The Great Ideas of Philosophy taught by Professor Daniel N. Robinson

Professor Robinson is one of those rare teachers whose tremendous respect for his audience, vast expertise, relish for language, and engaging rhetorical flair create an exceptionally enjoyable learning environment. Dr. Robinson’s lectures make the ideas of philosophy thrilling, passionate, human, and divine.

Indulge in the ideas that have captivated humankind for centuries and inspired great advances in Western civilization. After hearing Professor Robinson’s exposition, you may never view philosophy, or the world, in quite the same way again.

Section I - Ancient Foundations
Lecture 1: From the Upanishads to Homer
Lecture 2: What Is It and Did the Greeks Invent It?
Lecture 3: Pythagoras and the Divinity of Number
Lecture 4: What Is There? The Pre-Socratics and the Ultimate Stuff of the Universe
Lecture 5: Is Medea Guilty as Charged? The Greek Tragedians on Man's Fate
Lecture 6: Know Thyself—Herodotus and the Lamp of History
Lecture 7: Socrates on the Examined Life
Lecture 8: Plato's Search for Truth
Lecture 9: Can Virtue Be Taught?
Lecture 10: Plato's Republic—Man Writ Large
Lecture 11: Mind and Body—Hippocrates and the Science of Life
Lecture 12: Aristotle on the Knowable
Lecture 13: Aristotle on Friendship
Lecture 14: Aristotle on the Perfect Life
Lecture 15: Rome, the Stoics, and the Rule of Law

Section II - Early Modern Thought
Lecture 16: The Stoic Bridge to Christianity
Lecture 17: Roman Law—Making a City of the Once-Wide World
Lecture 18: The Light Within—Augustine's Idea of Human Nature
Lecture 19: Islam

Section III - From Feudalism to Urbanity: Two Renaissances
Lecture 20: Secular Knowledge—The Idea of the University
Lecture 21: Facts and Values—The Reappearance of Experimental Science
Lecture 22: Scholasticism and the Theory of Natural Law
Lecture 23: Erasmus and Luther—Humanism and Fundamentalism
Lecture 24: Let Us Burn the Witches to Save Them...

Section IV - The Dawn of the New: The Foundations of the Scientific World View
Lecture 25: Bacon's "Great Instauration"—The Authority of Experience
Lecture 26: Descartes and the Skeptical Mind—The Authority of Reason
Lecture 27: Newton—The Saint of Science
Lecture 28: The Social Machine—Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Science of Statecraft
Lecture 29: A Newtonian Science of the Mind—John Locke on Human Understanding

Section V - Enlightenment
Lecture 30: No matter? Never mind! Berkeley and the Challenge of Materialism
Lecture 31: Skepticism and the Pursuit of Happiness—David Hume
Lecture 32: Common Sense and Divine Providence—Thomas Reid and the Scottish School
Lecture 33: The Play of Mind and the Salons of Dissent—France and the Philosophes
Lecture 34: The Federalist Papers and the Great Experiment
Lecture 35: What Is Enlightenment? Kant on Freedom and the Forms of Knowledge
Lecture 36: Moral Science and the Natural World—Kant and the Moral Imperative
Lecture 37: The Phrenologists—Early Sciences of Mind and Brain
Lecture 38: The Idea of Freedom

Section VI - Romanticism
Lecture 39: Human History as the Unfolding of the Ideal—The Hegelians
Lecture 40: The World as the Gift of Genius—The Aesthetic Movement
Lecture 41: Dark Corners of the Soul—Nietzsche at the Twilight

Section VII - Science and Scientism
Lecture 42: The Liberal Tradition: John Stuart Mill on Liberty
Lecture 43: Survival of the Fittest—Darwin and the (Blind) Purposes of Nature
Lecture 44: Marxism: Dead but Not Forgotten
Lecture 45: The Freudian World
Lecture 46: Yankee Thought in a World of Mystery—The Radical William James
Lecture 47: William James's Pragmatism
Lecture 48: Helping the Fly Out of the Bottle—Wittgenstein and the Discursive Turn
Lecture 49: Breaking the Code—Alan Turing in the Forest of Wisdom
Lecture 50: Four Theories of the Good Life—From Saints to Heroes to Brains in Vats

All archives are stand alone and include 5 lectures each. Enjoy!