Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life
part 3 only
on audio cassettes; 12 Lectures,30 minutes/lecture; course guidebook included
Taught by the late, great Prof. J. Rufus Fears.
His bio is here: http://www.teach12.com/tgc/professors/professor_detail.aspx?pid=165
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Rufus_Fears
This course is no longer available from the publisher on audio in any tangible format. It is available on audio download for $199.95 and on DVD for $374.95+ shipping.
If you're new to Teaching Company courses, be aware that the late Prof. Rufus Fears is one of their best and most popular lecturers - if not the best. Even if you don't bid here, get your hands on one of his courses.
from the publisher's website:
COURSE DESCRIPTION
What makes a written work eternal—its message still so fundamental to the way we live that it continues to speak to us, hundreds or thousands of years distant from the lifetime of its author? Why do we still respond to an ancient Greek playwright's tale of the Titan so committed to humanity's survival that he
is willing to endure eternal torture in his defiance of the gods? To the cold advice of a 16th-century Florentine exiled from the corridors of power? To the words of a World War I German veteran writing of the horrors of endless trench warfare?
Mostimportant of all, what do such works—"Great Books" inevery sense—mean to us? Can they deepen our self-knowledge andwisdom? Are our lives changed in any meaningful way by the experienceof reading them?
Inthis course, Professor J. Rufus Fears presents his choices of some ofthe most essential writings in history. These are books that haveshaped the minds of great individuals, who in turn have shaped eventsof historic magnitude.
Thiscourse does not analyze the literature or discuss it in detail;rather, it focuses on intellectual history and ethics. What ProfessorFears does is to take the underlying ideas of each great work andshow how these ideas can be put to use in a moral and ethical life.
Beginningwith his definition of a great book as one that possesses a greattheme of enduring importance, noble language that "elevates thesoul and ennobles the mind," and a universality that enables itto "speak across the ages," Professor Fears examines a bodyof work that offers an extraordinary gift of wisdom to those willingto receive it.
Fromthe Aeneid andthe Book of Job to Othello and 1984,the selections range in time from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the 20thcentury, and in locale from Mesopotamia and China to Europe andAmerica.
AChronology of Fundamental Choices
Andthough every thoughtful reader's list of historically important bookswill likely differ, few would argue against the profound importanceof any of these selections. Together, they show how humankind hasdealt with the choices revolving around the three themes of God,Fate, and Good-and-Evil—and how those choices shape our moralityand direct our lives as we answer the question in the fourth maintheme of this course: How should we live?
Thiscourse by the University of Oklahoma's three-time "Professor ofthe Year" is a vital intellectual and moral journey that remainsconstantly invigorating because of a teaching style that keeps eventhe most abstract concepts readily accessible.
ProfessorFears is especially diligent about referring back to the main themesidentified at the beginning of the course and comparing the positiontaken by each new author to what previously discussed authors havesaid. As a result, you'll find that each new lecture is smoothlylayered into an ever-growing accumulation of knowledge. Each workcomes alive, its ideas rich in consequence.
Evenif you're already familiar with these works from a literarystandpoint, this is a course well worth your attention; ProfessorFears approaches each of these works from an entirely differentdirection, considering philosophical and moral perspectives thatsuperbly complement a purely literary understanding.
IdeasCrucial To Every Thoughtful Person
Andas Professor Fears is eager to point out, a grasp of thoseperspectives is crucial to the education of every thoughtful person.
"Historyis our sense of the past," he notes. "And these great booksare our links to the great ideas of the past. This course is builtupon the belief that great books, great ideas and great individualsmake history.
"That'snot a popular notion today, and certainly not in the academic world.In the academic world, we like to think that it is anonymous socialand economic forces that make history. Slavery, for example, is thegreat object of study for those who ponder the lessons of the ancientworld. Well à they're wrong. Karl Marx, who is the intellectualfather of this notion that social and economic forces make greatideas, was wrong.
"Itis the great ideas that propel men and women to become great inthemselves. It was the great idea of truth that made DietrichBonhoeffer [the Lutheran pastor who defied Hitler and was hanged as atraitor] into a great man. It was a great idea of truth—and thegreat idea of God and of conscience—that made Socrates into a greatman and left those Sophists, those academics, those professors of hisday, trailing in the dust bin of history.
"Historywill say how well we have learned these values from the greatbooks... all come together to educate us. For that is the ultimategoal of a course on the great books: wisdom."
WhatCan We Learn From The Great Books?
Thepoint, of course, is that it is not the Great Books themselves thatare important, but the values we learn from absorbing them. ProfessorFears offers dramatic illustrations of choices taken and valueschosen, and of the lives lived as a result.
Hespeaks, for example, of how Mohandas Gandhi relates the impact on hislife of the time he spent each day reading the BhagavadGita's "Songof God" as he brushed his teeth.
Awillingness to gain wisdom was also a characteristic of Gandhi'sgreat antagonist, Winston Churchill, as Professor Fears shows us whenthe course turns to three of the works authored by the Britishstatesman.
Fundamentalideas about right and wrong reverberate through these lectures, ashistory's most profound thinkers ponder questions about life, death,God, and morality:
Inthe Meditations of MarcusAurelius, you'll see how wordswritten as a means of self-education by a man who knew how ephemeralRome's empire really was became an enduring guidepost on the path towisdom.
Incomparing the funeral orations given by Pericles in Athens andLincoln at Gettysburg, you'll experience two of the most profoundstatements ever made about the necessity for just wars, as two greatleaders grapple with the same questions addressed by Vergil inthe Aeneid.
In Gilgamesh,you'll see how a search for eternal life and an understanding of whywe must die teaches a questing ruler the greater importance of howwe should live.
Inthe three plays of the Oresteia,you'll see how murder, revenge, duty, and divine intervention areused to show how the power of choice given us by free will is not,by itself, enough, and that disaster can ensue when choice is notguided by wisdom.
ABlueprint for "The Good Life"
Thiscourse encompasses Professor Fears's blueprint for "the goodlife," from the point of view of a historian who has venturedinto philosophy and ethics, stemming from his own interest in greathistoric statesmen and from his interest in the history of freedom.
Thethemes in this course make it an ideal companion to other TeachingCompany courses by Dr. Fears, including FamousGreeks, Famous Romans, Churchill,and especially AHistory of Freedom.
ACourse Imbued with Optimism
Accordingto Dr. Fears, optimism is the ultimate lesson of these great books.
"Nevergive up. Live your life and realize that every day, just as Thoreautold you and just as Homer tells you, every day you can begin again.”
LectureTitles
36. Lessons from the Great Books
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