Alan Charles Kors
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., Harvard University
 

Alan Charles Kors is Henry Charles Lea Professor of European History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching since 1968. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his Master's and Doctoral degrees from Harvard University.

Professor Kors is the author and editor of several books on European intellectual history, including D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris; Atheism in France, 1660-1729: The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief; and Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany. He is editor-in-chief of the four-volume Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment.

Professor Kors has served as a member of the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities and on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals. He has received postdoctoral fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Professor Kors has won two awards for distinguished college teaching and the Engalitcheff Award for defense of academic freedom. With Harvey A. Silverglate, he is co-author of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses. He is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

 
Courses by this professor:

Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
This course brings together 12 professors for 84 lectures on more than 60 of the most important thinkers in history. Enjoy the benefit of learning from the finest scholar-teachers active today while you study the key ideas of influential philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the Postmodernists. The curriculum is comprehensive, incisive, and thought-provoking—in short, an intellectual experience to be treasured.
Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
Between 1600 and 1800, Europe was seized by an intellectual revolution that challenged previous ways of understanding and sparked radical changes in thought and life. Learn about the age of Newton, Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Rousseau, and more from one of world’s leading intellectual historians.
Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
In Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment, leading intellectual historian and Professor Alan Charles Kors shares with you his view of Voltaire as one of the most intriguing, influential—and elusive—thinkers of the modern world. Focusing on the most enduring aspects of Voltaire's work and thought, Professor Kors sketches a vibrant, thought-provoking vision of Voltaire as "the father of the Enlightenment" and one of the great literary personalities of all time. What was his world like? What writers and thinkers influenced him? What questions and dilemmas did he ponder? And what is his legacy on the history of both Western philosophy and literature?
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition & Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition (Set)  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
Get a comprehensive look at more than 3,000 years of Western intellectual ideas and the profound philosophers who developed them. Start by surveying more than 60 of our intellectual tradition's greatest minds in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition. Then, continue your exploration of Western philosophy with The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, in which you focus on the concepts and theories behind these enduring intellectual thinkers.
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$815 		Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition & Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (Set)  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
Investigate profound life lessons and philosophical ideas in these two illuminating courses. Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition is a comprehensive survey of the history of Western philosophy from its origins in classical Greece to the present. Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life takes the underlying ideas of great written works and shows you how to put them to use in a moral and ethical life.
Rights of Man & The Birth of the Modern Mind (Set)  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
How do profound revolutions in human thought and society come about? The answers to this thought-provoking question are contained in this two-course set: The Rights of Man: Great Thinkers and Great Movements—which charts the history of the human rights movement—and The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries, which takes you through the dilemmas, debates, events, and works that produced the Age of Enlightenment.
Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle & Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition (Set)  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
Meet some of Western philosophy's greatest thinkers and explore their undeniable impact on how we view and understand the world around us with this two-course set. Start with an engaging introduction to the three ancient thinkers who gave birth to our intellectual tradition in Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Then, get a comprehensive survey of Western philosophy as it extends from its origins in classical Greece up to the dilemmas of the late 20th century in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition.
Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida & Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Set)  
By Professor Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania
Embark on an intriguing and illuminating foray into the development of modern philosophical concepts, ideas, and thinkers with this two-course set. First, explore the foundations of modern and contemporary Western approaches to reality and knowledge with The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida. Then, solidify your understanding of modern philosophy by taking a closer look at its roots in the 1600s and 1700s with The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries.