This course is a stimulating and accessible discussion of how some of the greatest minds of the past three centuries have pondered the mysteries of existence and meaning. Join Professor Stephen A. Erickson as he guides you along the intellectual road traveled by post-Enlightenment thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, and Camus. This course requires no background in philosophy; you can comprehend what each philosopher has to say equipped only with your own intellect, curiosity, and fascination with the course's central questions. Lecture by lecture, you'll encounter some of the most inspirational minds Western civilization has produced.
Philosophy as a Guide to Living
Engage in a stimulating and accessible discussion of how some of the greatest minds of the past three centuries have pondered the mysteries of existence and meaning in this fun and interesting new take on philosophy.
Overview
About
Dr. Stephen A. Erickson is Professor of Philosophy and E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities at Pomona College, where he has been teaching for more than 40 years. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University. Professor Erickson has received awards from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Earhart Foundation. He is the recipient of Four Wig Awards for excellence in teaching at Pomona College. Dr. Erickson is the author of several scholarly articles and books, including The Coming Age of Thresholding. He has also held several prestigious American and international positions. He has been a guest faculty member at a number of psychoanalytic institutes and a visiting scholar at several universities, including Cambridge University in England, and he serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy in the United States.
01: The Axial Model
The philosophical and religious understanding of life in the West has been axial for almost 3,000 years. This lecture explores how axial thinking, the understanding of life as a journey, came into being and how it has shaped our belief systems.
33 min
02: Kant’s Hopeful Program
We review some examples of the axial model at work in Western philosophy before turning to the beginning of its collapse during the Enlightenment c. 1750, most notably in the writings of Immanuel Kant.
30 min
03: The Kantian Legacy
We look at Kant's claims regarding both human nature and the limits to our knowledge, particularly his account of how a moral life ought to be led in the face of our irremediable ignorance of ultimate things and the consequences of this understanding for religion.
31 min
04: Kant and the Romantic Reaction
Kant becomes subject to criticism for comprehending the trajectory and ideal of human life too restrictively as a battle between moral duty and personal inclination. In reaction, a philosophical agenda that we now call Romanticism emerges, which glorifies the individual and the exceptional.
31 min
05: Hegel on the Human Spirit
Enlightenment philosophers pay little attention to human history, focusing on a future in which reason, science, and education overcome tradition and superstition to achieve human equality. Georg W. F. Hegel dramatically alters this picture and seeks to undermine its assumptions.
32 min
06: Hegel on State and Society
Hegel understands human history to be the progressive, though problematic, journey to human freedom. His notion of freedom and of human rights in general is different from and more inclusive than our Anglo-American versions.
31 min
07: Hegel on Selfhood and Human Identity
We examine Hegel's seemingly counterintuitive conception of Self, which involves relational elements, and we consider Hegel's three dimensions of our selfhood.
31 min
08: Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
An unusual figure in philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer offers an account of our nature that is most bleak, earning him the title of pessimist. We see how his own life makes his pessimism understandable.
31 min
09: Schopenhauer’s Remedies
Optimally, a guide to living delivers us not only from something, but also for or to something. The latter is lacking in Schopenhauer. In the end there is nothing, and the solution cannot be found in philosophy. We look at the four suggestions he offers.
31 min
10: Alienation in Marx
For Karl Marx, it is not our reason but socioeconomic forces that constitute our fundamental relations with the world. He asserts that not thought, but the concrete—the work activities we engage in—reveal, determine, and distort our natures.
31 min
11: Marx’s Utopian Hope
We examine Marx's belief that we belong to history and that we will find the meaning of our lives through it. We also study his claim that revolution, not philosophy, is necessary to overcome our alienation and transform our spirit.
30 min
12: Kierkegaard’s Crises
For Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism, the large and pervasive phenomena that preoccupy Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Marx fall away, and an intense focus is placed upon the individual.
30 min
13: Kierkegaard’s Passion
We look at Kierkegaard's argument for a passionate commitment to an ethical life devoted to the discovery and becoming of who we really are, which in turn leads to a direct passage toward religious salvation.
30 min
14: Why God Died—Nietzsche’s Claim
This lecture examines Nietzsche's indictment of both philosophy and religion as contributions to human decadence and analyzes his claim of the "death" of God, heralding pervasive disorientation, the arrival of a time of potentially courageous nihilism, and the power of human creativity.
30 min
15: Nietzsche’s Dream
There are no facts, says Nietzsche, only interpretations, especially in the realm of morality. He offers a fundamental and provocative distinction between a slave morality that conforms to assumed norms and a master morality that creates values through its activities.
31 min
16: Freud’s Nightmare
Is making shrewd compromises the best we can do with life? The philosopher in Sigmund Freud asserts that such compromises are both highly costly and terribly necessary. We focus on Freud's two pivotal means of achieving what he considers salvation: work and love.
30 min
17: Freud on Our Origins
Freud declares that raising metaphysical questions about our origins and destinies is symptomatic of illness. Part of the reason for this bleak view came from what he understood of those origins.
30 min
18: Psychoanalytic Visions in and after Freud
Some say that through psychoanalysis, sin is converted to guilt and the soul is replaced by the unconscious. We look at different perspectives on fundamental human drives that power us as Freud and those who followed him sought to understand and come to terms with those drives.
30 min
19: Heidegger on the Meaning of Meaning
Has our era become so misguided that we no longer concern ourselves with questions of meaning but only calculate costs and practical, material benefits? The man considered by many to be the 20th century's most influential philosopher claims this is the case.
30 min
20: Heidegger on Technology’s Threat
Heidegger claims that art can perhaps replace a Nietzschean world in which God is dead and the gods have fled, and puts the source of our core problem "dehumanization" in technology.
31 min
21: Heidegger’s Politics and Legacy
However great a philosopher, Heidegger was also a National Socialist in Nazi Germany - and for far longer than he later chose to admit. We examine the key turning points of his life and the implications of his politics.
30 min
22: The Human Situation—Sartre and Camus
Is isolation to be considered a means of liberation or estrangement? Is freedom a goal to pursue or a sentence to avoid? Two French philosophers raise provocative questions about our human situation.
31 min
23: Power and Reason—Foucault and Habermas
This lecture examines the theories of two of the 20th century's most challenging thinkers as they explore relationships among institutions, power, communications, and reason.
31 min
24: Today’s Provocative Landscape—Thresholding
The final lecture looks at the ideas and questions explored during the course and reflects on the role of philosophy in bringing us closer to answers about the meaning of life.
31 min
