Great Ideas of Philosophy

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D. Society is a fit subject for scientific study, but first, the absurdities must be identified and eliminated.Hobbes gives central importance to speech. Although speech confers power and aids memory, it also lendsitself to abuses.1. We reason with terms that have no settled meaning. Something about the way in which we representproblems to ourselves in words makes them soluble or not, clear or obscure.2. We fail to distinguish between real bodies and spirituous, immaterial things; we speak of “infusingfaith” into somebody, thus signaling profound ignorance of what can do the infusing and be infused.3. We remain tied to that old Platonic mistake, according to which “universals” are granted realexistence. Only particular things have existence.4. We treat metaphors as if they were real, and we complacently adopt terms for which there are no realworldreferents. The Scholastics are to blame for this.E. Reality is physical reality, material reality. If we are to have a scientific understanding of man, then manmust be accepted as a material entity.F. Society, composed of such entities, is then understood as a complex system made up of (human) matter inmotion.1. Motion is either involuntary and reflexive (“vital”) or intentional.2. Our motives and desires prompt intentional movements; we move toward what we want and awayfrom what we fear or dislike. The root motives are grounded in pleasure versus pain.3. The most fundamental desire is that of survival.4. All our moral and ethical standards inherited from philosophy and religion are actually grounded inconsiderations of personal survival. Good and evil are not devoid of meaning, but they mean simply“pleasure” and “pain.”G. It is fear of a violent death that moves us to enter civil society.1. Men gather in groups to prevent their destruction by other men.2. Within society, members differ in ability but are sufficiently equal that no one of them could singlyresist the power exerted by a combination of them.3. Therefore, they invest a protector with such power as is necessary to protect each of them from theothers in the same group. This monarchical power is the “leviathan”—the state.4. We give up enough of our power to the monarch that he will have sufficient options to protect us. Butour allegiance to the leviathan—and, hence, the monarch’s power—lasts only as long as he is able toprotect us, our interests, and our lives.III. Hobbes’s entire thesis is based on a hedonistic psychology, and Hobbes is not at all sheepish about stating asmuch.A. In a nutshell, the sovereign has the power of reward or punishment. It is by that power that we move—away from punishment and toward reward. What passes for altruism or Christian charity is itself anexpression of self-regard and self-preservation, based either on a desire for honor or eternal reward or on afear of reprisal.B. Concord in the state is the equivalent of health in the body. Sedition is sickness. Ultimately, sedition leadsto civil war, and civil war is death—it kills civic life. These are not metaphors but exact correspondences.IV. Hobbes’s critique of Descartes is cogent, and Descartes’s extended reply is not entirely convincing.A. Asked by Marin Mersenne to offer (along with Pierre Gassendi, now known chiefly as the 17 th -centurywriter who revived Epicurean philosophy, and Mersenne himself) a critique of Descartes’s work, Hobbestook issue with Descartes’s rationalistic mind/body distinction.B. Instead, Hobbes offers a view of human nature as a part of nature, subject to the same governing laws. Thetools developed to study and discover the laws and principles of nature can be applied to human nature.V. The age of Newton came to host increasingly mechanistic conceptions of the body politic and of society atlarge. Hobbes’s Leviathan illustrates this turn of mind vividly. Thus, in this age, the prospects for a socialscience are recognized and considered optimistically. Science now begins to take on a “scientistic” flavor suchthat statements and judgments, in order to be credible, must be rendered in ostensibly scientific fashion. TheEnlightenment is at hand.10©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Leviathan. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996.Questions to Consider:1. Conclude whether it follows from the success achieved by Newton and others in physics and astronomy that thesame methods are applicable to social and psychological phenomena.2. Summarize whether “fear of a violent death” is a credible causal explanation for the social tendencies displayedby human beings.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 11
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
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E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
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2. Despite their oracles, priests,
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4. Looking at geometry, we are told
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E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
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of the mystery of earth itself impe
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Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
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Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
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Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
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II. A philosopher is engaged in the
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Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
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Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
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III. The dominant school of Greek m
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1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
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C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
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III. The problem of conduct is then
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C. The Stoic account relies on the
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Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
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Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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Page 70 and 71: Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
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Page 76 and 77: Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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Page 82 and 83: Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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Page 88 and 89: Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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Page 96 and 97: Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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Page 100 and 101: Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Page 104 and 105: Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
Page 107 and 108: Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Page 115 and 116: Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
Page 117: Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Page 123 and 124: Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
Page 125 and 126: Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
Page 127 and 128: Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
Page 129 and 130: efore him were not always faithful
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Page 133 and 134: Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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Page 139 and 140: Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Page 147 and 148: Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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Page 151 and 152: Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Page 161 and 162: Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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insisted that our very character is
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III. Nietzsche was an admirer and o
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B. In the final state, we’re all
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Lecture Forty-ThreeDarwin and Natur
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2. There is room for altruism but o
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1. He is a Hegelian who stands Hege
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Lecture Forty-FiveThe Freudian Worl
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B. How can repressed elements be un
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III. What figures in the human imag
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Lecture Forty-SevenWilliam James’
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Questions to Consider:1. Conclude w
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III. As long as we subscribe to a
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture Forty-NineAlan Turing in th
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C. Searle thinks that the missing i
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3. Even activities could be simulat
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B. The inclination to classify is a
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Lecture Fifty-TwoPhilosophy of Scie
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V. These debates illustrate a far l
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1. The two had in common the idea t
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Questions to Consider:1. What does
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C. Locke and others emphasized that
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Lecture Fifty-FiveWhat Makes a Prob
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B. Kant suggests that the moral law
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1. Proponents have argued that so m
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Lecture Fifty-SevenOn the Nature of
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2. So far as it can coexist with th
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3. Slavery is commonplace in all of
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3. Does the just-war theorist have
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B. The quadrivium comprised arithme
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2. He argues that the former is pre
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1. The objects of the knowable worl
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etween a world of beauty and one of
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⎯⎯⎯. On Free choice of Will.
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Herodotus. The Persian Wars. G. Raw
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———. Toward a Science of Huma
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