Explore the entire western philosophical tradition in this comprehensive introduction to the topic taught by a member of the philosophy department at Oxford.
The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition is rated
4.4 out of
5 by
169.
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Wes S from
Outstanding CourseDr. Daniel Robinson makes his points so well that I came away from each lesson convinced that must be the best way to not only understand the topic but perhaps to live life.
Date published: 2021-04-12
Rated 5 out of
5 by
tom74 from
mind bogglingnever thought this course would be so intriguing ,a must course for all of us mortals, hooray for Dr. Robinson for such an exciting presentation
Date published: 2021-03-20
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Rosie57 from
I was so taken in by the lectures that I have to say I binged on the whole series. I loved the calmness and simple explanations. I have never been into philosophy but I am totally hooked and will immediately start reading all the suggested books. Thank you
Date published: 2021-02-04
Rated 5 out of
5 by
RJPB19P from
A Truly Great CourseI've viewed dozens of Great Courses / Teaching Company courses over the years. This is surely one of the best. Great content + a charming and insightful professor.
Date published: 2020-12-26
Rated 3 out of
5 by
Frank59 from
Philosophy from a perspectiveThis course should not be your first, introduction to philosophy. That's not what Professor Robinson had in mind. A better introduction is the Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition. This course is a compliment to that one. I have only one criticism of Professor Robinson's presentation. He uses elegant variation. In some paragraphs, he will describe a subject in three different ways. Still, if you have the patience to navigate his vocabulary, you will learn a lot.
Date published: 2020-12-20
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Yesh from
Great course!The top two reviews are both absolutely right in their way. And i would recommend reading them before you get the course. I had very little background on philosophy (save the course that i had taken on political philosophy by lawrence cahoone) and i am absolutely loving his style. These old professors and courses really have some charm that newer courses seem to have less of. Anyways, don’t go into this course expecting to breeze through and for a casual listen, you got to relate to the things he is saying and ruminate about them.
Date published: 2020-12-09
Rated 5 out of
5 by
vwarren7 from
Purchased As A Gift!I just purchased this for my daughter and sent her the DVD. She wanted something to do with Philosophy, and I think this one is going to do the trick. I also saved it to my Digital Courses. Just looking at the lessons, I know it perfect and I'm going to love it as well. I'll post again to give a better update.
Date published: 2020-12-08
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Anonymous from
PROFESSOR ROBINSON MAKES THE COURSE COME ALIVEProfessor Robinson is one of your best lecturers, in my opinion. He knows how to communicate complex ideas by speech, and his speech is completely clear. The main teaching medium of your courses is the spoken word. Some of your lecturers have such deficient speech habits that they should be taking speech lessons from Prof. Robinson. We know that is not possible; so why not reformat their courses and add subtitles.
Before ancient Greek civilization, the world hosted deep insights into the human condition but offered little critical reflection. Homer planted the seeds of this reflection....
31 min
2: Philosophy-Did the Greeks Invent It?
The ancient Greeks were the first to objectify the products of their own thought and feeling and be willing to subject both to critical scrutiny. Why?...
31 min
3: Pythagoras and the Divinity of Number
How can we comprehend the very integrity of the universe and our place within it, if not by way of the most abstract relations?...
30 min
4: What Is There?
How many kinds of stuff make up the cosmos? Might everything, in fact, be reducible to one kind of thing?...
31 min
5: The Greek Tragedians on Man's Fate
The ancient philosophers were only part of the rich community of thought and wonder that surrounded the world's first great dramatists and their landmark depth psychologies....
29 min
6: Herodotus and the Lamp of History
Can history actually teach us? Herodotus looked at what he took to be certain universal human aspirations and deficiencies and concluded that indeed history could....
30 min
7: Socrates on the Examined Life
Rhetoric wins arguments, but it is philosophy that shows us the way to our humanity....
31 min
8: Plato's Search For Truth
If one knows what one is looking for, why is a search necessary? And if one doesn't know, how is that search even possible? Socrates versus the Sophists....
31 min
9: Can Virtue Be Taught?
If virtue can be taught, whose virtue will it be? A look at the Socratic recognition of multiculturalism and moral relativism....
31 min
10: Plato's Republic-Man Writ Large
This most famous of Plato's dialogues begins with the metaphor-or perhaps the reality-of the polis (community) as the expanded version of the person, with the fate of each inextricably bound to that of the other....
31 min
11: Hippocrates and the Science of Life
Hippocratic medicine did much to demystify the human condition and the natural factors that affect it....
29 min
12: Aristotle on the Knowable
Smith knows that a particular triangle contains 180 degrees because he has measured it, while Jones knows it by definition. But do they know the same thing?...
31 min
13: Aristotle on Friendship
If true friendship is possible only between equals, how equal must they be-and with respect to what?...
