The Enlightenment Invention of the Modern Self

by Leo Damrosch

In 24 lectures that let you see the world through the eyes of the Enlightenment's greatest writers, follow the origin of new ways of thinking-ideas we today take for granted but are startlingly recent-about the individual and society. You'll discover how these notions emerged in an era of transition from a world dominated by classical thought, institutional religion, and the aristocracy to one that was increasingly secular, scientific, skeptical, and middle class.

These lectures are essentially about ideas and about books-how great ideas are alive and powerful in the pages of significant written works. The guiding premise is that the best way to appreciate the thinking of a given period is to explore its literature. You'll note or discuss at length a range of novels, autobiographies, and biographies from the 1670s to the 1790s, including The Pilgrim's Progress, Candide, The London Journal, The Social Contract, Confessions, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

If you haven't already done so, this is your opportunity to familiarize yourself with this remarkable collection of works. What was, after all, the modern self that the Enlightenment invented? This engaging lecture series suggests that it was a new human insight, one that rejected absolute or easily generalized explanations and embraced the conflict, confusion, and paradox of life. It was a new and dynamic account of human life-one that continues to both benefit and afflict us. And in the company of a master educator, you can finally discover why our everyday lives in the modern world are indebted to the writings of the Enlightenment thinkers.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Psychology

Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Leo Damrosch is an American author and professor. In 2001, he was named the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University.[1] He received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His areas of academic specialty include Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and Puritanism.[1] Damrosch's "The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus" is one of the most important recent explorations of the early history of the Society of Friends. His Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005) was a National Book Award finalist for nonfiction and winner of the 2006 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for best work of nonfiction. Among his other books are "Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth" (1980), "God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding" (1985), "Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson" (1987), and "Tocqueville's Discovery of America" (2010).

Reviews

[Maru Kun · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a decent amount of philosophy but as a bit of a narcissist (it’s my parent’s fault) I always want to know: What’s in it for me?

With Existentialism my existence precedes my essence, which makes me authentically absurd. But what's with shooting random people on the beach and always wearing a scruffy raincoat? I once smoked an unfiltered Gauloise, which is not an experience I want to repeat.

Every business meeting I go to I draw strength from Nietzsche’s maxim: “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. It’s a big help, but I don't have the genetics to grow a superhumanly large moustache.

In the family it's all Wittgenstein all the time. I tell the kids a hundred times a night that “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, but they still won't settle down.

So I have made some progress with my philosophical investigations, but after listening to “The Enlightenment Invention of the Modern Self” (‘EIMS’) I've begun to put the pieces together. EIMS sounds as dry as dust and if it wasn't for reviews on the "Great Courses" website saying how good it was I would have given it a pass. And I am glad I didn't, because it was quite excellent.

The lecturer is great to listen to and clearly knows his material. He picks a series of works written around the enlightenment period and relates the portrayal of the self in each novel or journal to the ideas of an enlightenment philosopher.

Great stuff, as you hit three targets at once: classic literature, philosophy and history. And then there is the added bonus of being able to compare how different schools of philosophy treat the idea of the self, illustrated with examples from how portrayal of different characters in the works.

Works chosen include La Princesse de Cleves, Candide, Boswell’s London Journal, Les Liaison Dangerous, poems of William Blake plus quite a few more. Philosophers whose work is covered include the all usual suspects: Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and the rest of the gang.

I began to understand how drastically the concept of the self implied by Hume’s empiricism – all social roles and sense impressions – contrasts with the idea of the authentic, inner self (let’s call it the ‘Californian Self’) derived from Rousseau. The professor’s view is that Rousseau’s Confessions is one of the earliest examples of auto-biography and pioneering in its day for suggesting that events in early life may have later psychological significance. This is just one small example of a lot of great material.

The main problem with this course is that it was recorded before the rise of social media and the digital revolution. However a sequel is planned: “The “Post-Modern Invention of the Modern Selfie”. If it’s as good as EIMS then it should be well worth a look.

PS: Much as I hate to advertise for Amazon, if you buy a subscription to audible.com you can get these courses at a very reasonable price. They make for great listening in the gym.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Damrosch narrates his lecture on the Enlightenment and its contribution to the modern idea of self. I will be listening to his other lectures.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not do audio books, but I do do Great Courses lectures...exceptions to every rule, and all. And I usually do these on long drives, stretching a lecture out over months, but as these particular lectures are only about 30 minutes, I worked the last few in on local errands. That said, I found this...pardon the pun...enlightening.

