What do you think?
Rate this book
Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) 12 Audio CDs.
CD's come 12 per Volume (2 Volumes) in hardcase with Course Guidebooks.
Taught by Thomas Williams of University of South Florida, Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
Are philosophy and religionreason and faithfundamentally at odds? From today's strict division between questions of logic and questions of belief, one might think so. But for 1,000 years during a pivotal era of Western thought, reason and faith went hand-in-hand in the search for answers to the most profound issues investigated by Christianity's most committed scholars:
* Can God's existence and attributes be established by reason alone?
* Are there Christian doctrines that are beyond the scope of logical demonstration?
* How can Christian beliefs be defended against objections and made internally consistent?
These questions posed by the great philosophers of the Middle Ages bear no resemblance to the stereotypical medieval dispute about how many angels can dance on the head of a pina problem that apparently no one in the Middle Ages discussed. Instead, they are emblematic of an extraordinarily rich period of intellectual ferment, when the best minds of the age participated in a common struggle with transcendent questions, using reasoning in the service of faith.
CD's come 12 per Volume (2 Volumes) in hardcase with Course Guidebooks.
Taught by Thomas Williams of University of South Florida, Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
Are philosophy and religionreason and faithfundamentally at odds? From today's strict division between questions of logic and questions of belief, one might think so. But for 1,000 years during a pivotal era of Western thought, reason and faith went hand-in-hand in the search for answers to the most profound issues investigated by Christianity's most committed scholars:
* Can God's existence and attributes be established by reason alone?
* Are there Christian doctrines that are beyond the scope of logical demonstration?
* How can Christian beliefs be defended against objections and made internally consistent?
These questions posed by the great philosophers of the Middle Ages bear no resemblance to the stereotypical medieval dispute about how many angels can dance on the head of a pina problem that apparently no one in the Middle Ages discussed. Instead, they are emblematic of an extraordinarily rich period of intellectual ferment, when the best minds of the age participated in a common struggle with transcendent questions, using reasoning in the service of faith.
Audio CD
First published January 1, 2007
4 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Williams
14 books23 followersThe Reverend Canon Dr. Thomas Williams is an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of Southwest Florida, Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, and Canon Theologian at the Cathedral Church of St Peter in St Petersburg.
He received a BA in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 1994.
His academic specialty is medieval Christian thought, focusing especially on St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308).
He received a BA in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 1994.
His academic specialty is medieval Christian thought, focusing especially on St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 31, 2022
A lot to think about and a great place to start. One of the best from the Great Courses.
January 10, 2022
The connections between the characters presented in this lecture series were so coherent that I could probably list all the thinkers presented in the order the lecturer presented them.
Coherence is not a proof for truth at best it is only a test for not truth. The latter lectures make that point in the final lectures which covers past the medieval period. The truth not being discoverable out there doesn’t mean the truth is not out there, or that it is within us, or neither, it only means it might not be discoverable by us.
Aristotle makes truth that which comports to reality and makes the things of the world for which we know through our senses its starting point. Aristotle is the character that is given out of order multiple times in this lecture series.
Augustine reconciles Plotinus’ metaphysics with Cicero’s ethics and defines Christianity’s next 600 plus years and even more if you consider Luther as his heir. Boethius visits with Lady Wisdom (Sophia) and concludes that despite the good things happening to bad people as in the case of MAGA hat morons, their punishment is that they don’t know they are ignorant fools and never will know and must suffer the life of a fool.
Anslem 600 years after Augustine awakens the world from a theological slumber and appeals to Augustine’s definition of God as something such that nothing greater can be thought. Aquinas will disagree on Anslem’s ontological proof for the existence of God, but keeps Anslem’s characteristics for such a creator God while making the will of God inherent to God and His existence equal to his essence.
Anslem brings logic and reason where assertions and faith reigned before. Abelard arrogantly extends the project while at times it seems to me Heloise has slightly more to say and contribute (read the Letters between the two, they are marvelous and it just seems that Heloise was the better thinker and was in more control of rational argumentation).
