For the Love of Wisdom

Video-based course
25 half-hour videos
25 lessons

Preview Guide (PDF 213KB)

Produced by Howard Community College and distributed by Dallas TeleLearning

For the Love of Wisdom begins with the familiar Western discourse and integrates women philosophers and both Asian and African philosophies throughout. The voices of traditional Western thinkers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Sartre, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, Mill, Rawls, and Manning, resonate with the worldviews of Buddhism, Taoism, and African philosophy.

The accompanying texts, Roots of Wisdom and Readings from the Roots of Wisdom, created by course host Dr. Helen Mitchell, inspired this series which explores the "big questions" of reality, knowledge, and values that form the core of philosophy. Rooted in the arts and popular culture, as well as in traditional texts, this series draws students into philosophical discourse and helps them explore its possibilities for their own lives. From the Axial Age, during which major thought systems were created throughout the world, to the neurophysiology of the human brain, this series situates the Western philosophical tradition in a worldwide context and correlates it with insights from the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

Lesson Titles/Descriptions

The Axial Age - Introduces Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Axiology and creates a worldwide context for philosophy by sampling bursts of intellectual activity in China, India, Africa, the Americas, and the Near East as early Greeks begin their quest for wisdom. Poets Ann Darr, Robert Hass, and Josephine Jacobsen.
The Big Questions - The Greeks explores the search for the arche or primary substance and contrasts Plato's two-world view with Aristotle's one-world view. We meet the concepts of the golden mean and harmonia, learn the logical tricks of the Sophists, and eavesdrop on a dialogue between Socrates and a slave boy. Poets Eamon Grennan and Josephine Jacobsen.
The Big Questions in Asia and Africa - Follows the search for wisdom to India where the Buddha finds Four Noble Truths about reality, to China where we meet Confucian virtue and the Taoist concept of ch'i, and, finally, to Africa where we encounter intuitive ways of knowing. Poets Eamon Grennan and Li-Young Lee.
We're Not in Kansas Anymore - Explores virtual reality and the ontological questions raised by quantum mechanics and relativity theory as foundations for understanding the Idealism of Plato, the Materialism of Hobbes, and the Pragmatism of James and Dewey. Poet Ann Darr.
A Net of Jewels, A Sacred Cosmos - Introduces the Buddhist ontology of oneness, the Taoist idea of the complementarity of yin and yang, and the concept of a sacred cosmos found in Native American, African, and African American thought. Poets Roland Flint, Robert Hass, Linda Pastan, Mark Strand, and Hilary Tham.
The Hebrews and the Greeks - Follows a Hebrew world view into Greece as early missionaries carry Christianity with its Jewish roots into the Gentile world, raising the question of how belief in a personal God affects ontology, cosmology, and our view of human nature. Novelist Mary Gordon and poets Robert Hass, Li- Young Lee, W.S. Merwin, and Hilary Tham.
A Little Lower Than the Angels - Considers how Western Essentialism, a blend of Hebrew religious thought and Greek rationalist thought, shapes our concept of the human person and explores the challenge of atheistic Existentialism as well as the power of gender stereotypes. Poets Lucille Clifton and Stanley Kunitz and novelist Edna O'Brien. Biographer David Levering Lewis, novelist Mary Gordon, and poet Linda Pastan.
Body/Mind/Spirit - Explores alternatives to Western philosophical assumptions—the Five Element view found in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Buddhist idea of anatman, the "no-self," an African female/male duality, and the anima/animus of Jungian psychology.
Made in the Image of God - Considers the power of the imago deo in anthropomorphism, distinguishes among theism, atheism, and agnosticism by reviewing proofs for the existence of God as well as mystical ways of knowing, and looks at the attributes of God or Goddess. Poets Lucille Clifton, Roland Flint, E.E. Miller, Carolyn Forche, Stanley Kunitz, Li-Young Lee, and Hilary Tham.
Varieties of Religious Experience - Introduces the Buddhist search for enlightenment and the Zen Buddhist emphasis on meditation, considers theologian Mary Daly's challenge to think of God as the most dynamic of verbs, and explores an African concept of God as cosmic architect and transformer. Poets Ann Darr, Linda Pastan, and Hilary Tham.
Leaving the Medieval World Behind - Considers the certainty of Scholastic philosophy that was shattered by the Enlightenment, Renaissance, and Reformation and previews upcoming lessons on knowledge, truth and aesthetic experience. Novelists Mary Gordon and John McGahern, and poets W.S. Merwin and Li-Young Lee.
Reason or the Senses - Takes up Epistemology or knowledge theory by exploring the egocentric predicament, Descartes' Cogito and the resulting mind/body problem as well as Anne Finch Conway's resolution of this problem, and lays out major theories of knowing: deduction, induction, and intuition. Poet Mark Strand.
The Dirt They Left Behind - Looks at variations on the sharp Western distinction between knowing subject and known object by considering an Asian story that rejects the writings of dead philosophers in favor of living intuitive knowledge and then traveling to Africa for an introduction to embodied knowledge as found in proverbs, stories, and art motifs. Poet Hilary Tham.
Do You Swear To Tell The Truth? - Looks at the role of warrant ability in distinguishing truth from falsity, explores traditional truth tests, examines truth in history, considers the need to deconstruct texts, and questions whether poets lie in order to tell.
