Great minds of western intellectual tradition download

I listened to this the second time now. Still barely scratched the surface. You can get so much out of this. Will probably listen to it again with accompanying PDF. There's so much to say about this, but I did try to capture my thoughts after each "chapter" 7 chapters total.

I will repeat them here, in order, and add a 7th, but before doing that, here's my overview: A I feel like I just learned more about the world than I ever realized existed.

Thank you! D I found that philosophy, as a whole, kind of becomes boring after about , making this whole thing kind of waver toward the end.

On to the chapters You know all the players, and it makes learning about them fun Socrates, etc Unfortunately, this whole set is about the foundation of Christian thought.

It all sounded like "pseudo-profound bullshit. Let's hope Set 3 gets better. It is still somewhat disheartening to see so many great minds Descartes comes to mind trying desperately to tie themselves into knots fitting "God" into mathematics, logic and science. I never quite appreciated all he'd accomplished!

Driven by Isaac Newton on the one hand, but also saw the rise of some other classic texts on human thought, such as Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". A great addition to the series! Post-enlightenment thinkers, dominated by Germans, but not exclusively. This one was hard to follow, and would almost require a require a re-listen. The modern thinkers are unknowns. I only knew about Freud and James. And it also seems like the "single thread" which was Western thought has now become a complicated "web".

Let's hope it wraps up well. Names nobody has ever heard of, because they aren't yet "historic figures". Modernism galore. Thinkers talking about right wing economic theory, anarchy, language. Basically, a rehash of old thought without a lot of new thoughts to cling on to.

I found myself zoning out and just ignoring much of this. All in all: Do it! Don't let the ending spoil your fun. Find 42 hours driving in a car is how I did it to spare, and listen to these CDs! I will give it one other "ding" Hard to believe that the entirety of western intellectual tradition doesn't have ONE great female mind Taught by 12 professors, this grand tour of the most brilliant minds tackling fundamental questions such as reality, purpose of life, God, freedom in the face of causal laws, hav [This is a review of the entire 7-part course, not just of its part II] Questions about life and existence have vexed humankind for millennia.

Taught by 12 professors, this grand tour of the most brilliant minds tackling fundamental questions such as reality, purpose of life, God, freedom in the face of causal laws, having power over others, justice, and beauty, describes the bases of the Western philosophical tradition and the fundamental debates that are still raging. The two sets of issues that permeate the Western discourse are the nature of the world and our knowledge of it metaphysics, epistemology and guidelines for a contented life ethics, social theory, politics, existentialism.

Much of what we have today in Western thought can be traced to the contributions of Aristotle, who formulated the four cardinal virtues: Courage; Temperance; Justice; Practical wisdom.

The first three virtues would not exist without the fourth. Courage, e. The following summary of the 84 lectures in this series provides a good indication of what the course covers.

Apr 28, Adam rated it really liked it Shelves: audiobooks. The breadth and scope of this Great Courses series is mind-boggling. Really, it is doomed to fail. A single course that overviews the history of Western philosophy, from Pre-Socratics to the modern day? Of course it is going to miss key thinkers. Of course it is going to broadly generalize philosophers and their nuanced thought.

But this is an introductory course-- a lengthy one, but one that skims over major schools of thought in a single lecture. But this course would be, I think, an essential The breadth and scope of this Great Courses series is mind-boggling.

But this course would be, I think, an essential guide for any college humanities course. As a student of literature, I had familiarity with some of the thinkers whose work intersects with literary study. However, this program connected these schools of thought in a cohesive way without forcing them into a schematic.

I also enjoyed the variety of lecturers who presented. Some were more or less pleasing to listen to, but the different styles kept me engaged. Lastly, do not mistake this introductory course for one that is simplistic or dumbed down. Many of the lectures warrant a second or third listen. Especially when we reach the modern era, with Structuralism and beyond, be prepared for some pretty esoteric stuff.

Very highly recommended. Nov 12, Raymond Raad rated it liked it. Lectures are of uneven quality. Many were good, but many were boring the presentation, not the subject matter. Despite their best efforts, the speakers hopelessly misunderstand certain important trends in philosophy. They do not really understand the problem of universals. They present nominalism versus realism inaccurately.

They also seriously underestimate the influence of Aristotle on the enlightenment. They rehash the standard idea that the enlightenment threw Aristotle out the window. Whe Lectures are of uneven quality. When they talk about Aristotle, they say he is an empiricist. Then when they talk about why the enlightenment thinkers did NOT like Aristotle, they say it's because Aristotle is dogmatic and impervious to empirical facts. Do they not realize the contradiction here?