I don’t want to spoil the surprise but Aquinas sees the necessity in making a God who uses his own voluntary will in creating us since He is all powerful and doesn’t have to do something He doesn’t want to do and ultimately leading to freewill within his creations since God is being and His creatures only have (participate in) being. Pseudo-Dionysius (about 600 ACE) reads his Plotinus and influences Aquinas, of course, Aristotle, The Commentator Averroes, and Maimonides do too. Aquinas is convinced the reason comes before faith in the support of faith opening the world to science.
Am I the only one who gets irritated when someone says Occam’s Razor? This lecture points out my source of irritation. It could just as readily be called Scotus’ Rule which preceded Occam and no one called it Occam’s Razor before 1836 according to these lectures and let’s face it most people do not realize that the Razor says: do not multiply entities unnecessarily. Aristotle’s ten categories do not need relations, for example, all that is needed are two categories, substance and quality. Everything else leads to unnecessary confusion.
John Dunce Scotus refutes Aquinas’ analogical method for the truth of God and he believes we can know God’s characteristics directly beyond analogy to the same degree we can know horses exist. For him, the truth is out there and knowable beyond analogy or metaphor.
Shortly after John Dunce Scotus (who is certainly no dunce!), Occam shows horse-ness, white-ness, or any other such universal same-ness adds nothing to our understanding. The thing is the thing, the particular makes the general, but the universal is a red-herring. Nominalism is a figment of the imagination. The end of nominalism is the beginning of the end of myth and imaginary friends. It means the truth is not necessarily found out there since there are no Forms, Ideals, or categories except for the ones we use for the sake of convenience.
The scholastics never argued over the number of angels that could fit on the end of a pin. They knew the real questions were about being human within humanity. When Anslem asked why did some of the angels fall and solved it by saying they had will such that happiness preceded justice rather than justice preceded happiness, Anslem is getting at the internal struggle that lays within each of us between our selfish aims and our virtuous goals. It’s not that the lion will lay down with the lamb, but it’s that within ourselves the struggles we have between our selfishness (lion) and our gentleness towards others (lambs) such that we must find the divine love through God’s unearned favor as spoken of by St. Bonaventure.
Heidegger wrote his dissertation on Scotus for a reason. Proof by contradiction (opposites don’t exist) does not lead to a refutation of the scholastic project. The book Hegel or Spinoza will show that and by extension the scholastic project is still worthy of our attention. After all, who amongst us doesn’t love an esoteric detailed exposition on the scholastic thinkers and why they are important? I know I do!
Here’s the thing. Of all the reasonable apologia for religion or mysteries, the best defense is contained within the Medieval Scholastic project which gets almost completely ignored today. There is a foundation that hangs around the Medieval Scholastics that gets obfuscated by the bloviators of today and they would be better served to revisit this period of thought.
.
Coherence is not a proof for truth at best it is only a test for not truth. The latter lectures make that point in the final lectures which covers past the medieval period. The truth not being discoverable out there doesn’t mean the truth is not out there, or that it is within us, or neither, it only means it might not be discoverable by us.
Aristotle makes truth that which comports to reality and makes the things of the world for which we know through our senses its starting point. Aristotle is the character that is given out of order multiple times in this lecture series.
Augustine reconciles Plotinus’ metaphysics with Cicero’s ethics and defines Christianity’s next 600 plus years and even more if you consider Luther as his heir. Boethius visits with Lady Wisdom (Sophia) and concludes that despite the good things happening to bad people as in the case of MAGA hat morons, their punishment is that they don’t know they are ignorant fools and never will know and must suffer the life of a fool.
Anslem 600 years after Augustine awakens the world from a theological slumber and appeals to Augustine’s definition of God as something such that nothing greater can be thought. Aquinas will disagree on Anslem’s ontological proof for the existence of God, but keeps Anslem’s characteristics for such a creator God while making the will of God inherent to God and His existence equal to his essence.
Anslem brings logic and reason where assertions and faith reigned before. Abelard arrogantly extends the project while at times it seems to me Heloise has slightly more to say and contribute (read the Letters between the two, they are marvelous and it just seems that Heloise was the better thinker and was in more control of rational argumentation).
I don’t want to spoil the surprise but Aquinas sees the necessity in making a God who uses his own voluntary will in creating us since He is all powerful and doesn’t have to do something He doesn’t want to do and ultimately leading to freewill within his creations since God is being and His creatures only have (participate in) being. Pseudo-Dionysius (about 600 ACE) reads his Plotinus and influences Aquinas, of course, Aristotle, The Commentator Averroes, and Maimonides do too. Aquinas is convinced the reason comes before faith in the support of faith opening the world to science.
Am I the only one who gets irritated when someone says Occam’s Razor? This lecture points out my source of irritation. It could just as readily be called Scotus’ Rule which preceded Occam and no one called it Occam’s Razor before 1836 according to these lectures and let’s face it most people do not realize that the Razor says: do not multiply entities unnecessarily. Aristotle’s ten categories do not need relations, for example, all that is needed are two categories, substance and quality. Everything else leads to unnecessary confusion.
John Dunce Scotus refutes Aquinas’ analogical method for the truth of God and he believes we can know God’s characteristics directly beyond analogy to the same degree we can know horses exist. For him, the truth is out there and knowable beyond analogy or metaphor.
Shortly after John Dunce Scotus (who is certainly no dunce!), Occam shows horse-ness, white-ness, or any other such universal same-ness adds nothing to our understanding. The thing is the thing, the particular makes the general, but the universal is a red-herring. Nominalism is a figment of the imagination. The end of nominalism is the beginning of the end of myth and imaginary friends. It means the truth is not necessarily found out there since there are no Forms, Ideals, or categories except for the ones we use for the sake of convenience.
The scholastics never argued over the number of angels that could fit on the end of a pin. They knew the real questions were about being human within humanity. When Anslem asked why did some of the angels fall and solved it by saying they had will such that happiness preceded justice rather than justice preceded happiness, Anslem is getting at the internal struggle that lays within each of us between our selfish aims and our virtuous goals. It’s not that the lion will lay down with the lamb, but it’s that within ourselves the struggles we have between our selfishness (lion) and our gentleness towards others (lambs) such that we must find the divine love through God’s unearned favor as spoken of by St. Bonaventure.
Heidegger wrote his dissertation on Scotus for a reason. Proof by contradiction (opposites don’t exist) does not lead to a refutation of the scholastic project. The book Hegel or Spinoza will show that and by extension the scholastic project is still worthy of our attention. After all, who amongst us doesn’t love an esoteric detailed exposition on the scholastic thinkers and why they are important? I know I do!
Here’s the thing. Of all the reasonable apologia for religion or mysteries, the best defense is contained within the Medieval Scholastic project which gets almost completely ignored today. There is a foundation that hangs around the Medieval Scholastics that gets obfuscated by the bloviators of today and they would be better served to revisit this period of thought.
.
April 26, 2022
In this course Dr. Williams surveys the major philosophical advances of the Middle Ages, with a focus on six major philosopher-theologians: Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. Williams’ teaching is very lively and one can tell he has a passion for his subject. The fact that Williams comes from within the Christian faith makes this course all the more helpful. This is an advanced course I’ll want to return to at a later point as I grow in my ability to understand all the history and the philosophical concepts presented. I recommend this for anyone interested in stretching their ability to think theologically and philosophically.
April 4, 2025
I completed 80% of this last year, but came back to finish this spring. These are excellent. Not only are the surprisingly engaging, but Williams does a remarkable job of showing the connectedness and development of thought between Medieval thinkers, as well as how their thought impacted later Modernity. I don't share William's special affinity for Duns Scotus, but on the whole, this was really well done.
January 12, 2019
It is just what it claims to be: a solid introduction to the topic.
October 9, 2022
Middle Ages is considered by many people as a black hole of intellectual endeavors, with Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine as exceptions. The lectures “reason and faith,” however, presents a continuous philosophical thread through the Middle Ages in reconciling two approaches to knowledge: revelation and human comprehension. These lectures address how we should understand God, what we know about God, and our relationship with God. Although the lectures follow the customary format of focusing on one thinker at a time, they uniquely emphasize connections between the schools of thought and the legacy of Middle Age thinking for later thinkers.