The Truth Will Set You Free - Investigates the Zen concept of Beginner's Mind as well as the role of zazen or sitting meditation in arriving at truth, samples some of the Great Arts of China as entry points to truth, explores the implications of the Ewe Creativity Test of truth, and concludes with the way of the mystics. Poets Robert Hass and Li-Young Lee.
Truth and Beauty - Looks at Aesthetic experience as an alternative path to knowledge and truth by examining the role of the artist in Africa, Asia, and Europe, learning the connection between beauty and truth the priestess Diotima taught Socrates, and reviewing the conflict between Plato and Aristotle over the role of art as mimesis or representation. Novelist John McGahern and poets Robert Hass, Stanley Kunitz, and Li-Young Lee.
Seeing the World Differently - Examines the ability of art (often at great cost to the artist) to take us beyond the egocentric predicament and our traditional ways of seeing and thinking, through an exploration of Chinese landscape painting, Zen gardens, Impressionism, Cubism, and Art Installations. Novelist Edna O'Brien.
Welcome To The Post-Modern World - Introduces Axiology or value theory by exploring a culture characterized by diversity, multiplicity, uncertainty, and anxiety and using that context to introduce Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy, and Ethics in a post-modern world. Biographer Francine Du Plessix Gray, poet W.S. Merwin, children's author Ashley Bryan, and the trial of Susan B. Anthony on the charge of attempting to vote.
The Social Contract - Takes up Political Philosophy by looking at the continuum connecting Anarchism and Totalitarianism, differing interpretations of life in a hypothetical “state of nature” as offered by Hobbes and Locke, and the "fuzzy" nature of the social contract. Biographer David Levering Lewis and poets Dennis Brutus, Carolyn Forche, E.E. Miller, and Hilary Tham.
Women and Revolutions - Examines theocracy and the separation of church and state, arguments from natural rights to feminism, the theory of Independent Morality, and the influence of the Enlightenment on the struggle for women's rights. Novelists John McGahern and Edna O'Brien, biographer Francine Du Plessix Gray, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Declaration of Sentiments."
A Room of One's Own - Looks at justice in the context of the relationship between the individual and the community, exploring the defense of civil disobedience, the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, Simone de Beauvoir's concept of alterity or otherness, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's economic theories. Poets Hilary Tham, Roland Flint, Stanley Kunitz, Lucille Clifton, Carolyn Forche, and biographer Francine du Plessix Gray.
It Takes a Village to Raise a Child - Examines the role of elders in achieving justice in ancient Buganda, explores the conflict between assimilation and separatism as goals for African Americans, reviews the theoretical base provided by W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Poet E.E. Miller, and biographer David Levering Lewis and a nineteenth-century version of the assimilation/ separatism debate.
Expanding the Moral Universe - Considers the concept of a "person" as amoral agent and examines theories of Applied Normative Ethics, including Teleology and Deontology, using Kant, as well as traditional Virtue Theory, as expressed by Aristotle, against the background of in vitro fertilization and other technological marvels and "fuzzy logic." Children's author Sook Nyul Choi and poets Lucille Clifton, Josephine Jacobsen, W.S. Merwin, and Hilary Tham.
Karma and Care - Explores modern Virtue Theory, based on an Ethic of Care, the Buddhist law of karma and its relationship with rebirth, Zen practice, the Akan concept of ethics as Syntropy, and Bioethics as expressed in the prayer of oneness among created things attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. Children's author P.R. Naylor and poets Roland Flint, Stanley Kunitz, and W.S. Merwin.
The Final Frontier - Examines the implications of brain neuroscience for philosophy, especially the concept of modularity and the possibility of diminished moral responsibility, and offers a reprise of the entire series before concluding with some challenges for the future. Poets Dennis Brutus, Carolyn Forche, Josephine Jacobsen, Stanley Kunitz, Linda Pastan, and Henry Taylor.

Course Objectives

Define philosophy, its purpose and methods
Ask and answer philosophical questions
Compare and contrast deductive/inductive logic
Determine validity/invalidity of arguments
Interpret philosophical issues underlying personal and social problems
Define and describe the three major branches of philosophy
Analyze the contributions of major philosophers to the history of ideas and thought
Identify and discuss philosophical issues expressed in current events and literature
Compare and contrast the methods and focuses of philosophy with those of psychology, theology and science
Discuss similarities and dissimilarities between western and non-western approaches to philosophy
Analyze philosophy's role in shaping and being shaped by other cultural forces such as: politics, economics, religion and the arts
Develop and defend a personal philosophy

Who Should Use this Course?

Colleges seeking an introduction to philosophy for distance learning
Libraries interested in pluralism and multiculturalism
Philosophy Departments seeking to enrich the standard curriculum
Social Science Departments looking for the ideas behind events
Women's Studies Departments interested in women and men philosophers
Science Departments exploring philosophical foundations of empiricism/scientific method
Business people pursuing globalism
Nursing Programs wanting to introduce ethical issues