Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 12:04:54 -0400
Subject: Home or Auto Didact
The Economist, 19 October 1996, p. 91.
_________________________________________________________
The Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition
(Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Moses, Jesus, Marcus
Aurelius, Augustine, Aquinas, More, Machiavelli, Bacon,
Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, Smith, Rousseau, Kant, Burke, Montesquieu, Hegel,
Marx, Mill, Kierkegaard, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, James,
Ayers, Quine, Wittgenstein, Weber, Habermas, Kuhn, Rorty,
Foucault, Rawls, Levi-Strauss. etc.)
...taught by 6 widely acclaimed lecture professors on
audio and video cassettes
_________________________________________________________
[Photo] Darren Staloff, Ph.D., City College of New York
[Photo] Michael Sugrue, Ph.D., Princeton University
[Photo] Dennis Dalton, Ph.D. Barnard College/Columbia
University
[Photo] Alan Charles Kors, Ph. D., University of
Pennsylvania
The Superstar Faculty Also Includes:
Robert Oden, Ph.D., President, Kenyon College
Elizabeth McNamer, Ph.D., Rocky Mountain College
_________________________________________________________
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE? What is the best *kind* of
life? Who or what is God? What is the essence of justice?
When is it legitimate for one person to have power over
others? Can any of these questions be answered?
These are basic riddles of human experience that
thoughtful men and women have pondered since the dawn of
civilization.
You too must have asked yourself questions like these
many times. And perhaps you once vowed that some day you
would plow through *all* the great thinkers of the
Western world and find your own answers.
But you know you never will. Frankly, it would require a
minimum of several years of withdrawal from active life,
and devotion to intense effort and concentration.
Now, at last, here is a feasible way to enjoy the
*intellectual adventure of a lifetime*. A way you can
comfortably grasp the *essence* and *consequence* of each
thinker's greatness, in leisure moments in your home or
car.
That is the extraordinary opportunity now offered by this
unprecedented new audio-video lecture series -- *The
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition*.
The series is composed of 70 lectures, covering more than
40 of the great minds of the Western world. Each lecture
is accompanied by an outline and reading list as an aid,
if you wish, to mastering and further exploring the
subject.
Over half of the lectures are delivered by Professors
Darren Staloff and Michael Sugrue, who for several years
electrified students at Columbia University with their
sweeping canvas of Western intellectual development. Then
to round out the series, there are guest lecturers from
the growing Teaching Company treasury of audio and video
recordings of America's SuperStar Teachers.
The result is a definitive survey of Western thought by
an all-star teaching team with no equal in lecturing
skill at any single college campus anywhere else in the
world.
With these video or audio recordings of six of America's
most widely acclaimed college lecture professors as your
guides, you can now follow down through the centuries of
mankind's great debate over the meaning of life, and how
the ideas put forth shaped and developed our Western
civilization of today.
Just listening to these lectures -- whether you decide to
supplement them by browsing through the texts of the
works discussed or not -- will give you a grasp of the
intellectual history of the Western world possessed by as
few as one out of every thousand Americans.
_________________________________________________________
The Curriculum
_________________________________________________________
PART I: Ancient Philosophy and Faith: From Athens to
Jerusalem
Introduction to the Problems & Scope of Philosophy; The
Old Testament; The Gospels of Mark & Matthew; Paul: His
World; Presocratics: Ionian Speculation & Eliatic
Metaphysics; Republic I: Justice, Power & Knowledge;
Republic II-V: Soul & City; Republic VI-X: The
Architecture of Reality; Aristotle's Metaphysical Views;
Aristotle's Politics: The Golden Mean & Just Rule; Marcus
Aurelius' *Meditations. The Stoic Ideal; Augustine's
*City of God*: Grace, Original Sin & Theodicy
Course No. 401. Video or Audio
_________________________________________________________
PART II: The Age of Faith to The Age of Reason
Aquinas' *Summa Theologica*: The Thomist Synthesis & Its
Political & Social Content; More's *Utopia*: Reason &
Social Justice; Machiavelli's *The Prince*: Political
Realism, Political Science & the Renaissance; Bacon's
*New Organon*: The Call for a New Science; Descartes'
Epistemology & the Mind-Body Problem; Hobbes' *Leviathan:
Of Man*; Hobbes' *Leviathan: Of the Common-wealth*;
Spinoza's Ethics: Metaphysics & the Path to Salvation;
The Newtonian Revolution; The Early Enlightenment & the
Search for the Laws of History: Vico's *New Science of
History*; Pascal's *Pensees*; The Philosophy of G.W.
