As direct heirs of what has been called the “invention of liberty” in the 18th and 19th centuries, we have been obliged to learn new ways of maintaining our individuality in a community made up of millions of other free-wheeling individualists. One strategy, of course, is to go it alone; another is to design large, well-populated states that set out to insure the individual liberty of all members. Both have their perils. In this course we will discuss efforts, imagined and real, to reconcile the benefits and liabilities of solitude and society. Lecture, discussion, short essays written in and out of class.

[Additional readings listed in the syllabus will be available as “ER”= Electronic Reserve through the Undergraduate Library and as e-mail attachments—“ATT”.]

Texts:

• Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. Dover Books.
• Thomas Paine. Common Sense. Dover Books.
• The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents. Dover Books.
• H. D. Thoreau. Walden. Dover Books.
• John Stuart Mill. On Liberty. Cambridge U. Press.