Professor Steinby kirjeldab loengu sisu järgmiselt: „The modern subjectivity emerged in the seventeenth and the eighteenth century in two different phases: while Cartesianism and the ensuing philosophical empiricism and rationalism claimed the epistemological sovereignty of the subject, the late eighteenth-century historicism and Romanticism emphasised the historical variety of humanity and the diverse ways in which individuals experience the world. The development can be best followed in the eighteenth-century novels.