“Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume” Listening Group

Learn and compare the competing philosophic ideas that shaped the Western world and continue shaping it today—morally, culturally, and politically.

The history of Western philosophy is the story of the fundamental causes that created the world in which we live. What is the fundamental nature of existence or reality? What is our means of knowing it? What are values and morality—and where do they come from? What are the essential features of a civilized society?

These are the questions on which philosophy is focused. And the answers philosophers have given throughout the ages have caused knowledge and ignorance, happiness and misery, freedom and tyranny, life and death.

In this listening group, Thomas Walker-Werth will lead discussions of Leonard Peikoff’s lecture series, “Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume.” As Dr. Peikoff says in his opening lecture, “To fight for your values in a world such as ours, you must regard yourself as a psychotherapist of an entire culture. Its present state at any given time cannot be understood except as an outgrowth from its past. The errors of today are built on the errors of the last century, and they in turn on the previous, and so on back to the childhood of the Western world, which is ancient Greece.”

Come learn and discuss the ideas that gave rise to the West. The knowledge you’ll gain will enable you to think more clearly, live more fully, and defend civilization more effectively.