Second Wave
Of Modernity
(1780 - 1880)
Timothy H. Wilson
(1780 - 1880)
Timothy H. Wilson
In the Second Wave of Modernity, Nature as a standard for human endeavour is abandoned in favour of History. This period of literature and philosophy covers what is often referred to as Romanticism (Rousseau, Blake) as well as the Nineteenth century -- in English literature, the Victorian Era (Tennyson, Darwin).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 78)
Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
William Blake (1757 - 1827)
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
G.W.F. Hegel (1770 - 1831)
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 73)
Charles Darwin (1809 - 82)
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 55)
Emily Bronte (1818 - 48)
Karl Marx (1818 - 83)
George Eliot (1819-80)
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
Herman Melville (1819-91)
Gustave Flaubert (1821-80)
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81)
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 86)
Leo Strauss and the Three Waves of Modernity
An introduction to Leo Strauss's categorization of the "Three Waves of Modernity".
The Second Wave of Modernity and the Rise of History
Lecture slides for a course on "Time and Narrative in Prose Fiction" (2020) -- covering the historical context of the "Second Wave" of modernity and the rise of "historical" thinking. This shift in thinking is explored in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel.
A detailed introduction to the various philosophical currents leading to the Romantic movement -- namely, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and Kant's "Copernican Revolution" in epistemology. In addition, an introduction to the Romantics' response to the Industrial and French Revolutions. Romantic aesthetics and key themes are explored.