Taking its departure from the Western cultural project of historical humanism, this seminar will ask questions about the erotic and affective developments that occur within the processes of humanism’s emergence as the cultural dominant within domains of knowledge production, creativity and species formation. These questions presume that the erotic is both a necessary component in the development of humanism—one of its necessary conditions—and also one of the consequences of that emergence. Readings will move from Plato to Foucault and shall include creative, critical and theoretical works.