Series
A working definition, and why philosophy needs faith, logic, ethics, and myth.
From Socrates to Tillich to Kant, a survey of what philosophy has claimed to be, ending in a definition worth keeping: the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom. Then the roots of the tree (logic and ethics) and philosophy's oldest form, myth.
Start with
24:45Surveying definitions from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Tillich, William James, and John Passmore, Dr. Firestone dispels the myths that philosophy is just asking questions or a field with no answers and lands on Kant's definition: philosophy is the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom.
Lecture-style series build on themselves. Numbered so you can follow the thread.
24:45Surveying definitions from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Tillich, William James, and John Passmore, Dr. Firestone dispels the myths that philosophy is just asking questions or a field with no answers and lands on Kant's definition: philosophy is the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom.
26:26Tracing philosophy from the Greeks through Augustine's 'faith seeking understanding,' Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant to its fragmentation in the modern university, Dr. Firestone argues that good philosophy recognizes we are finite, situated beings who must make wise judgments about whom to trust, which means philosophy requires faith.
27:39Presenting his 'tree of philosophy,' Dr. Firestone shows how metaphysics sits at the top of the big questions approached through existence or epistemology, and argues that logic and ethics are the two roots without which philosophy produces only self-serving narratives out of tune with truth, beauty, and goodness.
56:05After recapping his definition of philosophy, Dr. Firestone treats myth as perhaps the earliest form of philosophy, explaining why traditional cultures find 'is it true?' beside the point and walking through Joseph Campbell's hero's journey from the call to adventure to the return with elixir.
52:45Part two on myth traces the movement from oral tradition to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and parallels it with stages of human development, then reads Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning as a morally prescriptive use of the hero's journey: bring order to the small things, then step out of that world.
3 episodesThe thinker he chose to sit under for thirty years.
6 episodesSix episodes on what dreams are, from Freud and Jung to Genesis and Revelation.
2 episodesThe form and substance that made the republic last.
