Course Title：Comparative Intellectual Traditions

This course will consider key intellectual traditions across history, comparing ideas of morality, social justice, political organization, and the relationship between the individual and community, and the self and the divine. Selecting philosophical writings from various traditions, including Asian, Indic, European and Islamic, the course will examine these traditions in their classical contexts and then move on to consider how they evolved in both the early modern and modern periods. The course will give particular attention to how these intellectual trends shaped and responded to changes across time, including, but not limited to, the rise and fall of empires, the formation of nation-states, colonialism, and processes of modernization.