MALA 6030 - Topics in Culture and Ideas: A Stroll Through Western Civilization. Focused on interpreting the western philosophical tradition as an ongoing response to Plato (to whom British philosopher A.N. Whitehead famously said all of western philosophy is a series of footnotes) and Aristotle (whose students were known as Peripatetics, from the Greek word meaning "to walk up and down" while learning.
MAIN TEXTS:
- Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
- Frederic Gros, A Philosophy of Walking
“...Socrates describes the world around us as a darkened cavern, across the back of which a puppet show is flashed with the figures of men, animals, and objects cast as shadows. For a modern audience, the description has an eerily familiar ring. It’s the world of television and the media at its most flimsy and superficial."
"Walking is a matter not just of truth, but of reality. To walk is to experience the real. Not reality as pure physical exteriority... but reality as what holds good: the principle of solidity, of resistance. When you walk you prove it with every step: the earth holds good."
"To stimulate thinking, to move reflection forward, to deepen inventiveness, the mind needs the help of an active body. 'My thoughts sleep if I sit still," wrote Montaigne. "My fancy does not go so well by itself as when my legs move it.'"
Charles Darwin (
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