Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, and the Modern Experience

By: The Great Courses, Robert H. Kane

Narrated by: Robert H. Kane

Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Is there an ethics that we can all agree on without stifling pluralism and freedom? What would such an ethics look like? Most important, how should you, as a thoughtful person, find your way among the moral puzzles of the modern world and its cacophony of voices and opinions? These are just some of the engaging and perplexing questions you'll tackle as you join Professor Kane for this thought-provoking, 24-lecture examination of the problems surrounding ethics in the modern world.

The contemporary issues you'll consider include conflicts between public and private morality, the degree to which the law should enforce morality, the teaching of values in the schools, the role of religion in public life, the limits of liberty and privacy, individualism versus community, and the loss of shared values and the resulting discontent about politics and public discourse. Professor Kane's approach is as searching and comprehensive as any you could ask for. His lectures range over a rich array of literary, religious, and philosophical sources representing thousands of years of civilization. Most intriguingly, they spur you to ponder the possibility of recovering the ancient quest for wisdom and virtue in a way that respects the insights of modern thought and the achievements of modern pluralism. Whatever your thinking on such questions, whatever your own personal question for true meaning, you can rest assured that it will be immeasurably enriched by the harvest of reflection you glean from these compelling lectures.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1999 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1999 The Great Courses

A uniquely useful and practical view of philosophy and religion

What do philosophy and religion say about how to live (broadly, not in specifics) and how can we synthesize this information in a time of many beliefs? No spoilers, and the final section may not be a spiritual epiphany , but I found it to be useful.

Possibly the best from the great courses

I've listed to dozens of courses from this series, and I think this is the best I've listened to. The discussion was very logical and easy to follow (I am a scientist, but have never taken courses in philosophy, but I have studied quite a lot of theology). My favorite parts were the last few lessons where he pulls together the ideas of universal truth, universal worth, and couched it into the diverse world religions. This course is having me step back and really reevaluate how I live my life. So sad I'm 20 years out of my undergrad and just now coming across these ideas.

Brilliant and erudite

I learned heaps and my mind was opened. I will do more of the great courses. They are just a cut above every other course.

Best of the best

I have taken a number of excellent Philosophy courses through The Great Courses. This one is by far the best. Professor Kane does a masterful job of describing the classical, modern, and postmodern Philosophical Systems, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each. His solution for bridging the seemingly unbridgble divide among these systems While avoiding the twin pitfalls of relativism and dogmatism is both Insightful and relevant to our modern Philosphical discourse. Hie ye hence and listen to what he has to say. It will be time we'll spent.

Review

"If there is no God, anything is permitted." Through Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky challenged the atheists' grounding of ethics. This challenge has been haunting the modern era, and I view this lecture series as an attempt of responding to this central question of the modern human. Divided into three parts, the first part of this course traces intellectual roots of the Western civilization to the Axial Period to describe how the sunderings of modernity -- of scientific explanation from purpose, of fact from value, and of theoretical from practical inquiry -- create modern moral confusion by introducing pluralism and uncertainty. The main responses to such moral confusion, i.e. subjectivism (mainly positivism and existentialism) and relativism, are also introduced. The second part describes the project of modernity to address the problem of relativism -- sentimentalist, rationalist, utilitarian, contractarian alternatives in modern ethics -- as well as their criticisms. The third part preaches a pluralism different from postmodernism: the aspiration, or the search, of objective truth as well as of objective value or worth (love and glory), by considering all points of view. Using the framework of moral sphere developed by himself, Professor Kane claimed that this openness to all would not lead to indifference, but rather to determining which is more worthy and to achieving a mosaic of value. In detailing this aspiration and its challenges, a series of moral and social issues are discussed, from traditional commandments, pacifism, the demarcation of public morality and private morality by Liberty-Limiting Principles (including Harm Principle, Offense Principle, Legal Moralism Principle, and Paternalism Principle), to Plato's political and social criticisms of democracy in and their contemporary responses, as well as plurality and secularization as challenges to religion. Most of the lectures themselves are clear and interesting and great learning experiences, but part three is not very well logically structured and it is sometimes not clear what I'm learning this for.

Great Lectures

I like this lecturer very much. He combines extensive knowledge of his subect with common sense values.

An absolute delight

If you could sum up Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, and the Modern Experience in three words, what would they be?

Engaging, fascinating, fun

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Loved the chapter on social contracts - a pretty juicy subject in the hands of Dr. Kane!

Any additional comments?

This is a must-listen for anyone interested in ethics and morality, or in philosophy in general. Never a dull moment - provides genuine pleasure from start to finish. And it appeals to our values impulses at every level - the sentimental (it feels so good), rational (it makes perfect sense), utilitarian (such useful ideas!), and the contractual (you show up to listen, and Dr. Kane shows up with the goods!). I just wish I'd had Dr. Kane for Philo 101 -- way, way back when I was an undergrad.

A Good History of the Blind and Clueless

I initially purchased the book to delve into the history and the current state of philosophy from yet another professor. My title tells you what the professor revealed - Philosophy has been the work of lower-order humans, and it apples to lower-order humans (read the Philosophy of Broader Survival for the reasoning).

