"First thought, best thought." This was the phrase that poet Allen Ginsberg used to describe spontaneous and fearless writing, a way of telling the truth that arises from naked and authentic experience.
This course is an opportunity to explore the major thinkers and historic challenges that shaped the mind of Europe in the 19th century. Intellectual history emphasizes the exchanges of ideas and debates that went on among people from other places and times. But it also stresses the importance of a continuing dialogue between the present and the past.