Culture, faith and the arts
馃摎 Ideas and Values Since the Enlightenment
Francis Schaeffer's survey of Western thought and the thinkers around it: Kant, Rousseau, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Darwin, Nietzsche, Dewey, the existentialists, the postmodernists, and the later voices who answered them, with the criticisms Schaeffer's own history has drawn.
- 1Francis Schaeffer: The Man and L'AbriFrancis Schaeffer went from a Philadelphia boyhood of doubt to a Swiss chalet where students argued about truth through the night. This lesson tells his life, the founding of L'Abri in 1955, his books, and the way he taught.13 min
- 2The Enlightenment: Reason and RightsThe Enlightenment gave the West a new confidence in human reason and a new language of natural rights. This lesson follows Kant's 1784 definition, Newton, Locke and the Declaration, then sets out how Schaeffer read the age.14 min
- 3The Enlightenment Has Two Faces: Edinburgh and ParisThe Scottish and French Enlightenments shared a century and parted on almost everything that mattered to liberty. This lesson sets Hume, Smith and Reid beside Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, then follows the French road to the Terror and Burke's warning.14 min
- 4Kant and the Split Between Fact and ValueImmanuel Kant set out to rescue science and morality at once and ended by sorting reality into two realms, one of facts and one of duty. This lesson follows Hume's gap between is and ought, Kant's answer, and Schaeffer's account of what the split did to later thought.14 min
- 5Rousseau and the General WillRousseau's Social Contract of 1762 put the source of law in the will of the people, aimed at the common good. This lesson reads his own words, follows them into the French Revolution, and sets them beside the American design.14 min
- 6Hegel and the March of HistoryHegel taught that history is the story of freedom coming to know itself, and that reason works through events. This lesson reads him in his own words, clears away the myth of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and shows why Schaeffer placed him at the door of the line of despair.14 min
- 7Kierkegaard and the LeapSoren Kierkegaard, a Danish writer who died in 1855, asked how a person can hold a truth that costs something. Francis Schaeffer read the later history of his ideas as a warning about faith cut loose from facts. This lesson sets out both, and what each means for conscience and public life.14 min
- 8Darwin and the New Story of OriginsCharles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) gave natural science a new account of where living things come from. This lesson reads Darwin in his own words, follows how churchmen answered him, sets out Schaeffer's concern about a closed system of cause and effect, and asks what the idea of origins does to the rights the Founders called unalienable.15 min
- 9Marx and the Theory of ClassKarl Marx taught that the history of society is the history of class struggle and that morals, law, and religion grow out of the way a society makes its living. This lesson reads him in his own words, sets him beside James Madison and Pope Leo XIII on property, and asks what a theory of rights needs that class theory cannot supply.15 min
- 10Nietzsche and the Death of GodFriedrich Nietzsche announced that belief in the Christian God had collapsed and warned that Europe's morals would go with it. This lesson reads the famous passage in context, follows his argument against equality, and sets him beside Washington and Adams, who made the same link between faith and morals and drew the opposite conclusion.15 min
- 11Modern Art and Music: What Schaeffer SawFrancis Schaeffer and his friend Hans Rookmaaker argued that the arts register what a culture believes before the philosophers say it aloud. This lesson walks through real turning points in painting and music, sets out how Schaeffer read them, and ends with what he wanted Christians to do about the arts and what the Founders thought art was for.15 min
- 12Dewey and the SchoolsJohn Dewey wanted schools to be small democracies where children learn by doing, and he held that experience is the only final authority. Francis Schaeffer worried that public schools teach one view of reality as if it were neutral. This lesson reads Dewey in his own words, sets out Schaeffer's concern, and goes back to what the Founders and the Idaho Constitution say schools are for.15 min
- 13Sartre, Camus and the AbsurdSartre said man invents his own values and Camus said the world gives no answer and we must live anyway. Schaeffer read both as the end of a long road in Western thought, and the two men disagreed with each other as well.14 min
- 14The New Theology: Barth and the Liberal ChurchSchleiermacher and Harnack remade Christianity to suit the modern age, and Karl Barth broke with them after 1914. Schaeffer treated Barth as the door through which the new theology entered, and the Barmen Declaration of 1934 shows what was at stake for the church and the state.14 min
- 15Lewis and The Abolition of ManIn three lectures in 1943, C. S. Lewis argued that a society that teaches its children values are only feelings will end by shaping people with no moral center, and that all real moral teaching draws on a shared law he called the Tao. His case is a close cousin of natural law and of the Founders' appeal to a standard above the state.14 min
- 16The 1970s: Life and Death QuestionsIn the 1970s American law and medicine were asked new questions about when life begins, when it ends and who counts as a person. Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop answered with a book and film series in 1979, and the Declaration of Independence frames the underlying issue.14 min
- 17The Postmodern Turn: Lyotard, Foucault, DerridaThree French thinkers questioned the grand stories, the claims of neutral reason and the stability of language. Schaeffer had watched the same turn begin in the 1960s, and their ideas give citizens real warnings about power while leaving open what can ground a claim of right.14 min
- 18Reading Schaeffer Today and the Voices That Built on HimFrancis Schaeffer left a map of Western thought and a method of asking where ideas lead. Rookmaaker, Guinness, Pearcey, Colson, Postman, MacIntyre, Taylor, Hunter and Himmelfarb each confirmed or extended a part of it, and together they show how to read him today.15 min