Expertise

European Enlightenment, French Literature, History of Science, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Descartes

Biography

Daniel H. Leonard, Associate Professor of Instruction, completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University in French Literature. His research traces the development of the Enlightenment human sciences through the lens of the history of science and aesthetics, with a special focus on the relation between humans and machines. His publications include articles on Enlightenment theories of knowledge and comparative religion. He is the co-author (with Rosalind C. Morris) of The Returns of Fetishism: Charles de Brosses and the Afterlives of an Idea.

 

Selected Publications

• Daniel Leonard and Rosalind Morris, The Returns of Fetishism: Charles de Brosses and the Afterlives of an Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
• “Fetishism and Figurism in Charles de Brosses’ Du culte des dieux fétiches: Natural Historical Facts and Historical Fictions.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 45 (2016).
• “Condillac’s Animated Statue and the Art of Philosophizing: Aesthetic Experience in the Traité des sensations.” Dalhousie Review 82.3 (Autumn 2002): 491-513.

Courses Taught

• Intellectual Heritage 1: The Good Life
• Intellectual Heritage 2: The Common Good
• The Global Good in Athens, Greece (Summer study abroad program)
• The Global Good in Prague, Czech Republic (Summer study abroad program)