30 min
14: Aristotle on the Perfect Life
What sort of life is right for humankind, and what is it about us that makes this so?...
31 min
15: Rome, the Stoics, and the Rule of Law
The Stoics found in language something that would separate humanity from the animate realm, and that gave Rome a philosophy to civilize the world....
31 min
16: The Stoic Bridge to Christianity
The Jewish Christians, Hellenized or Orthodox, defended a monotheistic source of law....
29 min
17: Roman Law-Making a City of the Once-Wide World
Roman development of law based on a conception of nature, and of human nature, is one of the signal achievements in the history of civilization....
29 min
18: The Light Within-Augustine on Human Nature
Thoughts and ideas from the fathers of the early Christian Church culminated in St. Augustine, who explores humanity's capacity for good and evil....
30 min
19: Islam
What did the Prophet teach that so moved the masses? And how did the Western world come to understand the threat embodied in these Eastern "heresies"?...
31 min
20: Secular Knowledge-The Idea of University
Apart from trade schools devoted to medicine and law, the university as we know it did not come into being until 12th-century Paris....
31 min
21: The Reappearance of Experimental Science
There were really two great renaissances. The first occurred at Oxford in the 13th century: the recovery of experimental inquiry by Roger Bacon and others....
30 min
22: Scholasticism and the Theory of Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas's treatises on law would stand for centuries as the foundation of critical inquiry in jurisprudence....
30 min
23: The Renaissance-Was There One?
From Petrarch in the south to Erasmus in the north, Humanistic thought collided with those seeking to defend faith....
30 min
24: Let Us Burn the Witches to Save Them
Even in the time we honor with the title of Renaissance ran an undercurrent of a heady and ominous mixture of natural magic, natural science, and cruel superstition....
31 min
25: Francis Bacon and the Authority of Experience
Francis Bacon would come to be regarded as the prophet of Newton and originator of modern experimental science....
30 min
26: Descartes and the Authority of Reason
Descartes is remembered for "I think, therefore I am." With his work, the authority of revelation, history, and title was replaced by the weight of reason itself....
30 min
27: Newton-The Saint of Science
In the century after Newton's death, the Enlightenment's major architects of reform and revolution defended their ideas in terms of Newtonian science and its implications....
30 min
28: Hobbes and the Social Machine
As the idea of social science gained force, Hobbes's controversial treatise helped to naturalize the civil realm, readying it for scientific explanation....
30 min
29: Locke's Newtonian Science of the Mind
If all of physical reality can be reduced to elementary corpuscular entities, is the mind nothing more than comparable elements held together by something akin to gravity?...
30 min
30: No matter? The Challenge of Materialism
When Berkeley reacted to Locke with an extravagant critique of materialism, he unwittingly reinforced claims of skeptics he meant to defeat....
30 min
31: Hume and the Pursuit of Happiness
David Hume was perhaps the most influential philosopher to write in English, carrying empiricism to its logical end and thus grounding morality, truth, causation, and governance in experience....
31 min
32: Thomas Reid and the Scottish School
Thomas Reid was Hume's most successful and influential critic, with a common sense psychology that was both naturalistic and compatible with religious teaching and which reached America's founders....
30 min
33: France and the Philosophes
The leading French thinkers of the 18th century-Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, and Diderot-appealed directly to the ordinary citizen, encouraging skepticism toward traditional authority....
31 min
34: The Federalist Papers and the Great Experiment
The extraordinary documents written in support of the proposed constitution represent a profound legacy in political philosophy....
30 min
35: What Is Enlightenment? Kant on Freedom
Here the limits of reason and the very framework of thought complete-and in another respect undermine-the very project of the Enlightenment....
30 min
36: Moral Science and the Natural World
Kant traced the implications of a human life as lived in both the natural world of causality and the intelligible world of reason (where morality arises)....
30 min
37: Phrenology-A Science of the Mind
In founding the now-discredited theory of phrenology, Franz Gall nevertheless helped define today's brain sciences....
31 min
38: The Idea of Freedom
The idea of freedom developed by Goethe, Schiller, and other romantic idealists forms a central chapter in the Long Debate over whether or not science has overstepped its bounds....
31 min
39: The Hegelians and History
Hegel's Reason in History and other works inspired a transcendentalist movement that spanned Europe, Great Britain, and the United States....
31 min
40: The Aesthetic Movement-Genius
By the second half of the 19th century, the House of Intellect was divided between two competing perspectives: the growing aesthetic concept of reality and the narrowing scientific view....
30 min
41: Nietzsche at the Twilight
A student of the classics, Nietzsche came to regard the human condition as fatally tied to needs and motives that operate at the most powerful levels of existence....
29 min
42: The Liberal Tradition-J. S. Mill
When can the state or the majority legitimately exercise power over the actions of individuals? The modern liberal answer is set forth in the work of Mill, an almost unchallenged authority for more than a century....
