Paris, France - Course Descriptions - Myths and Modern Thought

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The notion of modernity covers a deep paradoxical reality, the modern history testifies where the humanism improvement were led with the worse barbarities and where growth of the freedom of thoughts led to the triumph of totalitarian ideologies.

The lectures offer to recount the history of thought, from the Renaissance to nowadays, through art, literature and philosophy, to see how the mythic spirits haunt the modern reason. Also, we will study the revival of former myths (Prometheus, Faust, Don Juan) and the creation of purely modern myths (Progress, Decadence, Paris myth, the "Oedipus"…) We will end up with mythologies of post modernity.

Lecture descriptions

• The myth of Faust and the Renaissance spirit
• Don Juan, a baroque myth
• Three philosophical myths (from the classical period to the Enlightenments): the Reason, Nature, General will (I)
• Three philosophical myths … (II)
• Four romantic myths (I): the Elsewhere, the Hero (Napoleon)
• Four romantic myths (II): the People, Paris
• Two modern myths (I): Progress
• Two modern myths (II): Decadence
• From the return of tragic myths to post modern mythologies (XXth century)
• Exam

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