Philosophers in the Midst of History

This is an ongoing quarterly series, started in 2016, hosted by the Frank Weyenberg Library, in which we focus upon important philosophers within their historical contexts. We discuss some of their key ideas and their connections with cultural, social, political, and religious developments, events, and figures of their times.

Here are the videorecorded talks from 2016 sessions:

• Aristotle, Athens, and Alexander the Great
• Anselm of Canterbury, The Catholic Church, and the Norman Conquest
• Rene Descartes, Early Modernity, and the Wars of Religion
• Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust

Here are the videorecorded talks from the 2017 season:

• Plato, Athenian Democracy, and the Greek Enlightenment
• Boethius, King Theodoric, and the Middle Ages 
• Thomas Hobbes, English Civil War, and Modern Political Theory
• Friedrich Nietzsche, the Apex of the West, and the Threat of Nihilism

Here are the videorecorded talks from the 2018 season:

• Cicero, Greek Philosophy, and the Fall of the Roman Republic
• Augustine of Hippo, Struggles in the Church, and Rome’s Fall
• John Locke, Absolute Monarchy, and Constitutional Government 
• Albert Camus, an Absurd World, Resistance to Evil

We have further sessions scheduled focused on Epictetus, Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Simone de Beauvoir