Just an example of how some truths are lost from one lecture to another. Jul 19, Tom Axworthy rated it really liked it.

The theme of this lecture series on Western philosophy is Athens vs Jerusalem, the ongoing debate between reason vs mythos or emotion. Humankind has always sought spiritual solace starting with the Greek gods but then dominated by scripture and the role of the church. Starting in Athens, a second movement has been reason and secular science where the first pre Socratic philosphers began to question the myths about nature, and ever since there has been a dialetic between the two great aspects of ou The theme of this lecture series on Western philosophy is Athens vs Jerusalem, the ongoing debate between reason vs mythos or emotion.

Starting in Athens, a second movement has been reason and secular science where the first pre Socratic philosphers began to question the myths about nature, and ever since there has been a dialetic between the two great aspects of our character.

Almost all the lectures are good until we get to the last part where 20th century philosophy disintegrates into logic,physics,and language almost completely incomprehensible to a layman.

The confusions of our age have confused philosophers ,once the lovers of wisdom. Oct 20, Don Heiman rated it it was amazing.

The lectures present the history of Western thought from Pre Socratic Grecian physics and metaphysics to the present time. Kant's "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy inverted the order of knowledge as Copernicus had inverted the positions of the Sun and Earth. This lecture examines Kant's views about morality and value. We examine Kant's derivation of his famous categorical imperative: "Act only by that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.

In this lecture, we examine elements in Edmund Burke's argument against the French Revolution. We will also explore how his support for the American Revolution can be squared with his denunciation of the French Revolution.

This, in turn, leads us to conclude with the difficult problem of the overall character of Burke's views. For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, history represents the necessary and rational unfolding of absolute Spirit becoming conscious of itself and discovering its own nature.

Hegel's historicism—the notion that the artistic products and accepted truths of a given era are relative to that era—profoundly influenced Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. Karl Marx's historical materialism is an attempt to answer Hegel's idealist explanation of history in purely naturalistic or scientific terms. Marx's historical materialism posits two fundamental entities: actual historical persons and the forces of production.

For Marx, real history begins only when technology has solved the problem of production. The hallmark of Marx's idea of alienation is his theory of work, especially of alienated labor in the capitalist system. Marx blames this economic system for the dissatisfaction that many people find in their work. Marx contends that such unhappiness is unnecessary and demands that it be changed so that we may experience fulfillment in our various forms of work.

John Stuart Mill was a thoroughgoing empiricist in the footsteps of Hume. In moral philosophy, he has become the classic defender of one of the main theories of ethics, which is known as utilitarianism. Arthur Schopenhauer is most notorious for his philosophical pessimism, but he was one of the most ingenious and influential thinkers of the 19th century.

The core of his theory is that reality is known to us as Will, which is full of self-conflict, so the world is not a harmonious place and human life has no hope of satisfaction. Only aesthetic experience and sainthood promise some escape from the torment of life's sufferings. This lecture will focus on Friedrich Nietzsche's so-called perspectivism: the view that there is no metaphysical "thing-in-itself" and, therefore, no singular truth or truths about the world.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche does present what would seem to be a singular thesis about the world, the "Will to Power. This lecture concerns Nietzsche's infamous attack on Judeo-Christian religion and morality and the project of self-creation with which he seeks to replace them. Again, we see an apparent contradiction or tension in Nietzsche's thought. He is, on the one hand, very much a naturalist. He does not believe in free will.

And he believes that each of us is largely determined by our biology. The first half of the 20th century has been aptly described as an "age of extremes. In this context of tumult and change, philosophers sought to reconceptualize the role and function of their discipline. The result was the development of three competing conceptions of philosophic practice: philosophy as regulative, philosophy as therapeutic, and philosophy as edification.

Influenced by the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James created a theory of pragmatism, which held that the meaning of any idea can be found only in experience. James melded Nietzschean perspectivalism with the American thought of Emerson. James's project was a philosophical "Protestant reformation," with the individual rebelling against the authority of accepted truths and absolutes. The world is not fixed, James argued, but is constantly remade by us.

Therefore, independent analysis of the world from a priori assumptions is impossible. Sigmund Freud's immensely influential theory rests squarely on his analysis of human nature. We seek to cope with inner turmoil through sublimation of our instincts, but as he says, our coping mechanisms are inadequate, and unhappiness is much easier to attain than happiness. Freud's conclusions are unquestionably pessimistic and powerfully expressed in his classic text, Civilization and Its Discontents.

