The Commonplace of Humanity: On Cosmism and Its (Un)certainties

We, humans, are forgetful creatures. We dwell in a radical forgetting that we are always already participants in and of the Cosmos; that our finite existence unfolds within an infinite whole.

This course tries to recover what has been forgotten. It asks: What does it mean for a finite being to live in an infinite universe? How did the recognition of cosmic order—eternal, perfect, sublime—compel humans to confront their own finitude and seek (their own) eternality? When humanity turned its attention to the stars, what did it discover about itself? And has there ever been a moment when we looked away?

Across eight weeks, students will encounter thinkers who refused to separate human existence from cosmic existence. By doing so, this course will trace how the eternal element of the cosmos became inseparable from human self-understanding, and vice versa.

Through close reading of primary texts—essays, aphorisms, philosophical fragments—students will engage foundational questions that transcend disciplinary boundaries. The aim is not to answer these questions definitively, but to elevate them, to place them at the highest level of an intellectual conversation. In doing so, we elevate human qua human: human not being reduced to une quantité négligeable (a negligible quantity), but understood as the necessary and fundamental site where infinity becomes conscious of itself.