Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Ed.pdf

The Great Ideas of

Philosophy, 2 nd Edition

Part I

Professor Daniel N. Robinson

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.

Philosophy Faculty, Oxford University

Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, Georgetown University

Daniel Robinson is Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, Georgetown University, where he taught from 1971 to 2001.

He is a member of the philosophy faculty of Oxford University and former Adjunct Professor of Psychology at

Columbia University. Although his doctorate was earned in neuropsychology (1965, City University of New York),

his scholarly books and articles have established him as an authority in the history and philosophy of psychology,

history of ideas, philosophy of mind, and kindred subjects.

Dr. Robinson’s books include The Enlightened Machine: An Analytical Introduction to Neuropsychology

(Columbia, 1980), Psychology and Law (Oxford, 1980), Philosophy of Psychology (Columbia, 1985), Aristotle’s

Psychology (1989), An Intellectual History of Psychology (3 rd edition, Wisconsin, 1995), and Wild Beasts and Idle

Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Harvard, 1996). He has served as principal

consultant to PBS for the award-winning series The Brain and the subsequent nine-part series The Mind . He is past

president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association: the Division of the History of Psychology

and the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Dr. Robinson also serves on the Board of Scholars of

Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, is a member of the American

Philosophical Association, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Table of Contents

The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2 nd Edition

Part I

Professor Biography ............................................................................................i

Course Scope .......................................................................................................1

Lecture One From the Upanishads to Homer .................................2

Lecture Two PhilosophyDid the Greeks Invent It?.....................5

Lecture Three Pythagoras and the Divinity of Number ....................7

Lecture Four What Is There? ..........................................................9

Lecture Five The Greek Tragedians on Man’s Fate .....................12

Lecture Six Herodotus and the Lamp of History ........................15

Lecture Seven Socrates on the Examined Life ................................17

Lecture Eight Plato’s Search for Truth...........................................20

Lecture Nine Can Virtue Be Taught? ............................................23

Lecture Ten Plato’s Republic —Man Writ Large .........................25

Lecture Eleven Hippocrates and the Science of Life ........................28

Lecture Twelve Aristotle on the Knowable .......................................30

Timeline .............................................................................................................33

Glossary .............................................................................................................38

Biographical Notes ............................................................................................42

Bibliography ............................................................................................... Part V

The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2 nd Edition

Scope:

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

three 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 favored 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: 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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