COLL-E 103 15660 Theism, Atheism, and Existentialism (Levene) (A & H) (3 cr.)

This course is an introduction to several major thinkers in the modern West through their views on faith and doubt. The modern period in European philosophy and theology is usually considered to begin with challenges to traditional religious world views, especially the belief in God. While the nature and meaning of God’s existence stimulated countless rich debates in earlier centuries, these debates take on a new dimension towards the middle of the seventeenth century. In the context of the close of the religious wars spurred by the Reformation and the emergence of a new experimental attitude towards nature and the cosmos, thinkers in this period continued to express theistic beliefs, many nevertheless struggled openly with what these beliefs entailed, setting the groundwork for arguments against God’s existence altogether and eventually stimulating the creation of alternative ways of securing human meaning.

Throughout the course, we will ask how various thinkers grappled with inherited notions of reason, revelation, nature, tradition, good and evil. What role did doubt, skepticism, and uncertainty play in modern world views? How have these experiences been related to faith? We will also subject the historical premises of the course to scrutiny, asking about the very assumption that atheism inaugurates modernity. What is the validity of this claim? Art there other events, ideas, or experiences we might identify as uniquely modern? How do terms such as “enlightenment,” “science,” “freedom,” “authority,” and the “self” determine how we characterize, and thus value, this period?