History Review

• Western Culture- Where

  Ancient - Mediterranean World

  Medieval - Europe

  Today - Europe, Americas, World
• Western Culture - What

  3 Elements

  • Classica ( Greco-Roman) culture
  • Judeo- Christian culture
  • Germanic culture
• Western Culture - Why

  • Globally influential
  • Source of great human achievements
  • Carrier of Christian faith
• Western Culture-Our Culture

  We study Western Culture not because it is the best culture, but because it is ours and it is us
• Patriotism

  The preferential love of one's own

  Based not on superiority, but on

  • Possession: being yours
  • Identity: makes up who you are
• Jewish Tradition

  Earliest- Predates Greco-Roman tradition

  Sources- Hebrew Scriptures (c. 1000-500 BC)

  Commentaries

  • Mishnah ( c. 200 CE)
  • Talmud (c. 500 CE)
• Abraham - father of faith

  • C. 1800 BC ( Born from Creation )
  • Ur ( in modern Iraq)
  • Polytheistic
• Abraham - His Call

  • Go to land " I will show you"
  • "I will make of you a great nation"
  • 75 years old, followed God's direction
  • Child-less until Isaac
• Moses - Law and Covenant

  • Contained in Torah - 1st five books of Hebrew Scriptures
  • Instruction for rituals of worship
  • Moral norms
  • Moses: lawgiver ( from God), not a lawmaker
• Moses - Covenant

  "If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples" (Exodus 19:5)
• God's people

  • Prone to idol worship
  • Neglect worship
  • Violate moral law
  • Idolatry/Hearts turned away
  • Golden Calf: worship of the golden calf is seen as a supreme act of abandoning your beliefs, the rejection of faith once confessed
• Kingmakers:

  1st - Saul

  2nd - David
• David

  • Born c. 1030 BC
  • Shepherd
  • Musician
  • King
  • Sinner: Murder and Adultery
• David was patient along the way and allowed God to promote him. If we are faithful in little things, we will be entrusted with greater responsibilities. David proved faithful in caring for his father's sheep before being called to shepherd God's flock.
• Jewish Legacy: Divine Righteousness, Human Sin (Psalm 51)

  "Against you, you only, have I sinned, And done that which is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless in your judgment."

  David, the greatest of Israel's kings, fell into serious sin and recognized his need to plead with God for forgiveness.
• Jewish Legacy: God knows us (Psalm 139)

  "O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

  You know when I sit down, when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether."

  It discloses information about God's omniscience: He knows everything. It explains His omnipresence: that He is everywhere. It declares His omnipotence: He formed every part of human beings.
• Jewish Legacy: God

  "God is One" - Monotheism

  God is sovereign

  God is good

  God is transcendent + immanent
• God's Law

  • Knowable morality
  • Moral responsibility of the individual
• God's Covenant

  • Relational
  • Obedience/love to person, not simply to abstract principles
• Greek Philosophy- Defined

  "Love of Wisdom"

  Reasoned inquiry into the principles of

  • Natural world (science)
  • Divine beings (theology, religion)
  • Human affairs (humanities, social sciences)
• Greek Philosophy

  Origins: Greek City-States

  Early Versions: "Pre-Socratics" - 500s BC: use of reason, cosmology

  Sophists- 400s BC

  • Teachers of rhetoric, 400s BC
  • Tended toward skepticism
• S- Socrates

  P- Plato

  A-Aristotle
• Socrates, The Questioner

  • Athens
  • Born 470 BC
  • Socratic method
  • Executed for atheism/corrupting young
  • Phaedo- reflections on the advantage of dying
• Plato, The Abstract Reasoner

  • Student of Socrates
  • Born c.428 BC
• Plato - Forms

  • Perfect originals in a spiritual realm
  • Things of this world only imperfect copies
  • Highest form - the Good
• Plato - The search for truth

  • Requires mental leaps ( to forms) from unreliable experience of imperfect copies
  • Requires discipline of the body
  • Death helps
• Aristotle, the Great Empiricist

  • Student of Plato
  • Mid-300s (384-322 BC)
• Aristotle - Empirical Method

  • Use the senses / experience
  • Truth through accumulation of empirical evidence
• Plato's Soul

  Nature of the Soul-

  • Incorporeal
  • Gives life to body
  • Pre-exists body
  • Immortal
  • Transmigrates
• Plato's Soul - Tripartite

  • Reason ( head)
  • Spiritedness (chest)
  • Appetite ( stomach)
• Plato - Tripartite Soul

  Paralleling the producers, warriors, and rulers in the city, Plato claims that each soul has three separate seats of desire and motivation:

  1)The appetitive part of our soul lusts after food, drink(and after money, most of all)

  2) The spirited part of the soul yearns for honor; and

  3) The rational part of the soul desires truth and knowledge.

  In a just soul, these three parts stand in the correct power relations. The rational part must rule, the spirited part must enforce the rational part’s convictions, and the appetitive part must obey. 
• Plato's Phaedo

  The soul is only able to view existence through its own body, and not outside, you must go through the journey of life to experience things;

  the immortality of the soul.
• Legacy of Greek Philosophy

  • Legacy of Methods
  • Of Debates
  • Existence of forms ( realism vs nominalism)
  • Nature of body & soul
• The Greek Polis

  • Whole community
  • Comprehensive ( all of life)
  • Participatory
  • Serves individual happiness
• Plato's Republic

  Justice

  • A society "in fever"
  • Diversity of occupations
  • Justice: each does his job
  •  He wants to define justice, and to define it in such a way as to show that justice is worthwhile in and of itself
• Plato's Republic Reading Main Points

  • Plato identifies political justice as harmony in a structured political body. An ideal society consists of three main classes of people—craftsmen, warriors, and guardians (rulers); a society is just when relations between these three classes are right. Each group must perform its appropriate function, and only that function and each must be in the right position of power over the others. 
• Plato's Republic Reading Main Points 2

  • There is a rational part of the soul, which seeks after truth and is responsible for our philosophical inclinations; a spirited part of the soul, which desires honor and is responsible for our feelings of anger and indignation; and an appetitive part of the soul, which lusts after all sorts of things, but money most of all (since money must be used to fulfill any other base desire).
• Plato's Republic

  3 Classes

  Guardians - leadership

  Soldiers - defense/enforcement

  Workers - productive class ( makers of things)
• Polis and the Self: in it together

  Polis ( Greek- City state):

  Serves happiness of polis

  Requires virtue of citizens

  Self:

  Seeks happiness in polis

  Requires virtue to be happy
• Greek Happiness

  Eudaimonia

  Our highest attainable good

  To "Live Well" or "Do Well"