The 24 lectures cover several Middle Ages thinkers in chronicle order. They include Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Abelard, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. Augustine started the project of “faith seeking understanding,” or uniting God with human reasoning. This project reaches its apex with the reintroduction of Aristotle into Western thinking and Aquinas’s systematic teaching of religion and reason. This trend was turned by Ockham with his famous “Ockham’s razor,” which excludes the idea of God from reasoning. Unlike most other courses, this one devotes multiple lectures to a thinker and thus going more profound and with a broader context.
The first question contemplated by many thinkers is how to prove God’s existence. A general approach is realizing that our reasoning inevitably reaches its limit without logical closing. We trace a chain of “creators” or “causes” to no end. We cannot explain where the original knowledge (or “ideal” in Plato’s terms) comes from. And we struggle to envision a reality without any defects. Therefore, we must “backstop” our infinite quest with an ultimate creator, cause, wisdom, and perfection. That is God.
However, this “God of necessity” is too abstract. It makes our reasoning complete, but it is not satisfying. We want to be able to say more about God. The thinkers contemplated questions such as whether God is omnipotent (it cannot violate logic, such as making a stone that he cannot move) and whether God can know the future, which is influenced by our free will. Various thinkers propose several theories. While these theories portray different visions of God, they share a common principle: our reasons cannot reach all necessary conclusions. Some knowledge must originate from faith and be obtained through revelation. However, knowledge from faith and reason should not and do not contradict each other.
So far, we may accept the idea of God as an idealized, even personified, creator and master. However, he is not necessarily the God described by the Christian teaching. The next task is to examine the relationship between God and human beings. What are God’s roles in our moral standards, justice, and security? How do we understand Trinity, redemption, good and evil, and other Christian tenets? Much of the Middle Ages' philosophical work attempted to answer these questions based on reason.
Another primary task of the Middle Ages philosophers was reconciling Aristotle’s thinking with Christianity. Aristotle established a comprehensive framework for reasoning, including epistemology, metaphysics, and logical rules. However, Aristotle did not accept the existence of God, and he believed that human reasoning is self-complete without the need for divine assistance. The Middle Ages thinkers, especially Aquinas, examined and explained the relationship between philosophy (reasoning) and theology (faith).
The perfect harmony created by Aquinas was disrupted by Ockham, who argues that reasoning can be self-complete and does not need the a priori assumption of God. Therefore, he argues, God is redundant and should not be included in the reasoning process. At the same time, social changes make other issues more prominent. People’s attention shifted away from the Middle Age philosophy to, for example, the emergence of science and the Catholic reformation. Actually, the reformist Luther drew from Aquinas and Ockham’s thoughts.
Nonetheless, social issues trump philosophical quests, and the project of uniting reason with faith receded to oblivion. However, it does not mean the Middle Age philosophy has lost its value, and we can still pick up and continue the project today.
The lectures are outstanding in similar courses because they not only delve into each philosopher’s works but also discuss their connection. The lectures also discussed the social conditions and the broader trends in thoughts, especially the roles of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and pagan philosophies. It provides a great context for studying western philosophy. For example, another course, “Skeptics and Believers” by Tyler Roberts, traces the evolution of Christian religious thoughts from the enlightenment period. That course provided a brief summary of Aquinas and went from there. Understanding of Middle Ages philosophical works, as provided by this course, is valuable in following the thread of thoughts.
On the other hand, a study of later philosophies, such as imperialism and rationalism, reveals the limit of the Middle Ages' understanding of reason and epistemology. These limitations explain some of the confusion Middle Ages philosophers struggled with. Therefore, these lectures are worth taking.
The 24 lectures cover several Middle Ages thinkers in chronicle order. They include Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Abelard, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. Augustine started the project of “faith seeking understanding,” or uniting God with human reasoning. This project reaches its apex with the reintroduction of Aristotle into Western thinking and Aquinas’s systematic teaching of religion and reason. This trend was turned by Ockham with his famous “Ockham’s razor,” which excludes the idea of God from reasoning. Unlike most other courses, this one devotes multiple lectures to a thinker and thus going more profound and with a broader context.
The first question contemplated by many thinkers is how to prove God’s existence. A general approach is realizing that our reasoning inevitably reaches its limit without logical closing. We trace a chain of “creators” or “causes” to no end. We cannot explain where the original knowledge (or “ideal” in Plato’s terms) comes from. And we struggle to envision a reality without any defects. Therefore, we must “backstop” our infinite quest with an ultimate creator, cause, wisdom, and perfection. That is God.