According to Marx and Freud, we are suffering from a common malady termed "the alienated split self. Freud, in particular, perceives society as the collective expression of individual aggression.

Ayer and Logical Positivism. Ayer was one of the leading logical positivists. In Language, Truth, and Logic , he argued that philosophy should abandon the study of metaphysics and take up a detailed analysis of language. He argues that assertions that cannot be verified in empirical experience are "nonsense. Max Weber is thought to be the founder of modern sociology. He studied power relations in societies as part of his effort to "demystify the world.

This lecture focuses on Husserlian phenomenology as a response to positivism and historicism. Edmund Husserl was opposed to relativism, skepticism, historicism, and positivism because they attempted to explain mind in terms of nature rather than nature by way of consciousness.

John Dewey's version of pragmatism represented the American values of democracy, progressivism, and optimism. Dewey was skeptical of truth, believing that what we call "truth" is simply what works best for us at the time.

Man's moral ends are not eternal truths but are formed through customs and habits that change over time. This lecture focuses on Martin Heidegger's early philosophy in Being and Time; his focus was on our place in the world, what he called Dasein , or simply, "being-there. Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that traditional metaphysics was flawed because it was based on mistakes in the use of language. The solution was to focus on those uses of language that cause confusion, using philosophy as a therapy against, in his own words, "the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Members of the Frankfurt School developed provocative and original perspectives on contemporary society and culture, including analyses of Fascism and the high-tech and consumer society that exists now. Drawing on Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber, the Frankfurt School synthesized philosophy and social theory to develop a critical theory of contemporary society. In this lecture, we consider the modern school of structuralism, an interdisciplinary approach to all branches of human knowledge that rejects all ontological and epistemological sources of meaning in favor of an antimetaphysical approach.

This approach posits that all humanistic pursuits are the products of deep structures that predate human consciousness. Philosophy in the latter half of the 20th century was written in the context of accelerating and often disturbing changes in Western society, politics, and culture.

Philosophers focused on two critical features of modernity, both inherited from the Enlightenment. One issue focused on modern political theory and practice, the other on the ideal of objective scientific rationality and progress. Hayek was an economist and political philosopher. He is also well known for his critique of the ideal of "social justice. Karl Popper wrote extensively on scientific issues and the history of ideas and was the author of The Open Society and Its Enemies , an impressive work in political philosophy.

In this lecture, we will explore Popper's ideas about knowledge and politics and their connections. In this lecture, we will look at Thomas Kuhn's views, his Structure of Scientific Revolutions , and his controversial ideas about the character of science. We will examine how he was led to refine his idea of a "paradigm" in light of criticism that he had used the term too loosely.

Finally, we will look at the research to which Kuhn's ideas have led. Willard Van Orman Quine made major contributions to ontology, epistemology, and mathematical logic. His philosophy came at a time when logical positivism suffered setbacks in its attempts to reduce mathematics to logic.

He attacked positivism's attempt to create a foundational first philosophy that would establish the meaning of language. Habermas made many contributions to philosophy and social theory and is today one of the most highly respected thinkers of our time. John Rawls's A Theory of Justice draws on the theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to argue that the best society would be founded on principles chosen by rational citizens who would choose a system granting the most extensive liberties to its citizens while ensuring the maximum justice.

The text has served as a philosophical defense of the modern welfare state. In this lecture, we will consider the origins of deconstruction in the theories of Derrida, particularly as they were first presented to America in his in famous lecture, "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" We shall see how Derrida, rather than work within the binaries of traditional metaphysics or logocentrism , attempted to break down or deconstruct all such binaries.

We shall contrast deconstruction from both Platonic and Christian thought and seek to understand the main terminology associated with deconstruction. Richard Rorty argues that philosophers have traditionally sought to escape from history by searching for "truth. His pragmatism is the basis of his defense of the postmodern bourgeois liberalism of the West. His analysis of the "new class" of intellectuals and others who earn their living from their education, not their ownership of capital, provides a necessary corrective to the Marxist idea of class struggle and helps explain why so many Marxists and radicals were not proletarians, but intellectuals.

Alasdair MacIntyre articulates a form of right-wing postmodernism, affirming the importance of traditions in contrast to the modern rejection of tradition and authority. He contends in After Virtue that modern moral reasoning is incoherent because it consists of ill-understood fragments of previous and more coherent traditions of moral reasoning.

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia , Robert Nozick asks us to consider that individuals have rights to their person and to their justly acquired property—and then asks us to take these ideas seriously. He offers several striking lines of criticism, including some reflections on democracy, redistribution, and justice, and a critique of the leading American political philosopher, John Rawls. Reviews Write a review. This action will open a modal dialog. Rating Snapshot.

