Focusing on some major themes in the intellectual development of the western world which continue to inform our own times, from Greek Metaphysics and Ethics, Christian Theology, Modern Politics, and Art, we will be examining this intellectual history with emphasis on the shifts from what we might call the times of the philosopher, the theologian, the political thinker and the artist. We will move from a consideration of philosophy as a representative achievement of antiquity, through the dominance of theology in the middle ages to the attempt to develop theories of a secular politics and autonomous art respectively from the 17th and 18th centuries onwards. In this process we will also encounter the differences that have subsequently been discussed in terms of the competing orientations of empiricism, rationalism and idealism.

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