Horizon of the New Social Sciences

Horizon of the New Social Sciences聽studies the modern attempt of the social sciences to work out concretely the new political, intellectual and institutional structures made necessary by secularization.

This course is not recommended for first-year students.

With secularization, other-worldly goals progressively provided less and less illumination and determination for governance, law and other social and economic relationships. The modern demand for new views of economics, law and social life fueled the development of the聽social sciences, which聽offered new understandings of the guidelines, values and goals that were previously supplied by tradition and the institutional church.

One of the main themes studied in聽Horizon of the New Social Sciences聽is the religious and ecclesial subtext to the great political debates and movements of the modern world, including the great church-state debate of the late medieval and early modern period. In the course of reading authors such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx, students will study the way Christian conceptions of freedom and dignity of the individual person inform, and in some cases conflict with, modern understandings of economics, law, and society.

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