Progressing through the lectures I realized that i could gain some "philosopher parlance" so I can begin to communicate with academic philosophers using their own terms (not that they will give any regard to a non-academic thinker, which is why I haven't wasted my time with them yet).

Being outside of academia (a blessing, I deduced - since I spared subjecting myself to having to memorize the mountains of pure hogwash that constitutes philosophy to date), and being a completely original thinker, I found (according to the book's terms) that I had independently "achieved objective modernity in ethics" (meaning I found 'objective values' or 'universal shared values') that they could not find (and which was, I learned, deemed impossible by Relativists (and more, I reasoned-out the Ultimate Value of Life (i.e. enlightened higher consciousness) - again, read the Philosophy of Broader Survival, which, I learned, destroys, along with Relativism, Post-Modernism, Subjectivism, Uncertainty, Pluralism; and Marx (who did not dig deep enough, since the problem was not economics but philosophy). I found that I (the Philosophy of Broader Survival) solved structuralism (to use the philosopher's vernacular), and in doing so I exposed philosophy to date as a collection of weak speculations, and a field that was in need of complete overhaul (in light of the vast body of new verified knowledge we now have) (so I rolled up my sleeves and did it - read the philosophy).

So the book filled in some gaps in my knowledge of the history of philosophy. As to the current state of "moral philosophy" the professor admits that it is still a weak and vague area of thought (my philosophy give you Ultimate Morality), and he only noted the Big Questions and the weak attempts to answer them to date.

I enjoyed the professor's approach to the history of moral philosophy - from the perspective of trying (and still failing) to find at least one universal shared value, and from the perspective of four categorized approaches that were used in the failed efforts - the sentimentalist approach, the rationalist approach, the utilitarian approach, and the social contract approach (and I could see why they failed - not due to a lack of a burning desire for higher answers like I had, but for the lack of verified knowledge, where they had to largely make guesses, and where they were still grossly misguided by metaphysics and religions

I enjoyed being exposed to new (for me) historical philosophical concepts, such as the two mental absurdities - 'lifting the veil' and the 'categorical imperative'.

I enjoyed the general history that the professor offered, it took me a level deeper into the details of several historic philosophers such as Marx, Hobbes, and Plato (who was spot-on concerning Democracy, but failed to have Churchill's insight, that "Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others") (and you can thank the book for presenting Churchill's observation, too).

Using his four-path approach above, he shed light on the major historic philosophers. I'm not sure if the 'four-paths' approach is common in academia, or if it was the professor's novel approach, but it was a good one for organization. So was his idea of a 'fourth dimension' in ethics - that of the 'absolute value' (my philosophy gives you the Ultimate Value, which is not the same).

The author mentions several interesting books throughout for further reading, such as "Life on Man" (concerning our body's hosts of bacteria, whose innate behavior I always find fascinating - and see "The Global Brain"). On my second listen (I did not catch the entire book in one listen, as I listen at work and while commuting - both of which offer multitasking distractions), I will note the other books he mentioned in passing, even though they will also be as clueless as all past and present thinking (see my philosophy for the reasoning).

The book even spurred me to investigate current academic philosophical papers (remember, I am trying to determine the current state of (moral) philosophy (or 'ethics') - I found the site "philpapers.org" and I saw the vast array of areas that current blind and clueless philosophy is being applied to, and worse, I saw that academia is a closed culture that generates a continuous stream of worthless speculation that will bury my enlightened efforts and results (as do the mountains of popular mystical goo being produced by non-academic frauds - so I do not blame academia for being an exclusive closed society - it keeps out loud and obnoxious kooks).

So I came to test my philosophy against all that was and is, and my philosophy won, and I found, to use the professor's philosopher parlance, that I am a one man 'Philosophical Neo-Axial Era' unto myself, having exposed all past and present philosophies as weak, nebulous mental vagaries, though some were noble efforts to elevate the weak and twisted paradigms of their times, an example being the Dalia Lama's convening representatives of 139 religions to identify universal shared values (which resulted in... what? I guess they missed the mark) (the Ultimate Value being Enlightened Higher Consciousness - again, read the Philosophy of Broader Survival, the future will be living by it).

Another book recommended by the professor that I noted is "Darkness at Noon".

I also discovered, thanks to the book, that I )through the Philosophy of Broader Survival) answered Kant's three questions: What should we know? How should we live? and What should we hope for?

Conclusion
You may benefit from the book's lectures in you own way - that is how I benefited (finding out where my Philosophy of Broader Survival fits into the history of human thinking).

2nd Conclusion
The book, along with being eye-opening (though the results were saddening), was inspiring, and it was graspable throughout (not a small accomplishment).

Life changing

The quest for wisdom brought to life, a well argued ethical journey that is worth the time

The Problems of a Pluralistic Society

I rather enjoyed this course. It was a fun investigation of the problem of ethics and the rule of law in a pluralistic society. I found some of his arguments to be lacking but even then informative. Finally, I enjoyed learning where this modern push for "virtue ethics" that is appealing to many today, but lacking a reality check, is coming from. He at least exposes the problems, this does not say he solves them by any means.