Great Ideas of Philosophy

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establish a highly disciplined regime of early instruction. Further, to eliminate greed and resentment, theremust be no money payments or property ownership in the community, and both wives and children must bepossessed in common by the community itself.B. Glaucon asks how the state will arrange to have a pool of suitable offspring to become guardians, and thescheme Socrates puts forth is pure eugenics, selective breeding for the purpose of acquiring those with theright natural endowments for the vital role of guardian.C. Glaucon points out to Socrates that even good breeding may produce worthless offspring, and sometimes,mediocre parents have heroic children. Socrates says that undesirable infants are to be exposed. The statehas no need for what it cannot use.V. We now turn to the problem of knowledge as dealt with in Plato’s Republic, where it figures centrally becauseSocrates must justify positions that seem to go against what most Athenians would take for granted.A. The problem of knowledge is illustrated in Republic famously in the “allegory of the cave.” In the cave,men are shackled and can see only a wall on which shadows are projected; they take the shadows forreality.1. Being shackled is equivalent to being a material object, being tied to a body.2. The shadows are taken for real, just as men take their own passions and points of view for the onlytruth, as Protagoras argues.3. When one of the prisoners in the cave breaks his chains and climbs to the light, he sees what neverbefore had been seen and begins to recognize that everything he had taken as true was just someshadowy illusion.4. When this prisoner returns to the cave to inform his cohorts of his experience, they believe that he hasbeen blinded by the light. In the allegory, the “light” is the guidance of the philosopher to universaltruths.B. We begin to recognize that the problem of knowledge is going to return always to a search for what isuniversally true, for a search for relationships, because it is the relationship that constitutes the true form.1. The question “What is it that makes a government good?” must be answered in terms of certainrelationships that obtain between the governing body and those governed, between the laws and thosewho are fit for the rule of law, and so on.2. Justice, too, is understood as the harmonious relationship among the rational, the passionate, and theemotional dispositions of the soul.C. The Republic offers a rigorously behavioristic theory of moral and civic development. Children must beprotected, for example, against the corrupting influence of dithyrambic music. Children must also betrained in the disciplines of the good soldier.D. To return to the story of Gyges, the point of the dialogue is not to examine what people will do if they wereable to make themselves invisible. The point of philosophy is to determine how people ought to behave,not how they do behave.1. Socrates recognizes that people are corporeal entities, inclined by pleasure and pain. He says that wemight regard ourselves as charioteers, pulled by both a good horse and a bad horse.2. The metaphor of the chariot and the good and bad steed is also found in the Katha Upanishads: “Knownow the soul [atman] as riding in a chariot. He who lacks understanding, whose mind is not constantlyheld firm, his sense is uncontrolled, like the vicious horses of a chariot driver.”3. We see from India to Athens this useful metaphor of the impulses of the body being like an untamedsteed, pulling us in one direction. Socrates recognizes that we must have a will capable of resolvingitself to follow the right course of action.4. The will itself cannot determine the right course of action, and desire knows only one course ofaction—that by virtue of which it fulfills itself. How, then, do we discover the right course of action?The answer is through the supremacy of reason, which in turn, is a reflection of our recognition thatmathematical proportion, harmony, and balance must be the guides and the goals of life.Recommended Reading:Plato. The Republic and Protagoras, in The Dialogues of Plato, 2 vols. B. Jowett, trans. Random House, 1937.26©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philosophy,” in The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World. J. Boardman etal., eds. Oxford, 1991.Questions to Consider:1. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, regarded the Plato of the Republic as a garden-varietyfascist. Explain whether this is a sound reading of the dialogue.2. Conclude whether there has ever been a “philosopher king.” Marcus Aurelius comes to mind, and the record hecompiled was rather mixed. Explain whether the special talents required for each of these distinctive vocationsis the same or even compatible.3. Conclude whether virtue can be taught.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 27
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 and 26: II. A philosopher is engaged in the
Page 27 and 28: Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
Page 29: Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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
Page 74 and 75: B. Very early, the Islamic commitme
Page 76 and 77: Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
Page 78 and 79: 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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