author : Daniel N. Robinson

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 60 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each lecture, a few pictures, some related reading, and questions to consider. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

I found this rather scrappy. It is mainly a presentation of Robinson’s own asides on the ideas, with little explanation of the ideas themselves (you are just assumed to know them, I suppose, which may be true of the more well known ideas, but not of all of them), little critique (maybe since these have been selected as great ideas, there are therefore assumed to be good ideas, but I’m not convinced all of them are!), and little synthesis (why are we in a better position now, after all these ideas, than before?).

There were some points that stood out for me. I enjoyed the acid asides on modern academia. I liked the structuring of the subject matter of philosophy into three parts: the problem of knowledge (how can we know anything), the problem of conduct (how we should live our individual lives), and the problem of governance (how to live as a community). I was interested in the discussion on “the Stoic bridge to Christianity”, showing how some of the early Christian ideas were influenced by, or even a result of, Roman philosophy, demonstrating how many of the ideas purported to be particular to that religion were common in the day. And I thought it telling that many of the more recent great ideas of philosophy are actually great ideas of science.

However, the lack of critique, and the tacit assumption these are good ideas, meant I spent some of the time shouting at the screen: “you can’t say that!”, “that doesn’t follow from what you’ve just said!”, and so on. And it seems that only Western philosophy has had great ideas.

If I was shouting during the course, I was fair frothing at the last lecture, on, you guessed it, God. The course starts with a discussion of philosophy being a search for truth, through a process of argument and criticism, with the possibility that you might not like the answers. It finishes with Robinson declaring that he chooses to believe in God (and presumably the Christian one at that) because he prefers the view of a cosmos “alive with promise and nurturing of hope”, over that of a “dead cosmos of meaningless statistical possibilities”. So much for following the argument no matter where it leads, even if you don’t like the answers. (And there not being a supreme being does not imply a dead, meaningless cosmos anyway.)

So, a definite curate’s egg.