Università Roma Tre

The first module intends to address the main critical and problematic nodes of early modern history in a perspective aimed at enucleating original characters and identity processes of the European continent. Particular attention will be devoted to the philosophical-political and political-institutional peculiarities that emerged in European states between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 19th century. From the English Revolutions of the 17th Century and later with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, parliamentary democracy, secularization, religious tolerance and the recognition of human rights became traditionally not only the key ideas of the definition of "being European", but real universal guiding principles to export and, if necessary, to impose on the rest of the globe. But can we really coincide the advent of European modernity with the beginnings of the process of secularization? What was the relationship between Christian churches and modernity? What was the relationship between Catholic Church and human rights since the Lumières century?

F. Chabod, Storia dell’idea di Europa, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
P. Prodi, Homo Europaeus, Bologna, Il Mulino
V. Ferrone, Lo strano Illuminismo di Joseph Ratzinger. Chiesa, modernità e diritti dell’uomo, Roma-Bari, Laterza.