30 min
43: Darwin and Nature's "Purposes"
From social Darwinism to sociobiology, the evolutionary science of the late 18th and 19th centuries dominates social thought and political initiatives....
30 min
44: Marxism-Dead But Not Forgotten
After years of influence, the Marxist critique of society is now more a subtext than a guiding bible of reform....
31 min
45: The Freudian World
Marx, Darwin, and Freud are the chief 19th-century architects of modern thought about society and self-each was nominally "scientific" in approach and believed their theories to be grounded in the realm of observable facts....
31 min
46: The Radical William James
Mortally opposed to all "block universes" of certainty and theoretical hubris, James offered a quintessentially home-grown psychology of experience....
30 min
47: William James's Pragmatism
Working in the realm of common sense, James directed the attention of philosophy and science to that ultimate arena of confirmation in which our deepest and most enduring interests are found....
30 min
48: Wittgenstein and the Discursive Turn
Meaning arises from conventions that presuppose not only a social world but a world in which we share the interests and aspirations of others....
29 min
49: Alan Turing in the Forest of Wisdom
Turing is famous for breaking Germany's famed World War II Enigma code, but, as a founder of modern computational science, he also wrote influentially about the possibilities of breaking the mind's code....
31 min
50: Four Theories of the Good Life
The contemplative. The active. The fatalistic. The hedonistic. There are good but limited arguments for each of these....
32 min
51: Ontology-What There "Really" Is
From the Greek ontos, there is a branch of metaphysics referred to as ontology, devoted to the question of "real being." Ontological controversies have broad ethical and social implications....
28 min
52: Philosophy of Science-The Last Word?
Should fundamental questions, if they are to be answered with precision and objectivity, be answered by science? We consider Thomas Kuhn's influential treatise on scientific revolutions....
30 min
53: Philosophy of Psychology and Related Confusions
Psychology is a subject of many and varied interests but narrow modes of inquiry. Today cognitive neuroscience is the dominant approach, but other schools have reappeared....
31 min
54: Philosophy of Mind, If There Is One
The principal grounds of disagreement within the wide-ranging subject of philosophy of mind center on whether the right framework for considering issues is provided by developed sciences or humanistic frameworks....
29 min
55: What makes a Problem "Moral"
Is there a "moral reality"? We examine especially David Hume's rejection of the idea that there is anything "moral" in the external world....
29 min
56: Medicine and the Value of Life
What guidance does moral philosophy provide in the domain of medicine, where life-and-death decisions are made daily?...
30 min
57: On the Nature of Law
Philosophy of law is an ancient subject, developed by Aristotle and elaborated by Cicero. We see how natural law theory has evolved through the Enlightenment and the writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin....
30 min
58: Justice and Just Wars
Theories of the "just war," beginning with St. Augustine and including St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Vittoria, and Francisco Suarez, set forth principles by which engaging in and conducting war are justified....
30 min
59: Aesthetics-Beauty Without Observers
The subject of beauty is among the oldest in philosophy, treated at length in several of the dialogues of Plato and in his Symposium, and redefined through history. What is beauty? Is there anything "rational" about it?...
30 min
60: God-Really?
We consider various theological arguments for and against belief in God, including those of Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Reid, and William James....
30 min
Overview
Explore the entire western philosophical tradition in this comprehensive introduction to the topic taught by a member of the philosophy department at Oxford.
Developments in philosophy are chiefly in the form of greater clarity, an ever more refined sense of just what makes the problem problematic. If ignorance is not thereby totally overcome, at least it is exposed.
ALMA MATER
City University of New York
INSTITUTION
Philosophy Faculty, Oxford University; Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, Georgetown University
About Daniel N. Robinson
Dr. Daniel N. Robinson (1937–2018) was a member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University, where he lectured annually since 1991. He was also Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, at Georgetown University, on whose faculty he served for 30 years. He was formerly Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, and he also held positions at Amherst College and at Princeton University.
Professor Robinson earned his PhD in Neuropsychology from City University of New York. He was president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association: the Division of History of Psychology, from which he received the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, from which he received the Distinguished Contribution Award.
Professor Robinson was the author or editor of more than 40 books, including Wild Beasts & Idle Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present, An Intellectual History of Psychology, The Mind: An Oxford Reader, and Aristotle's Psychology. He was the editor of the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. He also published widely on the constitutional history of the US and its philosophical foundations, with original research appearing in the International Journal of Constitutional Law and The American Journal of Jurisprudence. He was coeditor of The American Founding: Its Intellectual and Moral Framework (London: Continuum, 2012).
Also By This Professor
New Password Required
We've updated our website and apps to improve your Great Courses Plus experience.
This upgrade requires that you change your password.
We've sent a link and instructions to your email address to
help you easily reset your password and start exploring the new Great Courses Plus immediately.