THE GREAT COURSES; THE GREAT IDEAS OF PHILOSOPHY 2ND ED. PARTS 1-5 DVDS AND COURSE GUIDEBOOK

PROFESSOR DANIEL N. ROBINSON

ISBN 10: 1565859820 ISBN 13: 9781565859821

Publisher: The Great Courses, 2004

This course of 60 lectures is intended to introduce the student to main currents and issues in philosophical thought from the founding of the subject in ancient Greece to more contemporary studies. The lectures are organized around abiding problems: the problem of knowledge (epistemology and metaphysics), the problem of conduct (ethics and moral philosophy), and the problem of governance (political science and law). Each of these has by now evolved into a specialized subject treated rigorously in professional texts and journals. But even in these more technical projections, the problems remain largely as they were when the schools of Plato and Aristotle dealt with them and imposed on them the features they still retain. More than a series of lectures on the great philosophers, this course is designed to acquaint the student with broader cultural and historical conditions that favoured or opposed a given philosophical perspective. Attention is paid to the influence that scientific developments had on the very conception of philosophy and on the scientific rejection of "metaphysics" that took place when the "two cultures" began to take separate paths. Needless to say, the vast terrain that philosophy seeks to cover extends far beyond what can be explored in 60 lectures - or in 200 lectures! Entire areas of active scholarship have been ignored. But still, other areas have been more carefully examined than is customary in an introductory course such as the philosophy of law, philosophy and aesthetics, evolutionary and psychoanalytic theory. The hope and expectation is that, informed by these lectures, the interested student will press on, will fashion a fuller curriculum of study, and will return to these lectures for the more general framework within which the specialized knowledge ultimately must find a place

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