However, this “God of necessity” is too abstract. It makes our reasoning complete, but it is not satisfying. We want to be able to say more about God. The thinkers contemplated questions such as whether God is omnipotent (it cannot violate logic, such as making a stone that he cannot move) and whether God can know the future, which is influenced by our free will. Various thinkers propose several theories. While these theories portray different visions of God, they share a common principle: our reasons cannot reach all necessary conclusions. Some knowledge must originate from faith and be obtained through revelation. However, knowledge from faith and reason should not and do not contradict each other.
So far, we may accept the idea of God as an idealized, even personified, creator and master. However, he is not necessarily the God described by the Christian teaching. The next task is to examine the relationship between God and human beings. What are God’s roles in our moral standards, justice, and security? How do we understand Trinity, redemption, good and evil, and other Christian tenets? Much of the Middle Ages' philosophical work attempted to answer these questions based on reason.
Another primary task of the Middle Ages philosophers was reconciling Aristotle’s thinking with Christianity. Aristotle established a comprehensive framework for reasoning, including epistemology, metaphysics, and logical rules. However, Aristotle did not accept the existence of God, and he believed that human reasoning is self-complete without the need for divine assistance. The Middle Ages thinkers, especially Aquinas, examined and explained the relationship between philosophy (reasoning) and theology (faith).
The perfect harmony created by Aquinas was disrupted by Ockham, who argues that reasoning can be self-complete and does not need the a priori assumption of God. Therefore, he argues, God is redundant and should not be included in the reasoning process. At the same time, social changes make other issues more prominent. People’s attention shifted away from the Middle Age philosophy to, for example, the emergence of science and the Catholic reformation. Actually, the reformist Luther drew from Aquinas and Ockham’s thoughts.
Nonetheless, social issues trump philosophical quests, and the project of uniting reason with faith receded to oblivion. However, it does not mean the Middle Age philosophy has lost its value, and we can still pick up and continue the project today.
The lectures are outstanding in similar courses because they not only delve into each philosopher’s works but also discuss their connection. The lectures also discussed the social conditions and the broader trends in thoughts, especially the roles of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and pagan philosophies. It provides a great context for studying western philosophy. For example, another course, “Skeptics and Believers” by Tyler Roberts, traces the evolution of Christian religious thoughts from the enlightenment period. That course provided a brief summary of Aquinas and went from there. Understanding of Middle Ages philosophical works, as provided by this course, is valuable in following the thread of thoughts.
On the other hand, a study of later philosophies, such as imperialism and rationalism, reveals the limit of the Middle Ages' understanding of reason and epistemology. These limitations explain some of the confusion Middle Ages philosophers struggled with. Therefore, these lectures are worth taking.
May 27, 2023
I really enjoyed Professor's Williams 24 lectures on the relationship between reason and faith during the Middle Ages. Professor Williams speaks very clearly with no speech distractions, his lectures are as clear as a bell. The topic that he is speaking on is one that is very interesting to me. How can a person use their reason to help them understand their faith in God? Professor Williams gives between 2-5 lectures to each of the following philosophers in the Middle Ages; Augustine, Boethius, Anslem, Abelard, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham.
Professor Williams is passionate and knowledgeable about his topic. I listened to the audio version of this course while driving. His lectures are deep, and depending on what was happening while I was on the road, I occasionally missed something, so it is nice to have the course guidebook to go back and refer to it to check a statement, or get further reading on the topic discussed. I think I liked the lectures on Anslem and Duns Scotus the most, but this was a course I really enjoyed and will return to again in the future.
Professor Williams is passionate and knowledgeable about his topic. I listened to the audio version of this course while driving. His lectures are deep, and depending on what was happening while I was on the road, I occasionally missed something, so it is nice to have the course guidebook to go back and refer to it to check a statement, or get further reading on the topic discussed. I think I liked the lectures on Anslem and Duns Scotus the most, but this was a course I really enjoyed and will return to again in the future.
