Great Ideas of Philosophy

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IV. The third great institutional creation of the medieval period was chivalry, a symbology that expresses faith,devotion, purity, and a longing for the unattainable.A. The word chivalry brings to mind the knight-errant with his preposterous manners, as well as thoseincredible jousting matches where otherwise intelligent men mount horses and kill each other in the interestof gaining love. What was the point of all this, and how did it bear on what we have called the problem ofconduct?B. First, it is important to identify the chivalric knight as, essentially, a “secular priest.” He is the executivebranch of a government, at the top of which is the church itself, the repository of that rational and divinetemplate that should govern the work of the world.1. Right reason is the reason of the church because it is directly inspired by God. And the reason of Godmust now express itself through a willful, faithful, and “iconic” medium, who is the knight-errant.2. In this, we have the arrangement of what Plato argued was the nature of human nature: a soul, thetripartite elements of which are the rational, the passionate, and the volitional. It is also akin to theHoly Trinity, a unity within diversity.3. The knight’s code features ritualized self-sacrifice as a form of nobility. His politeness symbolizes hisstrength, for he is reserved and retreating by choice. He has complete control of his emotions, which iswhy he can serve any one of the causes of justice. The only insult is an insult to honor.C. Chivalry is one of the great civilizing influences in the history of Western civilization. It could be given tocertain excesses and lend itself to comic renditions, but in this institution, we find the incorporation ofsome of the most deeply held precepts of classical philosophy and the Christian ethic.Recommended Reading:Ferruolo, S. The Origins of the University. Stanford, 1985.Keen, M. Chivalry. New Haven, 1984.Lerner, R., and Mahdi, M., eds. Medieval Political Philosophy. Ithaca, 1963.Questions to Consider:1. Consider the role of the university as an institution in the history of Western civilization. Explain whether it isstill playing the role for which it was originally conceived.2. Compare how the hierarchic ordering of the medieval world matches up with Plato’s Republic and concludehow the two are different—especially in light of the particulars of Christian faith.24©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Lecture Twenty-OneThe Reappearance of Experimental ScienceScope: The medieval universities yielded not only that famous form of “logic-chopping” that today would behonored by the title “Analytical Philosophy” but a renewed commitment to natural science. This amountedto a renewed interest in the creation as a reflection of the divine, a belief that will be bequeathed to aWestern community able to move forward with it to a new kind of science. It is at Oxford in the 13 thcentury that Roger Bacon and others will recover the spirit of experimental modes of inquiry. Here, then, isthe first of the two great Renaissances.OutlineI. Intellectual historians point to a “renaissance” in the 13 th century partly to call attention to the fact that the termRenaissance, used of the 15 th century, was itself an invention of the 19 th century, coined chiefly by scholars inthe fields of the history of art and architecture.A. What does one mean by a renaissance? A “rebirth” presupposes that something once born in the past hasdied and is now to be revived.B. The Italian Renaissance considered the ancient and humanistic values of Greece and Rome to have been setaside during the “medieval” period. But in light of the rich philosophical undertakings of the later medievalperiod, there is no basis on which to suggest that this part of the classical achievement had in any sense“died.”C. It would be no exaggeration to say that if we wish to consider the rebirth of one of the defining features ofthe classical world, our attention should be focused on the Islamic commentators on Aristotle in the 11 thcentury and on the medieval universities of Britain and the European continent in the 12 th and 13 thcenturies. It is in these developments that we find a more secure and settled West recovering its owntraditions.1. Consider Peter Abelard (1079–1142), one of the most celebrated teachers of his time; his treatise Sic etNon (“Yes and No”) allowed readers to see the contradictions and inconsistencies in the works of theearly church fathers. His autobiography, which he titled Historia Calamitatum (“An Account of [My]Misfortunes”), is a summary of the envy and resentment aroused by his formidable intelligence andphilosophical powers and by his tragic love affair with the brilliant Heloise.2. Sic et Non employs a method of teaching that calls for the presentation of a major thesis orproposition, the arguments favoring it, the arguments opposing it, and a conclusion judged to bewarranted by the force of argument on each side.3. In Sic et Non, 158 such propositions are submitted to analysis, covering a range of problems inmetaphysics, theology, and ethics. A burning issue at the time—and one that still warrants carefulconsideration—concerns the ontological status of universals. Abelard drew attention to the idleness ofsuch controversies and to the limitations of radical positions on both sides of the issue.II. The first half of the 13 th century also hosted a revival of experimental science.A. By way of background, we should note that secondary sources routinely highlight the achievements inabstract philosophy of the ancient world at the expense of its scientific achievements.1. As we’ve seen, the ancients made a number of contributions in medicine, biology, physics, astronomy,and so on.2. Further, thanks to Islamic commentaries on Hellenic texts, the West began to recover the naturalscience works of Aristotle and see in these the possibility for progressive knowledge.B. Two figures of immense importance are found at the University of Oxford, both members of the Catholicclergy and both among the most instructed minds of their century. First, in Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253), bishop of Lincoln, we find a scholar as much at home with optics as with theology. Grossetestestudied and wrote on Aristotle’s ethical treatises, as well as the Physics. By the time of his death, he hadcreated at Oxford an interest in what his student Roger Bacon would come to call experimental science.C. Roger Bacon and the late-Scholastic dons of Oxford would lay the foundations for the fruitfulcontroversies and new methods of the 16 th - and 17 th -century modern scientific movement.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 25
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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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Page 29 and 30: Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Page 56 and 57: Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
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Page 64 and 65: Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
Page 66 and 67: Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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Page 70 and 71: Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
Page 72 and 73: B. Augustine approaches the problem
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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 100 and 101: Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Page 115 and 116: Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
Page 117 and 118: 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
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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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