First-Year Studies: Philosophy, Friend and Rival to Religion

Since its earliest days, philosophy has been characterized by its rivalry with religion. Philosophy begins from a desire to comprehend mysteries, while religion involves an acceptance of the mysterious. It’s no surprise, then, that philosophy has often criticized or even mocked religion, while religion has often been suspicious of philosophy. It is because their concerns are so close that philosophy and religion have often been rivals. Both seek ultimate reasons for acting and living and ultimate accounts of the nature of things. Yet the closeness of their concerns, which has sometimes brought them into conflict, has sometimes made them close allies. Philosophy has sought to draw on the energies, questions, and teachings of religion, and religion has sought the help of philosophy in explaining and defending its teachings—particularly when it had to defend them against philosophy itself. In this course, we shall study the tensions and alliances between philosophy and religion in order to gain a deeper understanding of both. We shall begin with the Theogony (account of the birth of the gods) of the Greek poet Hesiod. We shall then read the philosopher Heraclitus, who criticizes Hesiod, and the philosopher Parmenides, who seeks to provide an alternative to Hesiod’s theology. This will be followed by Aristophanes’ Clouds and Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo to study both the charges of impiety against Socrates and Plato’s response to those charges. Depending on time and the interests of the class, we may also read Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium. In the second semester, we shall inquire into the relation between the Bible and philosophy by reading the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis, the Book of Job, and the Books of Amos and Jonah. We shall study the Epicurean attack on religion by reading Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. We shall then go on to Paul’s Letter to the Romans in the New Testament, followed by Augustine’s Confessions—in which Augustine shows us how Platonism and the ancient academic skeptics helped lead him to Christianity. If time permits, we shall read Averroes’ Decisive Treatise on the Relation Between Philosophy and Law, in which the medieval Arab philosopher Averroes argues that philosophy and religion can be friends that grasp the same truths at different levels. If we have time, and depending on the interests of the class, we may read other works such as Hume’s The Natural History of Religion and Kant’s humorous defense of religion in the Dreams of a Spirit Seer.