Great Ideas of Philosophy

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Questions to Consider:1. Explain whether the “Socratic method” is able to do any more than disclose confusions—whether it has acreative as well as a critical contribution to make.2. Summarize how the notion of “pure forms” and skepticism regarding perception stand up against modernscientific conceptions of knowledge.22©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Scope: In the dialogue Protagoras, Socrates must learn from Protagoras how his young friend Hippocrates shouldbe educated and where he should be schooled if were he to become a fine sculptor or an expert physician.Receiving predictable replies from Protagoras, Socrates then asks what it is that young Hippocrates shouldaspire to be for it to make sense for him to study with Protagoras! The answer given by Protagoras is“virtue,” but then Socrates must ask whether this is the sort of thing that can be taught.OutlineI. The skeptics ask: Why is the conduct of life problematical? Why is it that we cannot simply live in such a wayas to maximize our own satisfactions and take others into account only insofar as they stand in our way andmust be avoided or defeated?A. There may be truths in mathematics but not in the conduct of life, which is a matter of personal taste anddesire. Nobody can tell others how to live.B. To counter the skeptics’ position, Socrates must make a case that there is a problem of conduct and that itcan be solved with the same argumentative and analytical resources that proved successful in the search forknowledge itself.II. In the dialogue Protagoras, Socrates deferentially asks the famed Sophist Protagoras how his young friendHippocrates should be educated: Where should he be schooled? What is it he might learn from Protagoras?A. Protagoras goes along with the inquiry: were Hippocrates to be a fine sculptor, he ought to study withPhidias; to be an expert physician, with the Aesculapian school. Socrates then asks what it is that youngHippocrates might become expert in studying with Protagoras.B. The answer given by Protagoras is “virtue,” moral excellence, arête. Socrates must then ask what is virtueand whether it is the sort of thing that can be taught. The dialogue explores these questions.III. To teach anything one must know what it is. What is virtue? Is it one thing or many?A. Are justice, holiness, and temperance separate virtues or parts of virtue as a whole? It makes a difference,because if they are separate, it should be possible for a person to be, for example, just but intemperate orholy but unjust. Protagoras’s answer, that these qualities are parts of virtue, introduces confusion. If justiceis separate from and not in any way like temperance, then temperance must match up with what is not just,that is, with injustice!B. Socrates then pursues the question of whether virtue can be taught. Why would he raise this question?Socrates appreciates that there’s something about moral excellence that defies merely academic exercisesor pedagogical undertakings. There seems to be something in the human being that reflects, generates,expresses virtue. How can something of this nature be “taught”?C. We do not say of persons that they are virtuous in the morning but not so in the afternoon. We tend to thinkthat a person is virtuous when there is a quality about the person that expresses itself in almost everycontext. For that to be the case, it must be because the actions of the person are guided by a principle orprecept that is at once unified and universally applicable.D. Obedience to this principle is not blind, however. Expressions of virtue presuppose knowledge; courage,for example, arises not from ignorance of what is involved in one’s actions but with full knowledge of therisks.E. Thus, virtue seems to be a quality regulative of conduct, but if it is a universal, then it cannot be accessedby the senses. The senses can pick up only particulars, not universals. If behind persons of virtue, therestands a universal principle, an impelling principle, applicable in all contexts and known in some nonsensoryway, then virtue is like the Pythagorean theorem—a matter of relationships.F. If virtue cannot be learned by experience—that is, by some sort of perceptual activity—then how can it betaught at all?1. In most contents, we teach by pointing to instances of what we are teaching, but we cannot point tovirtue, which is a universal. A universal precept cannot be the subject of ostensible definition.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 23
Page 3 and 4: Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
Page 6 and 7: Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
Page 8 and 9: E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
Page 10 and 11: 2. Despite their oracles, priests,
Page 12 and 13: 4. Looking at geometry, we are told
Page 15 and 16: E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
Page 17 and 18: of the mystery of earth itself impe
Page 19 and 20: Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
Page 21 and 22: Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
Page 23 and 24: Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
Page 25: II. A philosopher is engaged in the
Page 29 and 30: Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
Page 31 and 32: Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
Page 33 and 34: III. The dominant school of Greek m
Page 35 and 36: 1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
Page 37 and 38: Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
Page 39 and 40: 1705...............................
Page 41 and 42: 1873...............................
Page 43 and 44: Functionalism: The view that consci
Page 45 and 46: Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
Page 47 and 48: progress in one of its most summoni
Page 49 and 50: John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
Page 51: The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
Page 54 and 55: Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
Page 56 and 57: Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
Page 58 and 59: C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
Page 60 and 61: III. The problem of conduct is then
Page 62 and 63: C. The Stoic account relies on the
Page 64 and 65: Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
Page 66 and 67: Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
Page 68 and 69: III. Roman law successfully permitt
Page 70 and 71: Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
Page 72 and 73: B. Augustine approaches the problem
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Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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IV. The third great institutional c
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1. Scholasticism was an attempt to
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Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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historical volumes tell Florentines
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Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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1. First, the courts required a doc
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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B. This expansion, however, does no
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1. This standard essentially rules
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Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
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Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Levi
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B. Other things can be known to be
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Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
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Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
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Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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efore him were not always faithful
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2. His Letters on the English makes
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Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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VI. The Federalist Papers and the g
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III. Kant argues that there is some
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Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Questions to Consider:1. A hypothet
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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C. Though his system would be mocke
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1. There is nothing in the physics
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F. To include Hegel within the trad
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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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