Great Ideas of Philosophy

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1. Scholasticism was an attempt to rationalize the teachings of the church. Doctrinal decrees in the 13 thcentury left no doubt but that God had created the universe out of nothingness and that, as anexpression of the divine mind, this same universe was ordered in a rational manner. Both of thesedoctrines were an invitation to forms of inquiry that would evolve into experimentation.2. The further understanding, reinforced by the works of Thomas Aquinas, is that Christian faith and thefacts of science can’t be in conflict, because both reach truths about the same creation. One might needsome sort of algorithm or translation device to get from one to the other, but there is no fundamentaltension between the perspective of the natural philosopher or the natural scientist and the perspectiveof the theological or religious person.3. The Scholastics also owed a debt to Augustine and some of the early church fathers in the assertionthat we have an obligation to know God and that the way to do so is by his works. Thus, Scholasticscholarship recognizes the central place of scientific inquiry in a life of faith.D. Experimental science also engages us in applying our senses to God’s creation and integrating the evidenceof the senses into a more rational framework. As Bacon says in his Opus Maius: “I now wish to unfold theprincipals of experimental science, since without experience nothing can be sufficiently known.”1. Absent direct, sensory commerce with the physical world, knowledge is empty. Bacon goes on to say:For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoningdraws the conclusion, and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain,nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discoversit by the path of experience.2. Bacon understands that we are equipped with two modes of knowing and that the problem ofknowledge must be addressed via two paths: One cannot know anything merely by fashioning abstract,rational depictions of what it might be. What must be combined with rationality is knowledge gleanedby the senses. By the same token, experience must be disciplined and ordered, and this is what“experimentation” achieves.3. The actual experiments conducted by Roger Bacon and his colleagues are interesting, but moreimportant were his thoughts on what he called “the sin of ignorance” and the need for the clergy to bescientifically informed.4. Experimental science, in the hands of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, becomes part of the ethicsof Christian life. It’s not a depreciation of the world to examine it at the sensory level, but it would bea depreciation to leave it there.E. The great medieval Christian philosopher Duns Scotus put the case in yet another way:As for what is known by experience, I have this to say. Even though a person does not experience everysingle individual, but only a great many, nor does he experience them at all times, but only frequently, stillhe knows infallibly that it is always this way, and holds for all instances.1. In other words, once we have sampled a number of cases and have seen how things work out ingeneral, then we can lay claim, by logical inference, to understanding how an individual instance willwork under all circumstances.2. Moreover, Duns Scotus knows this method of inquiry intuitively, in virtue of something “reposing inhis soul.”F. Duns Scotus, Robert Grosseteste, and Roger Bacon are defending a mode of thought in the Scholasticperiod that is “characteristic” of that period, though also original and groundbreaking. This is not an agehostile to the senses, indifferent to experimental modes of inquiry; there’s nothing dark about this period atall. Indeed, the labors of medieval scholarship, particularly in the context of the university—the corpus ofScholastic teaching, methodology, criticism, and analysis—will revive the noblest traditions of the West.Recommended Reading:Haskins, C. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Harvard, 1927.26©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Questions to Consider:1. As the Scholastic thinkers saw no conflict between science and religion, the widely perceived conflict must beof a later date. Summarize what later developments might be the chief source of this conflict.2. Given that experimental science results not in certainties but only in certain general trends, identify on whatbasis the Scholastic thinker might still have confidence in what he discovered. Conclude what, in Aristotle’sphilosophy of science, might have supplied this confidence.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 27
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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
Page 29 and 30: Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
Page 31 and 32: Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
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Page 35 and 36: 1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
Page 37 and 38: Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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Page 43 and 44: Functionalism: The view that consci
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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
Page 82 and 83: Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
Page 84 and 85: E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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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 and 118: Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Page 121 and 122: B. Other things can be known to be
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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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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Great Ideas of Philosophy

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