December 14, 2024
Maybe closer to 4? Not sure. I am sure that I personally would recommend knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine on a minimum. Other than Boethius there is zero backstory or information of the men (it is all men) discussed here. If I hadn't read quite a bit on those three I think I would be lost. Also I have read Dante and there are quite a few references to him. In my humble opinion this is not a beginners lecture (this is a Jr. or Sr. level class-for those with some experience). My favorites were Augustine, Boethius, Scotts, Occam. Anselm and Abelard sections are okay. I kind of found myself spacing off a bit and re-listening to the Aquinas section. Some lectures are really entertaining and I felt like I learned a lot but others I found myself lost in the mental weeds.
June 3, 2021
Can't get more efficient than this at conveying information. It is admitedly a bit dry to present content in footnotes this way but if you are someone who is curious who doesn't want the stuff to go around it, this is the best thing that you can read. Part 1 is about Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Abelard. Part 2 has Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham. I didn't read through the whole thing in detail but I went in quick, got what I wanted from the figures that most interested me and got out. This is an absolute must for anybody wishing to understand theology in a concise way.
January 11, 2022
This Great Courses course is a bit uneven. Some of the lectures are approachable and informative, and even sometimes enterataining. Other lectures are so dense with logical arguments that I found it hard to follow in audio format. Prof. Williams certainly is a master of the subject matter, and I definitely want to listen over again to try to glean more from this course, but it was a challenge for sure, particularly in some of the later lectures in this course.
It did get me to find a copy of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy to read, though, so it had an impact.
It did get me to find a copy of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy to read, though, so it had an impact.
July 8, 2021
also yknow I listened to the lectures too which should count as a book/audiobook. loved the ones on Scotus and Ockham as I didn't know much about that, as well as the concluding lecture explaining why the medieval project for seeking understanding between faith and reason was eventually abandoned in favor of natural science or political philosophy, as people lost interest in what we can know through pure reason.
July 22, 2019
This one was a bit of a grab bag. I got more out his discussion of Some thinkers than others. High points of the course for me were his discussions of Boethius and Anselm. And Augustine lecture on authority, reason and truth was fantastic!
I hoped to get more out of his Aquinas lectures than I did, but I think that is more the fault of Aquinas than of the teacher.
I hoped to get more out of his Aquinas lectures than I did, but I think that is more the fault of Aquinas than of the teacher.
October 24, 2022
A little dry in some spots but overall a solid intro/quick look/study guide/ reading list for a lot of very complicated topics. Recommend reading or re reading Plato and Aristotle before diving in to this. Otherwise the Augustine and Aquinas bits are going to lose you
March 6, 2017
In short, this is amazing. The lecturer outlines a the arguments of the major philosophers of the Middle Ages on topics of God. I highly recommend this.
April 5, 2020
A great overview of medieval theology and philosophy that was both easy to listen to and interesting.
October 20, 2021
Worth it. He will make you work. But it’s worth it.
February 21, 2023
Listened rather than read. Highly informative and engaging lectures.
May 23, 2012
A superlative series of lectures by Notre Dame-trained philosopher Thomas Williams. No mere "lecture" could ever hope to convey the fulness of some great genius' corpus, but Williams does a fine job of covering the "big names" (Augustine, Aquinas) while also providing neat introductions to the "lesser" philosophical systems developed by the likes of Bonaventura and Boethius. Williams' treatment of Abelard and Anselm--two "great" philosophers lost in the post-Thomistic shuffle--is especially good, which makes sense given that the latter is Williams' primary research interest and the former looms large in the period with which he is most familiar (i.e., the period immediately prior to the big "Aristotelian boom" in European philosophy). Note: Williams is a theist, a fact which may be off-putting to some listeners but which actually seems to enhance the quality of his presentation (i.e., he's really excited about teaching this subject).
November 6, 2011
Quite possibly the most frustrating audio book experience of my life. The author/narrator sounds as if he had a yen to go into sermonizing, and the tone of his lecturing ended up shutting my ears down every time. I must have listened to this set 5 times and STILL i came away with barely anything to show from it. Apparently if im going to study how ancient theologians measured god, then i will need a set of cliffs notes and a flow chart. Either way, Mr. Williams is not the one who is going to teach it to me.
October 6, 2023
This is one of the best surveys of philosophy I have listened to, worth multiple passes.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews