by Dennis Dalton (Biography)

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Course
Summary

"Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition" is a
comprehensive survey of the history of Western philosophy from
its origins in classical Greece to the present. The material
is presented through a close examination of the central
doctrines in the discourse of Western philosophy, as presented
through the thought of critical figures. The course not only
presents the broad range of philosophical positions
articulated, but it also examines the relationships between
various systems and doctrines as they develop over time, along
with the relations between those doctrines and their larger
historical settings.

Key philosophical doctrines are explained in their
historical contexts, although they developed according to
their own internal conceptual dynamic. The Western tradition
is a blend of two outlooks that are characteristic of the
ancient cities that generated them—Athens and Jerusalem.
Western monotheism and its philosophical entailments—fideist
resignation, mystic ecstasy, and dogmatic scripturalism—along
with such assumptions as the equality of all souls in the
sight of God, ultimately derive from Jerusalem. Athens is the
city of inquiry, hubris, and emancipation. Athens attained the
highest kind of human development; it achieved excellence in
every department of human aspiration, and the rationalism of
Western culture, with its unprecedented control over nature,
is a perennial element in Western philosophy. Jerusalem
supplies the mythos of the West and its canonical holy text;
Athens supplies the critical and self-critical spirit, which
animates the Promethean and perhaps Faustian history of
Western thought.

The genre of philosophy in the West has been characterized
by two basic sets of issues. One set of issues is concerned
with the environment in which we find ourselves and our
relation to it (metaphysics and epistemology). The other set
is concerned with the nature of human experience (ethics,
social and political theory, and existentialism). Although
these issues have a certain constancy, the ways they are
interrogated or the particular formulations that are devised
to address them vary dramatically over time. Yet this
variation is not always purely random; entire philosophical
epochs can be characterized on the basis of shared approaches
to or formulations of basic questions, despite a plethora of
different solutions. This series of lectures offers an
overview of the Western philosophical tradition. Whether in
the hylomorphism and eudaemonism of the classical world, the
fideism of the Christian age, or the scientism of the
Enlightenment, "Great Minds" examines both the shared
presuppositions and approaches of an epoch, as well as the
different positions at which various thinkers arrived from
those shared approaches. The former are highlighted in
introductory lectures to each historical section and are then
examined in the specific doctrines of individual philosophers
in subsequent lectures. The course itself is comprised of
seven historical sections.

The first section, Classical Origins, examines the origins
of philosophy in the Greco-Roman world. Philosophic
speculation in this period was characterized by a hylomorphic
approach to metaphysics (a theory of being based on form and
content) and a eudaemonic ethic (the morally good is
distinguished by its promotion of human happiness and
felicity). The first three lectures on the Pre-Socratics and
Sophism set the stage for the emergence of the full-blown
speculations of Plato and Aristotle, who together comprise
roughly half the lectures in this section. These two figures
both share a hylomorphic and eudaemonic orientation, but they
diverge dramatically in the ways they deploy that orientation.
Plato heralds an "idealistic" or otherworldly tradition in
Western philosophy, while his student Aristotle is
characterized by the naturalism and scientism of his thought
and the tradition it would inspire. The final three lectures
examine how the Romans handled this precious intellectual
inheritance. Although hardly original, Roman philosophical
synthesis was marked by a tendency to simplify and
"spiritualize" the systematic thought of the great Athenians
and, thus, make it accessible and relevant to a larger
educated audience. Both Stoicism and Epicureanism demonstrate
the Roman propensity to search for the ethical and personal
implications of metaphysical and epistemological
positions.

The second section, The Christian Age, witnesses the
transformation of philosophy from a monothetic search for
explanations to a spiritual quest for meaning and
understanding informed by a profound fideism. Lectures
Fourteen and Fifteen on the Hebrew contribution to
post-classical Western thought examine the two critical issues
raised for that tradition by the Pentateuch. These issues are
the metaphysical and incomprehensible gulf between the profane
world of man and the sacred realm of the divine (bridgeable
only by an act of religious faith or existential courage) and
the historical dimension introduced by the covenanted relation
of God and his chosen people across a linear time rule by
divine providence. The next two lectures examine how these
issues are reinterpreted in the foundational texts of the
Christian tradition. Lectures Nineteen through Twenty-Two are
devoted to the development of theology in the so-called Middle
Ages, during which time philosophically sophisticated
theologians tried to reconcile the fundamental truths of
Christian revelation with the theoretical insights and
approaches of classical philosophy. The final three lectures
represent a sort of Christian revival against the intermixture
of "classical pagan" argumentative concerns that had
characterized scholasticism, a revival that could take the
form of quiescent mysticism, principled reformation, or
fundamentalist confessional politics. All three lectures
expose the basic tension inherent in medieval Christianity
between Jobean prudence and self-abnegation on the one hand
and Greco-Roman humanism on the other.

Section three explores the period from the Renaissance to
the onset of the Enlightenment in the middle to late
seventeenth century. This epoch was characterized by a
reaction against the scholastic intellectual inheritance.
Particularly objectionable were the role of Christian
authority and dogma in speculative thought, as well as a
conception of the role and power of philosophy that relegated
it to the handmaid of theology. Lectures Twenty-Six through
Twenty-Eight focus on Renaissance thinkers who counterpoise
the sterility of medieval scholastic inquiry with the rich
erudition of classical speculation and self-consciously
embrace the latter over the former as a source of further
inquiry. This liberation from the intellectual tyranny of
received tradition is carried to its logical conclusion in the
next four lectures as Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes all seek
to ground their arguments directly in the evidences of nature
and a self-evident reason. This rejection of traditional
authority (both intellectual and political) in favor of a
purely rational and "new modeled" order is one of the central
marks of the "modern." Not surprisingly, it quickly generated
critical responses of its own, both in the form of skepticism
(Bayle) and fideism (Pascal). The final lecture on Newton
serves as a transition from the still-dogmatic rationalism
(and mathematicism) of the great seventeenth-century
post-Cartesians to the less systematic and largely empirical
orientation (Scientism) of the eighteenth century. Naturally,
the Enlightenment is the focus of the fourth section. Lectures
Thirty-Eight through Forty-One are meant to lay down the basic
outlines of its early "moderate" phase. Locke’s curiously
liberal invocation of the social contractual idiom that Hobbes
had used as a bulwark of absolute power and his widely
influential articulation of empiricism serve as a sort of
baseline for the understanding of subsequent thinkers, such as
Vico and Montesquieu. Lectures Forty-Two through Forty-Eight
examine the controversial sides of the Enlightenment, both in
the skeptical, this-worldly, and shockingly irreligious
thought of David Hume (and, to a lesser extent, his good
friend and fellow-consequentialist Adam Smith) and in the
downright hostility of such critics of the Enlightenment as
the Anglican Bishop George Berkeley and the proto-Romanticism
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Section five, The Age of Ideology, is marked by its
eclecticism and the broad and diverse range of issues covered.
Yet, these lectures offer an underlying unity, which is
centered on the turn from the metaphysical and political to
the historical and social (and, in some cases, the personal).
This transition marks the age of ideology, an age in which
mere "theory" divorced from "real life" and practical
considerations was likely to be dismissed as irrelevant,
obscurantist, and "utopian." A pair of lectures on Kant
establishes the limits, both temporal and theoretical, of the
Enlightenment. Kant’s Copernican revolution and aesthetic
standpoint serve both to protect Enlightenment optimism and
scientific confidence from the skepticism of Hume and give
rational/pragmatic grounds for faith in the traditional
concerns of a Christian metaphysic, despite the obvious
"pagan" thrust of late-Enlightenment thought. Kant’s thought
would supply the materials from which nineteenth-century
transcendentalisms and idealisms would be constructed.
Lectures Fifty-Two through Fifty-Four all deal with the
problem of the proper relation between science, human history,
and political authority. From Burke’s curiously modern
sociological formulation of the conservative defense of
tradition to Marx’s hyper-scientific interpretation of history
and subsequent radical critique of "bourgeois
parliamentarism," these lectures cover almost every possible
position of the newly created "ideological spectrum." Lectures
Fifty-Five and Fifty-Six reflect the emergence of a profound
spiritual dissatisfaction with modern life in the Industrial
Age, while Lectures Fifty-Seven and Fifty-Eight focus on
attempts to sort out the implications of its scientific and
social/ethical trajectories. The final two lectures are
devoted to Nietzsche, who again serves as a transitional
figure from the ideological and existential longings of the
nineteenth century to the epistemological and linguistic
considerations that would characterize Western philosophy in
the early twentieth century.

The aforementioned linguistic and epistemological
considerations certainly comprise the core of section six,
Modernism and the Age of Analysis, which covers roughly the
first half of the twentieth century, but they are not the only
considerations that are raised. Freud, Weber, and the
Frankfurt School all advance critical ideas in ethical and
political thought, and both Husserl and Heidegger wed their
metaphysical speculations to an existential posture. Far and
away the bulk of this section is devoted to formulating the
great questions about reality, representation, and truth that
have animated so much of twentieth-century thought, both in
its modernist and post-modernist phases. From positivism to
pragmatism, section six examines all the major approaches to
the issues under consideration, whether based on a priori
phenomenal reduction or pragmatic behaviorism, the
interpretation of recondite artificial languages or the
analysis of everyday discourse, or a model of knowledge and
language based on opposing paradigms of empirical science and
mathematics.

The final section, The Crisis of Modernity, details the
skeptical and critical answers reached in the second half of
the twentieth century to the questions posed in the previous
fifty years. From science as our paradigmatic epistemic
activity, we come to Kuhn’s definition of science as a
discursive activity of "paradigm sharers." From
epistemologically informed linguistic analysis as an
analytically prior "first philosophy," we come to Quine’s
behavioristic relativism and epistemological naturalism, a
juncture that heralds the end of the post-Kantian
philosophical project to "ground" scientific and humanistic
knowledge. Rorty extends this deflationary pragmatic spirit to
ethical and political concerns, defining moral terms as "we
intentions" and arguing for democracy without any
philosophical foundations at all. Habermas and Derrida deploy
the techniques of philosophy of language to demonstrate that
medium of communication’s inability to overcome the
limitations imposed by structures of authority and power, as
well as privileged access to phenomenal experiences. Lectures
Seventy-Eight through Eighty-Two register the different
political and historical/critical postures that have arisen in
these years of criticism and doubt, including the
neo-Habermasian media criticism (and new class theory) of
Alvin Gouldner, the social democracy of John Rawls, the
seeming "situationist" quiescence of post-modernism, and the
neo-libertarian conservatism of Hayek-Popper. The course ends
with the defense of tradition put forth by Alasdair MacIntyre
and Robert Nozick’s defense of libertarianism.
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Teaching Company Recommended
Links

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/

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Condensed
Bibliography

These selected titles from the
reading list are now available on Amazon.com. Click here for
more information and/or to order them.

Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western
Philosophy

Sheed, F.J., (ed.). Confessions

Perhaps
the most poetic of the many translations of Augustine’s
classic autobiography, accompanied by valuable
introduction by Peter
Brown.

Descartes, Rene, and Cottingham,
John (trans.). Descartes: Meditations on First
Philosophy : With Selections from the Objections and
Replies

This is an excellent edition of
Descartes’s immensely influential and controversial work
of fundamental metaphysics, and it includes the
"Objections and Replies" published in the first
seventeenth-century edition, which permits the reader to
understand how Descartes was read (and objected to) in
his own lifetime and how he defended his
positions.

