The so-called period of “Enlightenment” in European history provided a wide range of debates that continues to provoke critical engagements in the following centuries. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most profound questions in Enlightenment debates, a question that is still seen by many as highly relevant to today’s social and political theory, as well as moral and legal philosophy; that is, what constitutes a just society? The course will cover texts constituting the so-called “canon” in Enlightenment social and political thought, and will end with a brief reflection on how such debates might still preoccupy some of our own understandings of the nature of politics and sociability.

The absence of gender and racial diversity among the authors covered in the course is not incidental. The syllabus itself is intended to be modeled after a specific mode of (in)forming ways in which one approaches socio-political, moral, and legal questions that has been put into practice, for decades, in some of the leading universities, particularly in Western Europe and North America. This lack of diversity only begins to receive criticism in a much more recent time. The modeled syllabus welcomes occasions of challenges, particularly on what is lacking or even unsatisfying in such a mode. And with that notion in mind, the course also invites students to reflect on the relevance of “the Enlightenment” in a general sense.