Dec 2, 2014
Vital themes in Europe's Enlightenment project included a new cosmopolitanism rooted in a growing awareness of other world cultures, an interest in forms of natural religion, and efforts to find a new foundation for social ethics apart from the moral laws and teachings of Christianity. In this lecture, Stewart J. Brown argues that Europe's growing awareness of China, and especially of Confucian thought, played a significant role in shaping early European Enlightenment thought.