600
Provides students with an overview of the intellectual culture of Catholicism from the birth of Christ to the eve of the Reformation. The primary objective of the course is to provide students with a chronological framework of cultural and intellectual development within which to situate particular pieces of knowledge. The students are given a big-picture plotline of the Christian experience.
From its inception in ancient Greece, the central occupation of Western philosophy has been to “know thyself.” In this course, we will ask what sort of things are we: are we only material beings, or do we have a soul? What can we know? What is ethical for creatures like us? How should we organize human society? Students will read several great thinkers from the history of Western philosophy (e.g., Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Rousseau) to see the different ways in which these and other questions have been answered. Particular attention will be paid to examining whether the Christian vision of the human person and society is viable given the rise of philosophical naturalism. This course aims not only to impart information about the history of philosophy but to help us think more accurately about ourselves.