Classical origins. Introduction -- Pre-Socratics, physics and metaphysics -- Sophists and social science -- Plato, metaphysics -- Plato, politics Plato, psychology -- Aristotle, metaphysics -- Aristotle, politics -- Aristotle, ethics -- Stoicism and Epicureanism -- Roman eclecticism, Cicero and Polybius -- Roman skepticism, Sextus Empiricus.

Christian age. Introduction -- Job and the problem of suffering -- Hebrew Bible and covenantal history -- Synoptic Gospels, the historical Jesus and the Kingdom of God -- Paul, justification by faith -- Plotinus and Neo-Platonism -- Augustine, grace and free will -- Aquinas and Christian Aristotelianism -- Universals in medieval thought -- Mysticism and Meister -- Luther, law and gospel -- Calvin and Protestantism.

From the Renaissance to the age of reason. Introduction -- Machiavelli and the origins of political science -- More's Utopianism -- Erasmus against enthusiasm -- Galileo and the new astronomy -- Bacon's new organon and the new science -- Descartes, the method of modern philosophy -- Hobbes, politics and the state of nature -- Spinoza, Rationalism and the reverence of being -- Pascal, Skepticism and Jansenism -- Bayle, Skepticism and Calvinism -- Newton and enlightened science.

Enlightenment and its critics. Introduction -- Locke, politics -- Locke, the revolution of knowledge -- Vico and the new science of history -- Montesquieu and political thought Wordly philosophy of Bernard Mandeville -- Bishop Berkeley, Idealism and critique of the Enlightenment -- Hume's Epistemology -- Hume's theory of morality -- Hume's natural religion -- Adam Smith and the origins of political economy -- Rousseau's dissent.

Age of Ideology. Introduction -- Kant's "Copernican Revolution" -- Kant's moral theory -- Burke, the origins of conservatism -- Hegel, history and historicism -- Marx, historical materialism -- Marx, on alienation -- Mill's Utilitarianism -- Kiekegaard and the leap of faith -- Schopenhauer, the world as will and idea -- Nietzsche, perspectivism and the will to power -- Nietzsche, the death of God, morality, and self-creation.

Modernism and the age of analysis. Introduction -- Jame's Pragmatism -- Freud's psychology of human nature -- Freud's discontents -- A.J. Ayer and Logical Positivism -- Max Weber and legitimate authority -- Husserl and Phenomenology -- Dewey's critique of traditional philosophy -- Heidegger, Dasein and existenz -- Wittgenstein and language analysis -- Frankfurt school Structuralism, Saussure and Lévi-Strauss.

Crisis of modernity. Introduction -- Hayek and the critique of central planning -- Popper, the open society and the philosophy of science -- Kuhn's paradigm paradigm -- Quine, ontological relativism -- Habermas, critical theory and communicative action -- Rawls's theory of justice -- Derrida and deconstruction -- Rorty's neo-pragmatism -- Gouldner, ideology and the "new" class -- MacIntyre, the rationality of traditions -- Nozick's defense of libertarianism.