Select to filter reviews with 5 stars. Select to filter reviews with 4 stars. Select to filter reviews with 3 stars. Select to filter reviews with 2 stars. Select to filter reviews with 1 star. Average Customer Ratings. Review by RexLoco. Written 9 years ago. Great Minds -- Uneven Presentation. Most Helpful Critical Review. Review by SJMD.

Written 10 years ago. Lacks continuity! Good enough to buy again. Recommends this product. Was this helpful? Post Comment. Patchy and uneven coverage. Format Audio. Better than Bertrand Russell's Philosophy History! Interesting material Challenge Yourself. Amazingly interesting content. So far, so good. A Thought Provoking Course. Questions Ask a question. Why is there not a single lecture on Voltaire? He was arguably the greatest mind of the Enlightenment period. Answer this Question. Why the discrepancy?

I own this course on audio format; I would like to purchase a pdf of the course transcript. No, there is no digital transcript for this course. I have an earlier edition of this course and loved it. By far, my favorite professor was Michael Segrue. I do not see him listed. Also, do you have professor Segrue in any other courses? How can I get a complete list of the courses I bought here that are no longer available in audio. And how do I get credit for them on audible. I purchased this course via Audible; How may I acquire the syllabi and suggested readings?

What is the "exclusively on Audible" nonsense? I want to download the course onto my phone and play it offline. Is that still possible? Why do I need to get yet another app, that happens to have membership subscription fees, to get this course in an au. When is it legitimate for one person to have power over others? What is justice? This lecture, professor tour of Western philosophical tradition covers more than 60 of history's greatest minds and brings you a comprehensive survey of the history of Western philosophy from its origins in classical Greece to the present.

It took 3, years for the debate chronicled in these lectures to reach maturity. With this series of lectures, you can encompass it by the end of next month. You'll travel chronologically through the history of the Western world, charting the intriguing development of Western philosophy and drawing fascinating connections between thinkers separated by the gulf of time and space. You'll acquaint yourself with the Greek Pre-Socratics the world's first scientific thinkers and examine in detail the insights of three towering figures: Socrates, his student Plato, and Plato's student, Aristotle.

You'll examine the contributions to philosophy from biblical traditions and the great minds of the Christian age. Then, you'll mark the critical schism that developed between the claims of faith and those of science and participate in the breathless discovery found during the Enlightenment, which reveled in the new freedom of human potential and scientific expansion. You'll study the provocative philosophical responses by the Existentialists and others to the challenges raised by the new scientific consciousness.

And you'll conclude with an overview of the work of Derrida and other late 20th-century philosophers and theorists. The concluding lecture is a summation of the career and significance of Isaac Newton, whose pathbreaking Principia Mathematica gave the new science authoritative expression.

Part IV covers the 17th and 18th centuries, capturing the sense of breathless discovery found in the Enlightenment, which reveled in the new freedom of human potential and scientific expansion.

This was also when the new bourgeoisie found its voice in a demand for free markets, free speech, and more political power. This period marks the intellectual flowering that led to the American Revolution.

This segment of the course, like the others, stresses the inevitable linkage between a thinker's theory of knowledge and theory of morality: what we can know determines what we can know to be the right way to act. The lectures on John Locke and David Hume develop this point with special cogency. The Enlightenment stirred critics who feared its larger moral, spiritual, and political effects. Of these doubters, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among the most influential, making him a fitting subject for the compelling lecture that concludes this segment.

Part V continues to explore the meaning of the scientific revolution in our understanding of ourselves and the many problems that it raises. Is science the only source of true knowledge? If we have no control over our actions because causal laws determine them, then what is left of freedom? Right and wrong? You study philosophers asking how far the scientific method might be applied. Immanuel Kant responds to the challenges raised by the new scientific consciousness in the metaphysical and the moral arenas.

You study Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish philosopher-statesman whose eloquent critiques of the French Revolution made him an architect of modern conservatism, as well as the giant of the liberal tradition, John Stuart Mill. Lectures follow on G. Hegel's philosophy of history, and Karl Marx's appropriation of a materialist version of Hegelianism as part of his effort to develop scientific laws of progress potent enough to overcome all human alienation.

Because causal determinism undermines the possibility of freedom, choice, and virtue, this is a period of spiritual turmoil as well as of material advance. Part VI introduces you to the philosophical struggles of our own day.

Psychologists William James and Sigmund Freud still affect us.