Modern European Philosophy

Professor Patrick Frierson

Syllabi and Evaluations

(2006-2025)

This course was almost always offered in the Fall. I started teaching it in Fall of 2006. Until 2009, it was offered as Philosophy 303: Early Modern Philosophy, as the third part of a four course history sequence required of majors. From 2009 until 2022, it was offered as Philosophy 202: Modern European Philosophy, as the second of two required courses in the history of philosophy. Starting in 2023, it has been offered as Philosophy 202, one of several courses that satisfy the two course requirement for readings in the history of philosophy. Below, I give links to the syllabi and course evaluations for the versions of the course for which I can find syllabi and course evaluations, along with a short description of what’s distinctive about that version of the course. (Some syllabi and evaluations were lost because they existed only in hard copy, others because my laptop was stolen in 2019 and not everything was adequately backed up. Some gaps are also due to sabbaticals, when the course was taught by my colleague Rebecca Hanrahan.)

Over the years, I’ve taught the course using several textbooks. (Click “Read Sample” to see Tables of Contents for each.)

· Ariew and Watkins’s Modern Philosophy: An Anthrology of Primary Sources, in its first, second, and third editions.

· Atherton’s Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period.

· Lascano and Shapiro’s Early Modern Philosophy: An Anthology, so far just in its first edition.

Course Change Highlights

· 2006-2012: A fairly typical “Big 7” Modern course, though starting in 2010 (and with the 2011 syllabus linked below), this has some innovative group assignments that I’m pretty proud of (including, e.g., translating the rhyme “Jack and Jill…” into Leibnizian lingo or recording a proto-podcast on Berkeley). Throughout, I also always included required student presentations on other early modern philosophers, including several women philosophers. See 2011 syllabus for a good example.

· 2013-2014: Here I replaced Leibniz with Anne Conway, teaching a different “Big 7” course, with Leibniz as a bonus figure and Conway as central (rather than vice versa). See 2014 syllabus for a good example.

· 2015-2019: A more inclusive syllabus in three main respects. First, I included more women philosophers more prominently. Second, I expanded the list of philosophers on whom students could give presentations from about 12 to more than 40, showing students just how much exciting philosophy was happening during this period. Finally and most importantly, I shifted away from an exclusive focus on metaphysics and epistemology towards a syllabus that taught modern European philosophy as including ethics and political philosophy. See 2017 syllabus for a good example of this version.

· 2020-2021: During these years (which included COVID), I reoriented the course to focus on closer reading of three main philosophers—Descartes, Hume, and Sor Juana—including other philosophers in conversation with them. See 2021 syllabus for an example.

· 2022-present: With the publication of Shapiro and Lascano’s new Modern textbook, I’ve revolutionized the way I teach modern, turning it into a student-driven and student-designed course that radically expands the scope of what Modern philosophy can be. See examples of 2022, 2023, and 2024 versions of the course below, each of which is quite different from the others. My template (based on the 2024 version) is here.

Syllabus	Evaluations	Key Figures	Distinctive Features
2006 syllabus	2006 evaluation	“The Big 7”: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant Student presentations on Bacon, Elizabeth, Hobbes, Pascal, Arnauld, Newton, Malebranche Margaret Cavendish, Damaris Cudworth, Voltaire, Anne Conway Samuel Clarke, Thomas Reid, Jean-Jacques Rousseau	First time teaching
2007		Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant	Mostly unchanged
2009		The Big 7 + presentations
2010 (Spring) (unfortunately, the syllabus links are broken)		The Big 7 + presentations	Switch to Phil 202 New edition of Ariew and Watkins Large class (>30) led to some really interesting group assignments.
2011	2011	The Big 7 + presentations	Version of syllabus with group assignments
2012	2012		☹ I can’t find my materials for 2012 or 2013
2013	2013		☹ I can’t find my materials for 2012 or 2013
2014	2014	Descartes, Spinoza, Conway, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant	This version (mostly) replaced Leibniz with Anne Conway, making her a focal part of the “Big 7” rather than an add-on.
2015	2015	Descartes, Hobbes, ???	This version made ethics and political philosophy (almost) as important as M&E. (This also allowed a bit more Elizabeth.) For this course, I also assigning readings from Atherton’s Women in Early Modern Philosophy. And at this time, I switched from a handful of possible presentation options (more or less those from 2006) to a much longer list, with one or two different options for each day of the semester, more than 40 options in all. [These changes are reflected in the 2017 syllabus below.]
2016	2016	??
2017	2017	Descartes, Elizabeth, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant	(This was also the semester when a student (Brewer C.) gave a class presentation on Sor Juana, which changed my whole teaching and research trajectory.)
2018	2018	Sabbatical
2019	2019
2020	2020	Descartes, Hume, Sor Juana (with lots of cameo appearances from a wide range of other modern philosophers)	COVID! More importantly, I developed a streamlined version focusing on just three main philosophers. (COVID also gave me a chance to have online visits from Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa (on Sor Juana) and Dwight Lewis (on Amo), which was awesome.)
2021	2021	Descartes, Hume, Sor Juana
Template			This is the template for the current version of my modern European philosophy course, one that changes every year. The template itself changes every year, since the first text is based on the final exams from the previous iteration of the course. This is the template for 2024 (prior to that, the course began with Descartes’s Meditations)
2022	2022	Descartes, Spinoza, Sor Juana, Du Chatelet, Suchon, Conway, Malebranche, Leibniz, Bayle, Masham, Hume, Smith, Rousseau, Montaigne, Mandeville, Kant.	This was the first of my de-centered, student-driven iterations of the course, inspired by the Shapiro-Lascano anthology. The themes this year were Love, Philosophy of Mind, and Virtue/Vice.
2023	2023	Descartes, Sor Juana, Mandeville, Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Astell, VanSchurman, Suchon, de Maintenon, Locke, Berkeley, Spinoza	Themes: Freedom/Autonomy, Feminism, Epistemology. In their final exams, the class argued for starting the next year’s class with Sor Juana rather than Descartes.
2024	2024	Sor Juana, Shaftesbury, Astell, duChatelet, Malebranche, Conway, Montaigne, Hutcheson, Kant, Mandeville, Leibniz, LeMettrie, Smith, DeGrouchy, and Hume	Themes: Love, Morality, Human Nature. No Descartes!!
2025	2025	Sabbatical