Great Ideas of Philosophy

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Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to HomerScope: In the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, Theseus, having killed the Minotaur, is able to escape from thelabyrinth only because Ariadne had given him a golden cord by which he can retrace his steps. Myths arean endless source of metaphor, and the cord of Ariadne is an apt metaphor for history: We solve a problemor a puzzle by retracing the steps that got us where we are. In these 60 lectures on philosophy from remoteantiquity to the 21 st century, history will be our guide.Central to the history of philosophy are three overarching problems. For the sake of economy, these maybe dubbed the problem of knowledge, the problem of conduct, and the problem of governance. The first ofthese would be developed within the fields now called epistemology and metaphysics. The second is thedomain of ethics and moral philosophy. The third is the province of political science and jurisprudence.But these developed realms of reflective inquiry were slow to reveal themselves to human intelligence.Beginning in mimesis, in dance and ritual that encode and explain the world, the questions become moreinsistent, and as a whole, communities begin to ponder the nature of things. The dance is augmented bysong and poetry, by epic tales so vivid that children never forget the main characters and theirextraordinary experiences and exploits and that pose, in different terms, the fundamental questions: What isthe world? What should I do? How are our lives to be ordered? Between 800 and 600 B.C., such accountsproliferated. Both the Hindu Upanishads and Homer’s famous epics are rich in what may be called prephilosophicalreflections on the human condition and the point and purpose of life. Such works are thebackground “folk” wisdom of an age; philosophy is a refinement or a rejection of the claims of the dancerand the bard.OutlineI. We are about to embark on an intellectual journey of 60 lectures devoted to great ideas in philosophy, coveringa period of time from remote antiquity to the present century. Our guide will be the history of ideas.A. We begin with myth, which seeks to answer perplexing questions but does so in such a way as to createand preserve a kind of civic coherence. The mythology of a people is the basis on which they recognizethemselves as a people and have a coherent relationship, not only to each other but with their own past.B. To some extent, philosophy is disruptive in this regard. The enterprise is not an essentially civic one. Itdoes not begin with a settled position on political and moral matters, then seek ways to enshrine the settledview. Rather, the mission is a broadly epistemological one. The search, as we shall discover, is the searchfor truth.C. Nonetheless, the questions that mythology must set out to answer are not unlike the questions thatphilosophy sets out to answer. We can identify three overarching issues that consume much of the subjectmatter of philosophy: the problem of knowledge, the problem of conduct, and the problem of governance.1. The problem of knowledge is straightforward. How is it that we come to know anything? On whatbasis do we undertake to frame and seek answers to questions? Long before the appearance ofphilosophy, people facing the challenges of daily life were required to seek knowledge, if onlypractical knowledge. In philosophy, the problem reaches beyond the practical and the everyday tomore general and abstract realms.2. The problem of conduct is nothing less than the problem of deciding how one’s life should be lived.How should I conduct myself in such a way that my life is a satisfying one? How will I be able to actin a way that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain? What sort of person should I strive to be?What’s the nature of the relationships I have to others?3. Were there no basis on which to plan or conduct a course of life, there would be no real “problem” tobe solved politically. The problem of governance arises in light of conflicts at the level of conduct. Onwhat basis does a people come to understand itself as a people? What is the basis on which modes ofleadership are chosen? What is the basis on which leaders are resisted, revolutions staged, radicalupheaval fomented?2©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
D. Long before the appearance of philosophy, issues of this sort were engaged, often heroically, by personsand by entire communities. Indeed, philosophy comes about at a late stage in the development of this dailyencounter with the problems of knowledge, conduct, and governance.II. The Upanishads are a brilliant example of the vast body of morality tales that appeared in many settledcommunities between 800 and 600 B.C.A. The etymology of the word Upanishad carries the action of “sitting next to,” as in “sitting next to themaster.” The Hindu Upanishads pose philosophical questions, but the answers are mythic.B. The questions posed by the Upanishads are the abiding ones: Where do we come from? How do weexplain the fact that some things live and other things don’t? How did this great earth come about, andwhat are we to make of the objects in the sea and sky? What kind of life should I be living? Why is thereso much evil in the world?C. Central to the Upanishads is the notion that the universe itself, and everything in it, exists in virtue of somefundamental power or force or fire, a kind of cosmic soul, Atman, which because of its presence, givesreality to things and to us.1. We share something fundamentally in common with the universe itself. We have the breath of firewithin us. We have soul within us. It is an imperishable feature of our very nature. Everything thatthere is participates in the cosmic Atman.2. There is a sense that there is something fundamentally identical between the life of the person and thelife of the cosmos, that one is the microcosmic expression of the macrocosm.D. These teachings come to equate Atman not only with fire and life and creativity but also with Brahma, aform of knowledge, knowledge as the manifestation of the spirit. The quest for knowledge then becomesquite a natural undertaking for those invested with Atman, and Brahma becomes the search that renders lifemeaningful.E. All comes from the soul (Atman), even space itself. Creation is attributed to an imperishable and heavenlyperson, Purusha, who though breathless, gives breath. Again, what is Brahma? It is breath; it is thought; itis enlightenment. Thus, it is the macrocosm within the microcosm, which is oneself—both the self and thecosmos endowed with Atman.F. Through the Upanishads, we have the beliefs of an ancient culture, a distinctly Eastern culture; however,nearly all civilized people adopt the Hindu teachings on ethical grounds. The Buddha’s teachings includerules against killing and theft, against any form of moral degradation, against cruelty and deception.Nonetheless, the teachings do not stand as philosophy.III. Moving from East to West, we can make certain comparisons between the Upanishads and the famous epics ofthe blind poet Homer, composed circa 750 B.C.A. What moves the Homeric actors is not precepts coming from above but something arising insidethemselves. Diomedes, for example, is said to be overcome by lyssa, the blind rage of the wolf.B. The gods in Homer are enlarged versions of the hero, in fact, often have sired or mothered the hero. Whatdivides humanity and divinity is mortality; otherwise, they have much in common, including little powerover destiny itself.C. There is something terribly immediate and awesomely human and real in the Homeric epics. We findourselves on every page. There are no final answers to the questions of why things happen. Why, forexample, does the Trojan War take place? Is it the anger of the gods? The pride of men?D. Iliad and Odyssey are entirely open-textured at the levels we call epistemology, ethics, and politicalscience.1. The problem of knowledge is underscored in the epics in the form of delusional dreams, gods imitatingmortals, hallucinatory experiences.2. The origin of conduct is illustrated repeatedly by our vulnerability to our own passions, our loss ofrational control.3. The problem of governance in this war of princes and kings is written in blood and gore, where theDestinies are more powerful than the rule of law.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 3
Page 3 and 4: Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
Page 8 and 9: E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
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Page 12 and 13: 4. Looking at geometry, we are told
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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
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Page 27 and 28: Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
Page 29 and 30: Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Page 43 and 44: Functionalism: The view that consci
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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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III. Roman law successfully permitt
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Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
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B. Augustine approaches the problem
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B. Very early, the Islamic commitme
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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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