Hume, David, and Popkin, Richard
(ed.). Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:
The Posthumous Essays of the Immortality of the Soul and
of Suicide

Hume’s Dialogues,
published posthumously in the eighteenth century, were
and are a remarkable exploration and examination of the
arguments for and against the claim that we know of God
from the study of nature by the natural human faculties.
This edition includes two essays that Hume withheld from
his earlier philosophical works, "Of the Immortality of
the Soul," and "Of Suicide," that also critically
examine deeply held Christian
beliefs.

Galilei, Galileo, and Drake,
Stillman (translator). Discoveries and Opinions of
Galileo

This is an important and
historically dramatic compilation of major works by
Galileo, accomplished by Stillman Drake, one of the
century’s most eminent scholars and translators of
Galileo’s works. It includes, among other works, The
Starry Messenger, in which Galileo announced some
of his most startling discoveries (since he perfected
the astronomical telescope), the Letter to the Grand
Duchess Christina, in which he articulated his
profoundly influential views of the relationship between
science and scripture, and a significant excerpt from
The Assayer, in which he attacks, with verve,
the natural philosophy of the Aristotelians. Drake links
them together with an interesting narrative. Reading
these pieces, one encounters not merely the scientific
and philosophical Galileo, but the bitterly
anti-Aristotelian intellectual brawler
also.

Hobbes, Thomas and Macpherson,
C.B.. Leviathan

This work is
not only one of the great classics of political theory,
but, more deeply, an entire philosophical project based
upon a theory of knowledge, human nature, and human
motivation. Everyone reads the political theory of Book
II; you should read, above all, the theory of human
nature in Book I and the reflections on religion,
philosophy, and politics in Books III and
IV.

Dillenberger, John (ed.). Martin Luther, Selections from His
Writings

Includes the treatises on "The
Freedom of a Christian" and "The Babylonian Captivity of
the Church" (under the misleadingly-translated title,
"The Pagan Servitude of the
Church").

Bacon, Francis, and Urbach, Peter
(ed.). Novum Organum

In
Bacon’s "Introduction" and in Book One, you will find
his clearest presentation of his vast project for a new
knowledge. The later seventeenth century was deeply
inspired and influenced by this work, and the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are almost
incomprehensible without a familiarity with the vision
his work
offers.

Pascal, Blaise, and Krailsheimer,
A.J. (trans.). Pensees

Despite
Pascal’s often marginalized place in seventeenth-century
religious debates, being a Jansenist in revolt against
the worldliness of other forms of Catholicism, the
Pensees were an instant best-seller in France,
beloved across a wide spectrum of beliefs, and have
stood as one of the most influential religious writings
of Western
civilization.

Montesquieu, Charles and Betts,
C.J. (translator). Persian Letters

This
is a superb translation of Montesquieu’s exotic,
philosophical, best-selling work, one of the true
publishing sensations of the eighteenth century. It
exposes the reader not only to Montesquieu’s quest for
universals among the relativistic beliefs and practices
of mankind, but to his wit and social
criticism.

Plato, and Cooper, John (ed.). Plato Complete
Works

More complete and
recently-translated than the old Hamilton-Cairns edition
of Plato's Collected Dialogues (Princeton:
Princeton University, 1961). Hackett also publishes
editions of individual dialogues, such as Apology,
Phaedo and Republic. Because there are so
many different editions and translations of the
dialogues, passages from Plato's works are usually
indicated by referring to the marginal page numbers
(e.g. "Phaedo 57a-84c"), which are the same in
all
editions.

McKeon, Richard (ed.). The Basic Works of
Aristotle

Contains all the texts needed
for a serious introduction to the philosophy of
Aristotle, in the standard older
translation.

In some cases the only available book
from Amazon is a newer edition than the one used by the
professor. The edition used by the professor may be available
on the used market.

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