The Great Conversation

Perhaps more so than in any other discipline, philosophy is best understood as a "great conversation"held across hundreds of years. All philosophersóand we are all philosophers or their followersóhave the same eternal questions:

* What can we know about the world? * What is the best kind of life? * When is it legitimate for one person to have power over another? * How should we govern ourselves and each other? * On what philosophical precepts does the rule of law depend? * What are the philosophical justifications for respect of the individual? * What legal and moral implications arise from the claim of our "autonomy"? * On what basis, philosophically, did we ever come to regard ourselves as outside the order of nature?

Socrates and Nietzsche wanted to answer these questions. Aristotle and Hegel wanted answers to these questions. Scientists, artists, and all thinking people want answers to these questions. In the nature of things there are no final answers, but some are clearly better than othersómore coherent, more consistent, compatible with relevant facts.

The Great Ideas Connected Across Time

This extraordinary series covers more than 2,000 years of philosophical thought. Yet this course is much more than a collection of the thoughts of various geniuses; it links their concerns across centuries, thereby making their debates a part of our own.

These lectures offer a coherent and beautifully articulated introduction to the great philosophic conversation of the ages. They cover an enormous range of key thinkers and perspectives, but always from the vantage point of the enduring human