Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Start > Leuphana Bachelor (B.A./B.Eng./B.Sc./LL.B.) -> Leuphana Semester -> Wissenschaft kennt disziplinäre Grenzen. Einführung in das Studium Individuale

Lehrveranstaltungen

Moderne Freiheit (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Volker Balli, Paul Lauer

Inhalt: Freedom is arguably the most important orientation of contemporary societies and a decisive driving force in modern history. At the same time, ‘freedom’ has been severely contested: with regard to its status relative to other ends such as justice or security as well as with regard to the question of what exactly its realisation in personal and social life would mean. In this course, we want to shed light on the question of freedom under the condition of modernity, by drawing on a variety of scholarly fields, including history, historical sociology, intellectual history social and political theory, but also philosophy, literature and art. We will do so by paying special attention to the relationship between, on the one hand, the vast transformations, in particular of 'the West', over the last 300 to 400 years - a period that is often termed ‘modernity, - and, on the other hand, to the reasoning and justifications for freedom, as expressed in key texts. For analytical purposes, three distinct spheres will be distinguished - the economic, the political, and the cultural. The course aims to aims to explore from which perspective and in which sense these transformations can be seen as movements of liberation, drawing particular attention to their intended and especially unintended effects. The basic structure of the course follows from this conceptualisation: Sessions 1 to 3 will serve as a broad introduction, where the relevance of the question about freedom is raised, the ambiguity of the liberations introduced and, for comparative purposes, a look at the medieval Europe is taken. In the following sessions - 4 to 12 - each of the three spheres will be dealt with in three sessions. In the last two sessions, we will look back on the ground that we will have covered by then, first by dealing with a specific interpretation of these development, namely in terms of increased contingency, and then by paying attention to the connections between the different developments.

Leuphana Bachelor - Leuphana Semester - Wissenschaft kennt disziplinäre Grenzen. Einführung in das Studium Individuale