Liebniz
Course No. 402. Video or Audio
_________________________________________________________
PART III: The Enlightenment and Its Critics
Locke's Theory of Knowledge; Locke's Political Theory;
Montesquieu & the Beginnings of Political Science;
Berkeley's Idealism & the Critique of Materialism; Hume's
Epistemology; Hume's Theory of Morality; Smith's *Wealth
of Nations*; Rousseau's Dissent: The Challenge to the
Idea of Progress; Kant's "Copernican Revolution":
Epistemology & the Critique of Metaphysics; Kant's Moral
Philosophy; Burke & the Birth of Enlightened
Conservatism; Naturalism & Materialism: The Boundaries of
the Enlightenment
Course No. 403. Video or Audio
_________________________________________________________
PART IV: Philosophy in the Epoch of Ideology
Comte & the Origins of Sociology; Hegel: The
Phenomenology of Geist; Hegel's Philosophy of History;
Marx & the Problem of Alienation & Ideology; Marx's
Historical Materialism; Kierkegaard's Christian
Existentialism; Schopenhauer: The World as Will & Idea;
The Classical Doctrine of Liberal Democracy: John Stuart
Mill's *On Liberty & Utilitarianism*; The Darwinian
Revolution in Social Thought: William Graham Sumner;
Weber's Historical Sociology; Freud & Philosophy
Course No. 404. Video or Audio
_________________________________________________________
PART V: Modernism and the Age of Analysis: Beginnings
Nietzsche's Critique of Christianity: The Genealogy of
Morals; Nietzsche's Perspectivalism & Critique of
Philosophy; James' Pragmatism; Gadamer Hermeneutics & the
Human Sciences; Bergson's Elan Vital & Vitalism; John
Dewey's *Reconstruction in Philosophy*; The Pragmatic
Critique of Traditional Philosophy; Levi-Strauss:
Structuralist Anthropology; Husserl: Phenomenology & the
Life-World; Heidegger Being & Time; A. J. Ayer's
Language, Truth & Logic; The Latter Wittgenstein: The
Philosophy of Language; The Frankfurt School
Course No. 405. Video or Audio
_________________________________________________________
PART VI: Modernism and the Age of Analysis: Conclusions
Kuhn's Paradigm Paradigm; Habermas' Critical Theory;
Barthes, Semiotics & the Revolt Against Structuralism;
Social Justice & Social Democracy in Contemporary Times:
*A Theory of Justice* by John Rawls; Alvin Gouldner's
*Dark Side of the Dialectic*: Social Theory; Renegade
Sociology & Outlaw Marxism; Foucault: Power, Knowledge &
Post-Structuralism; Quines Ontological Relativism & the
End of"Philosophy"; Rorty's Neo-Pragmatism; Jean-Francois
Lyotard: the Post-Modern Condition; Conclusion: The
Theory of Knowledge & Language; Conclusion: Political,
Social & Cultural Criticism & Theory
Course No. 406. Video or Audio
_________________________________________________________
To order, mail coupon or call
1-800-TEACH-12
(1-800-832-2412)
please refer to offer Code 4025
or FAX 703-912-7756
"No Risk" Money-Back Guarantee!
_________________________________________________________
Save up to $100 on entire course!
_________________________________________________________
[Torch of learning image]
The Teaching Company
7405 Alban Station Court, Suite A107
Springfield, VA 22150-2318
Offer Code 4025
Please send me the following Parts from Great Minds, each
consisting of 11-12, 45-minute lectures on audio or video
cassettes in handsome storage cases.
[ ] ALL SIX
[ ] Part I
[ ] Part II
[ ] Part III
[ ] Part IV
[ ] Part V
[ ] Part VI
(please check desired format)
[ ] Video*: SALE: Entire six-part course, $449.95
(reg. price $549.95) plus $20 S&H. One part,
$149.95 plus $5 ea. S&H.
[ ] Audio*: SALE: Entire six-part course, $299.95
(reg. price $349.95) plus $20 S&H. One part,
$89.95 plus $5 ea. S&H.
* Note: Virginia residents please add 4.5% sales tax.
[ ] Check or Money Order enclosed
[ ] VISA
[ ] MC
[ ] AMEX
[ ] Disc.
[ ] Please send me a free copy of your complete catalog
of over 80 courses (no purchase necessary)
_________________________________________________________
Account Number
_________________________________________________________
Signature Exp. Date
_________________________________________________________
Name (Please Print)
_________________________________________________________
Mailing Address
_________________________________________________________
City/State/Zip
_________________________________________________________
Phone (If we have questions regarding your order)
--- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005