritual striving and its own version of the struggle between secular and Christian norms.
Prerequisite
University Honors Program