Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Great Courses

I am a big fan of The Great Courses from The Teaching Company which I can borrow from my local library.  The one I am listening to now may be the best yet.  It is  Philosophy and Religion in the West taught by Phillip Cary of Eastern University.

I have listened to about half the course so far:

 
1.Introduction—Philosophy and Religion as Traditions
2.Plato's Inquiries—The Gods and the Good
3.Plato's Spirituality—The Immortal Soul and the Other World
4.Aristotle and Plato—Cosmos, Contemplation, and Happiness
5.Plotinus—Neoplatonism and the Ultimate Unity of All
6.The Jewish Scriptures—Life With the God of Israel
7.Platonist Philosophy and Scriptural Religion
8.The New Testament—Life in Christ
9.Rabbinic Judaism—Israel and the Torah
10.Church Fathers—The Logos Made Flesh
11.The Development of Christian Platonism
12.Jewish Rationalism and Mysticism—Maimonides and Kabbalah
13.Classical Theism—Proofs and Attributes of God
14.Medieval Christian Theology—Nature and Grace
15.Late-Medieval Nominalism and Christian Mysticism
16.Protestantism—Problems of Grace
17.Descartes, Locke, and the Crisis of Modernity
18.Leibniz and Theodicy
19.Hume's Critique of Religion
20.Kant—Reason Limited to Experience
21.Kant—Morality as the Basis of Religion
22.Schleiermacher—Feeling as the Basis of Religion
23.Hegel—A Philosophical History of Religion
24.Marx and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
25.Kierkegaard—Existentialism and the Leap of Faith
26.Nietzsche—Critic of Christian Morality
27.Neo-orthodoxy—The Subject and Object of Faith
28.Encountering the Biblical Other—Buber and Levinas
29.Process Philosophy—God in Time
30.Logical Empiricism and the Meaning of Religion
31.Reformed Epistemology and the Rationality of Belief
32.Conclusion—Philosophy and Religion Today

I have come across most of these topics before, but I have never had the chronology and interaction of the various traditions laid out so well and so clearly.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Vince,

    I also love audio type lessons on classics subjects, and look at your list, and my mouth waters. I noticed going to the one in the link you provide, and noticed that the download is like $50. Yikes!

    Here is my question. Do you know of any good sources for free audio downloads? I often subscribed to audio readings from librivox.org, and sometimes come across things from places like Yale, but I have not figured out a really organized way to find free educational stuff on the subject history and the humanities.

    Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

    Cheers!
    RichGriese.NET

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  2. I haven't looked for stuff on the web yet. My library has enough to keep me busy for another year or so, but $50 sounds like a bargain for the courses that it doesn't have.

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