Dr. Damrosh covers some works I am familiar with, and lot of works that I have not read, nor am ever likely to read. I like the exposure.

This is a targeted look at what we call The Enlightenment, only "the self", and while I think some of the questions asked by his subjects didn't need asking (philosophers are really good at coming up with unanswerable questions; some even think they've found answers), I really respect his analyses. In my 63 years (59 of those as a reader), I don't get "meaning" of literature (sometimes not even when hit in the face with a detailed rationale), so I appreciate when someone does explain such. It gives me material to ponder and more pieces to a puzzle I don't understand. He is a good speaker with a keen sense of humor, and as with nearly every Great Course I've listened to, recommended.

[Brett Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This course of 24 lectures by Harvard literature Professor Leo Damrosch (nonfiction National Book Award finalist for Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius) is a thrill. It examines how the view of what humans are to themselves changed since Medieval times. It was then that life was provincial, insular, immobile, and immersed in an extended family, filled to the brim with superstition, poverty, and a social hierarchy that fostered ignorance. After all, knowledge was as dangerous as Adam and Eve proved it to be when they ate the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Traditional religion validated this misery. If God wanted you to be prosperous and happy, he’d have made you a Noble. By 1500-1700, with the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient Greek knowledge and humanism on the rise in concert with individualism of the Reformation that said each person had access to salvation through the Bible without need for the Pope as an intermediary, all this began to change. New inventions spurred by the Scientific Revolution eventuated in new inventions driving economic growth, social mobility, spatial mobility, and disconnections from the old community. The Enlightenment to follow then elevated the individual, thinking for themselves, free from authoritarian beliefs while its governmental options expanded freedom - though often not sure what to do with it. Eventually, one way of thinking affirmed an inner core of authentic selfhood that sought to gain access to “a true self,” striving to be faithful to it (Rousseau). At the same time, another perspective saw the self as socially conditioned, nothing more than a series of roles we learn to play (Hume). The perceptions we have of ourselves and the tensions between our social animal nature on the one hand and the drive for autonomy on the other come from this era of psychological transformation. There are many “aha” moments in this series. Fun stuff.

[sch]

Oct 2019. Followup to Kors, "The Birth Of The Modern Mind: The Intellectual History Of The 17th And 18th Centuries." Damrosch is a literature professor, not a historian.

After 13 lectures, I'm not going to finish. It's very good, but not what I was expecting, and not suitable as an audio lecture series (in the way I consume them, anyway). Most GREAT COURSES "audiobooks," in my experience, are pitched at the undergraduate or popular level. This is undisguisedly a graduate-level course in English and French literature of the "long eighteenth century": using a pretty broad definition of "literature" (philosophy, history, biography, moralism, drama, fiction). I'd need to read the primary works analysed in each lecture to truly profit from them, and I don't have time for that. In addition, I find it hard to grapple with the whole course because of the vagueness of the term "self." I understand the "character type" vs. "personality" distinction, but I don't quite see how these new notions intersect with the other abstract concepts used to organized the series: Enlightenment, epistemology, empiricism, psychology, etc. I don't know enough about Freudian psychology to interact with the lecturer's assumptions, and honestly I don't care to learn.

Maybe I'll return to this some day, but for now I'm trying to study straightforward philosophy in the Baconian, Cartesian, and Lockean traditions.

[Pierre Jacomet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful set of lectures, which dives into the formation of the modern concept of self through the exploration of the ideas of enlightenment philosophers. I don't know whether I will ever read the works of the philosophers mentioned, as they are hard to read and takes time. I did however start reading some of works of Diderot and they are well represented by the views expressed by Damrosch. This is not a self-help book, but the variety of ideas about the self presented is so vast and varied that it could very well count as one. I really enjoyed all the points of view as each one of them enriched my own thinking.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Damrosch tells this story through these lectures I can see quite clearly that our modern dance with rabid individualism is what we ought to expect coming out the Enlightenment. One can only hope there is a "next" that might acknowledge we are not quite so smart as those Enlightenment thinkers believed we could be - the future looks somewhat murky.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The two five-star subjects for me were empiricism and Rousseau. in addition, the course theme was five star, as was the instructor. The rest of the course material wasn't to my liking, which is pretty significant, hence the four stars instead of five. I recommend this course to people interested in the subject matter.

[Elissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good. It explains how philosophers have arrived at a description of the human self, post-renaissance up to the transcendentalists. The author uses the great thinkers and literature of the enlightenment to trace the development of ideas. It was quite interesting. In addition Leo Damrosch is an excellent lecturer, clear and easy to follow without being over-simplified.

[Peter Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Leo Damrosch’s voice, he is a comforting lecturer. I have noticed that lecturers make mistakes every once in a while, saying one thing when they mean another. That happens less frequently when a book is read aloud. William Blake is the last writer covered by Damrosch. I have memorized some of Blake’s poems. I might read a biography of Blake.

[Igor · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a 'beginner' in the subject, this audiobook and PDF file have been very interesting.

Off course, someone has to read much more to have a minimal understanding of ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

[Alexander Serban · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaned more heavily on the literature perspective than I would have liked, but interesting nonetheless.

[S. Kallahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more interesting and detailed than I thought it would be.

[Tom Axworthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leo Damrosch delivers 24 lectures on 17th and 18th century intellectuals that are erudite and entertaining. He explores the birth of the Enlightenment with thinkers like Voltaireand Hume( the famous Age of Reason,now so much under attack in our age) and then expands to critics like William Blake and the coming age of romanticism.Intellectual history can be difficult to make entertaining as well as substantive but Damrosch has a gift for the personal anecdote that illuminates large ideas.

[Helen]

The self in Enlightenment works of literature.

[Jim]

I had just finished the excellent lecture series about the philosophical evolution of the Enlightenment by Dr Kors (Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries), and was interested in finding out a bit more from a different set of eyes...literary eyes in this case. I was initially a bit disappointed and lost in the first two lectures, until I read more thoroughly the scope of the course and got out of the Kors-inspired materialistic mode and tried to think more like a poet/author.
This was a time (1670-1790) in which there was a great deal of change in the air...the world was struggling out from under the yoke of oppressive religious dogma and turning to nature and the mind of man. The world was being defined by from a purely empirical point of view...everything involved employing the scientific method of observation and replication of experiments. Descartes gave way to Newton, Pascal and Bunyan to Diderot and Voltaire. The world had changed. These new ideas flew in the face of the establishment.

But for some this materialistic philosophy just didn't cut it...what about the individual...the self? The truly enlightened rejected the dualism of mind and body...the mind, they said, was just another part of the body, deeply rooted in the physicality of the whole. This concept flew in the face of a few (and growing) groups of individuals who became quite influential...folks like Rousseau, Boswell and our old friend Diderot began to produce literary works that proved that the immaterial mind...the self...is very much alive and well, thank you very much. It's here in the lecture series, starting with the discussions about Boswell, Diderot and Rousseau where Dr Damrosch hits his stride and really captured my attention (I'll admit here that I will re-listen to the first few lectures with a much more discerning eye). These were truly gifted writers whose stories are as interesting as the works they create.

The series end with fascinating discussions about Ben Franklin, Adam Smith and Choderlos de Laclos, the author of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' ('Dangerous Liaisons'). Needless to say, these authors have created works, both in life and literature, that flies in the face of our ideas about the enlightenment and leads the world into the Romance period.

Highly recommended...Dr Leo is the perfect lecturer...witty and articulate.
Avoid those flies and get this one on sale with a coupon.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Leo Damrosch is an excellent lecturer. I'm not that much into philosophy, but I'm glad I learned about the origins of the Enlightenment. Damrosch does a good job of putting the players and ideas in context, from which you can draw a line all the way to modern times.

[Matthew Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This course systematizes much of the sense of self you've collected from pop psychology and casual reading of classic novels. It feels highly selective rather than comprehensive, but it was a semi regular sequence of interesting moments, the best of which were Damrosch's synthesis, rather than his analysis of individual works.

It ended very much with the sense that there is no consensus on "self," but at least 3 competing models of self, with mild criticism of an unidentified modern perspective. Rather than illuminating the "correct" idea of self to guide the listener in their own analysis, this material serves best as giving you stereotypes of "self philosophy" which you can use to categorize.