The globalization of modern European intellectual history is long overdue. It is also still in its early stages. This chapter distinguishes four paths historians have followed so far. First, there has been the attempt to recover the global contexts and sources of the canon of “European thought.” A second approach has been to recapture the global imaginations of modern European thinkers. A third and more difficult possibility has been to track how European concepts and traditions were received and remade as they traveled the globe and to examine the complex feedback mechanisms that have blurred the line between the European and the extra-European. Finally, a fourth and most controversial mode is to insist that the modern European canon is of prime significance in understanding historical and contemporary global relations – and that part of its value lies in helping undo the exclusions that its own historians have visited on that canon by misrepresenting European thought as a merely European affair.

This chapter draws a distinction between ideas-as-content and ideas-as-form in E. M. Forster’s Howards End, arguing that the novel stages an ongoing tension between liberalism as a set of propositional ideals (content) and liberalism as a procedural approach for investigating ideas (form). Although the novel is invested in liberalism as an ideal, an ethos best encapsulated in the novel’s epigraph to “Only connect,” its commitment towards a liberal methodological treatment of ideas – to balanced debate and discussion that takes conflictual views into account and tries to reconcile them – means that this liberal ideal is also constantly undermined and challenged throughout. This chapter traces the dynamics of this tension and Forster’s attempt to resolve it.

There is a connection between the habits of thinking in science, economics, and diplomacy that are hindering our response to climate change. Western science since the Enlightenment has built its success on reductionism. This has left us less good than we need to be at thinking holistically, and at understanding the potential for systemic change in our environment, economy, and international relations. New ways of thinking can take generations to spread through society and displace their predecessors. In our present crisis, we must accelerate this process deliberately – we cannot afford to wait.

This chapter gives a practical guide to the creative process through step-by-step description of the composition of a short piano miniature, from initial idea to final score.

Péter Lautner’s chapter ‘Concepts in the Neoplatonist Tradition’ expands the scope of the enquiry by discussing Platonist theories of concept formation in Late Antiquity. Generally speaking, the philosophers belonging to the so-called schools of Athens and Alexandria believe that the articulation of our rational capacity and the acquisition of knowledge somehow derives from the senses as well as the intellect, and they mostly agree that some elements of concept formation, notably generalisation, occur on the basis of sense-perception. They disagree, however, as to whether or not such generalisations are full-blown concepts. While all the philosophers under consideration endorse some version of the view that the main source of concepts is our intellect, which essentially contains fully fledged concepts, their accounts vary in respect of the intellect’s ability to project concepts onto the lower cognitive faculties. The problem of how the two kinds of concepts mentioned above are related to each other occupies the Platonists through the entire period under examination and constitutes the focus of Lautner’s analysis.

Engaging directly with the question whether Platonic Forms are concepts, David Sedley’s chapter ’Are Platonic Forms Concepts?’ takes its start from the Parmenides 132b–c, where Socrates and Parmenides briefly examine the hypothesis that Forms are ‘thoughts’ (noēmata). Sedley asks what ‘thoughts’ are in that context, and argues that they are not thought contents, but acts of thinking. The chapter offers an ambitious and comprehensive analysis of the classical theory of Forms as showcased in the Phaedo, Republic, Parmenides, and Timaeus, in terms that clarify why Plato was bound to reject the hypothesis considered in the Parmenides (132b–c), namely that Forms are thoughts.

‘Concepts and Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysical Thought’ by Christof Rapp starts with the recognition that Aristotle does not have a general term for ‘concept’ and examines which entities in his metaphysical theory might play the role of concepts. According to Rapp, many of Aristotle’s discussions focus on the meaning of general terms and whether they signify something real and existing independently in its own right. Aristotle remains committed to the view that universals as captured by genuine definitions are crucial for human knowledge and understanding. Insofar as Aristotle resists a conception of universals as existing in the way that particular substances do, he can be taken to intimate that universals are ‘merely conceptual’. In the Metaphysics, he distances himself from the view that universals such as genera and species qualify as substances. His main contribution to our thinking about concepts consists in the view that both universals and embodied substantial forms have mental counterparts, by which we grasp and understand the things falling under the conceived form or essential definition.

Through the process of talking to one another, children become creators of their own future as they collaborate and build relationships. Talking Circles are designed to encourage children to ask questions about their lives and how they can make a difference for themselves, each other and their community. This process helps to build the resilience and leadership skills of children. These qualities are important in helping children to consider their world view and day-to-day challenges, which enables them to contribute to their own health and wellbeing.

Why do successive education reforms within a country resonate with familiar assumptions about educational goals, society, class, and state, even at moments of radical change? Repeating cultural narratives sustain continuities within institutional change processes, by influencing how new ideas are interpreted, how interest groups express preferences, and how institutional norms shape political processes. Repeating narratives make it more likely for some types of reforms to be implemented and sustained than others. This chapter develops a theoretical model suggesting how cultural narratives are transmitted across time and an empirical method for assessing cross-national differences in cultural narratives. Each country has a distinctive “cultural constraint,” or a set of cultural symbols and narratives, that appears in a nation’s literary corpus. Writers collectively contribute to this body of cultural tropes; despite individual fluctuations, they largely reproduce the master narratives of their countries. Computational linguistic processes allow us to observe empirical differences between British and Danish cultural depictions of education in 1,084 works of fiction from 1700 to 1920. Cultural narratives do not determine specific outcomes, as tropes must be activated in political struggles. Yet we can show how significant cross-national differences in literary images of education resonate with British and Danish educational trajectories.

This chapter is focused on aspects ot the superordinate Idea of the Good. Why is the first principle of all a normative principle (Section 2.1)? How does the Idea of the Good differ from an “ordinary” Form of the Good (Section 2.2)? Why is the unhypothetical first principle of all also the goal of everything, that which all desire (Section 2.3)? How does the Idea of the Good differ from the Demiurge? Why is the Demiurge good but not the Good (Section 2.4)? How is the admonition in Theaetetus to “assimilate to god” related to the Good as goal (Section 2.5)? In Symposium, the relation between eros and the Good is explored (Section 2.6). In Lysis, the idea of a “prōton philon” is comapred to the Idea of the Good as goal (Section 2.7). The evidence frrom Aristotle and from the indirect tradition that Plato identified the Good with “the One” is assembled. Why is oneness an index of goodness? The idea of integrated unity according to kind is introduced (Section 2.8).

The focus on supply shocks may have obscured the importance of such other factors as institutions, ideas, culture, leaders, and human agency. Certainly these can lead to bad outcomes – bad leaders usually produce bad outcomes – but with rare exceptions they matter only at the margins. Elites will use established institutions to maintain their position against an adverse shock, but those institutions will yield to a big enough shock. Institutions, then, are endogenous, as are leaders (bad ones are overthrown or defeated) and human agency (although crowds, especially acting through markets, are usually wiser than individuals). The salient exceptions are culture and systemic ideas. We have convincing examples of how initially adaptive cultural traits – e.g., of male supremacy or interpersonal distrust – can persist over generations and affect how societies respond to shocks. And systemic ideas about how the world works can prescribe bad or good ways of responding to a crisis such as the Great Depression. Institutions, ideas, culture, leaders, or human agency clearly matter, but supply shocks almost always matter more.