Modern Intellectual Tradition

ABS Reading Group on The Modern Intellectual Tradition

The Modern Intellectual Tradition: Part 2

This reading group is the second in a series of groups dedicated to exploring, in light of the Bahá’í Writings, the work of major thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution. The first group, which convened this past fall, focused on how the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant helped to transform our understanding of the world we live in, and the implications of this transformation for the advancement of civilization. This second group considers the writings of influential nineteenth-century thinkers—such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche—who were grappling with many of the issues also being addressed by the Revelations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. This will set the stage for subsequent reading groups, which will examine major contributions to philosophical thought during the Twentieth Century. With a view to refining our capacity to participate in discourses concerned with contemporary intellectual trends, the group will listen to Lawrence Cahoone’s lecture series, “The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida” and read supplementary material from selected sources. We will also draw correlations with passages from the writings of the Faith to enrich our understanding of the content.

Participants are encouraged to participate for the full 90 minutes as often as they can. Participants will benefit most from the reading group by listening to the assigned lectures and engaging with readings and relevant Bahá’í writings, before we meet. A familiarity with the key questions and answers will also be helpful in elevating the conversation, which is sharply focused on the weekly assignments. While our goal is 100% participation, not everyone will be ready for that. The use of the chat option for sharing questions, comments, concerns, and citations, is highly encouraged. At the end of eight weeks, we hope to have a modest shareable resource suggesting potential correlations between the Bahá’í writings and some elements in Cahoone’s lectures.

Texts:

Lectures: “The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida” by Lawrence Cahoone
The Bahá’í Reference Library
Sergeev, M. (2021). Studies in Bahá’í Epistemology: Essays and Commentaries.

Supplementary Material:

The Dream of Reason: The Rise of Modern Philosophy, by Anthony Gottlieb
Philosophy: The Classics, by Nigel Warburton
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Relevant Wikipedia articles.

Facilitator: Maureen Flynn-Burhoe

Schedule: Weekly (Tuesday) 21 Jan – 11 Mar, 7:00 to 8:30 PM Eastern Time

Registration capacity: 12

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The reading group on the Modern Intellectual Tradition is the first in a series of four groups dedicated to exploring, in the light of the Bahá’í writings, the work of major thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution

Week 1 Descartes at the dawn of the Modern Age See Cahoone (2010:7-16) "Philosophy and the Modern Age".
Week 2 Scholasticism and the Scientific Revolution See Cahoone (2010:17-29) "Scholasticism and the Scientific Revolution".
Week 3 The Rationalism and Dualism of Descartes See Cahoone (2020:29 ) YouTube lecture and Transcript. See also Warburton (2014: Chapter 6) and Gottlieb (2016 Chapter 1)
© 2025 Maureen Flynn-Burhoe. Last updated 2025