OVERVIEW OF CORE 300: WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Core 300 is an interdisciplinary study of modes of knowing (epistemology) characteristic of Western civilization. This class emphasizes the important and continuing impact that human reason (a means of inquiry) and rationalism (a philosophical position) have had in shaping Western intellectual traditions and our contemporary world. The foundations of these traditions were laid by brilliant thinkers and artists of ancient Greece; they were modified, or at least interpreted for the rising Western world, by the Romans; some of them were absorbed, some were rejected, in the growing ascendancy of the Christian Church; and a renewed knowledge of them was achieved by thinkers like Thomas Aquinas during the Middle Ages.

Rationalism was fully revived in Western Europe during the Renaissance, when classical Greek knowledge was rediscovered by the Christian West, which sought at first to balance the claims of rationalism with those of faith. During this period other intellectual movements developed that revived the great artistic accomplishments of the ancient Greeks and Romans as normative. Humanism drew its meaning from the study of classical writing and art, and from these sources developed renewed appreciation for human accomplishments and capabilities. Empiricism emphasized experience, observable data, and experimentation, the foundations for the later burgeoning of modern science. The scientific method was successful in understanding the physical world, while the Industrial Revolution gave impetus to many new technologies for manipulating it. By the Eighteenth Century, often called the Age of Reason, rationalism and scientific inquiry had been elevated to a position of dominance.

During the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and the early years of the Twentieth Century, rationalism and empiricism became prevalent in the Western world. This Enlightenment worldview characteristically affirmed that people are reasoning beings who live in an orderly universe, which they can understand and manipulate. Other disciplines, impressed with the success of the sciences, became convinced that reason, reinforced by scientific method, could solve all human problems.

This optimistic view of humanity and the world has been radically challenged during the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. A new appreciation for the role of the knower has raised challenges to traditional views of truth and objective knowing as having an existence independent of the knower. Encouraged by such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud, and devastated by experiences of war, new criticisms of the assumptions and affirmations of rationalism and empiricism emerged. These voices and interpretations find expression in many currents of contemporary life, including post-modernism, multiculturalism, and feminism.

The “rationalist tradition,” with its confidence in a knowable universe, a reason-based humanity capable of free moral and intellectual choices, and a faith that the physical world can be cultivated to human benefit, has played a significant role in the development of Western civilization. In light of the crisis currently confronting rationalism, this study of human reason—including its limitations and redefinitions—is designed to enable Whitworth students and faculty to live responsibly and thoughtfully in the present age.

THE RATIONALIST CREDO – 1. The universe is orderly. 2. The universe is knowable. 3. The universe can be known best by human reason. 4. The universe can be manipulated for human benefit by means of reason and its tools.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: 1. An understanding of rationalism—and the various criticisms of that tradition—as represented by major thinkers and concepts. 2. An understanding of the relationship of the rationalist tradition to the problems and prospects of the present age. 3. An increased ability to think critically. 4. An improvement of the student’s written communication skills. 5. An enhanced ability to read and understand primary source texts of great thinkers throughout the history of Western thought. 6. An examination of one’s own worldview by comparing and contrasting it with major thinkers from the past. 7. An acquaintance with the vocabulary and methods used by philosophers, scientists and thinkers of several eras of Western history.