The course presents an interpretation and an evaluation of the fate of modernity, as understood by some of the most influential thinkers of the past 250 years -- and involving different currents in the arts, social history, cultural theory, politics and philosophy. 'Modernity' is understood here to entail such things as the emergence of the nation-state; ambitious claims for the authority of reason in human affairs; the increasing authority of the natural sciences; the advent of a discourse of natural or human rights; aesthetic modernism; capitalism and the free market; globalization and social movements that take up new demands of mutuality, from feminism to the labor movement. Each of these issues will be addressed, through readings of works by Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Darwin, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Arendt and others -- alongside consideration of a range of cultural products and social practices.