Philosophy

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
Professor Zarefsky draws on classical rhetoric reaching back to Aristotle and Cicero, and also on recent philosophers and logicians. Key concepts from the course include : Argumentation is mostly a social and cooperative enterprise by which we find truth and resolve conflict. Formal logic adds surprisingly little to argument and persuasion. Arguments and evidence fall in to a handful of patterns - and the ways to use and defeat these patterns are also few and clear.

Produced by Public Affairs Television.
57-minute programs; released 2006.
Bill Moyers is joined by some of the world's most provocative writers and thinkers to explore the jagged, mysterious region between rationality and belief. Part 1, Salman Rushdie; part 2, Mary Gordon and Colin McGinn; part 3, Jeanette Winterson and Will Power; part 4, Anne Provoost and David Grossman; part 5, Richard Rodriquez and John Houghton; part 6, Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis; part 7, Pema Chodron.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Focuses on the revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800, a revolution whose lights and shadows are all around us still. This course consolidates and enhances material from two of Professor Kors's earlier courses, The origin of the modern mind and The mind of the enlightenment.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Join distinguished philosopher and psychologist Daniel N. Robinson as we explore fascinating questions that get to the heart of human identity in Consciousness and Its Implications. Over the course of 12 thought-provoking lectures, you'll probe the depths of this mysterious mental state from the perspective of the philosopher, the psychologist, the scientist, and the doctor.

Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman.
85 minutes; released 2002.
A documentary about French philosopher and author of deconstructionism Jacques Derrida.

Produced by the Eternal Word Television Network.
30-minute programs; released 2008.
Alice von Hildebrand and Thomas Howard discuss the book Transformation in Christ, the greatest work of 20th century philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Directed by Trevor Green.
50-minute programs; released 2002.
A brief introduction to various eastern philosophies: Confucianism, Shinto, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Drawing on an array of influences from Europe and the non-Western world, Transcendentalism also offered uniquely American perspectives of thought: an emphasis on the divine in nature, on the value of the individual and intuition, and on belief in a spirituality that might "transcend" one's own sensory experience to provide a more useful guide for daily living than is possible from empirical and logical reasoning.

Produced by Public Affairs Television, Inc.
30 minutes; released 2004.
Bill Moyers interviews Joanne Ciulla about the role of ethics in the world of business and the meaning of work in North American culture.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
This course is an opportunity to explore the major thinkers and historic challenges that shaped the mind of Europe in the 19th century. Intellectual history emphasizes the exchanges of ideas and debates that went on among people from other places and times. But it also stresses the importance of a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. This course in intellectual history, therefore, seeks to expand our capacity for engaging in informed "dialogue" with the intellectual world of 19th-century Europe.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Lectures by Lloyd Kramer, professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in which he examines major themes and authors in twentieth-century European thought.

Produced by INTELECOM Intelligent Telecommunications.
60-minute programs; released 2004.
This series offers in-depth analysis of western philosophy from antiquity to the present. Using writings of past philosophers and interviews with more than fifty contemporary thinkers, these episodes underscore how classic questions still reverberate today. Correlated with the book by Manuel Velasquez.

Produced by Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
90 minutes; released 2005.
Bill Moyers interviews a panel about their personal confrontations with the force of evil and the discovery that exploring evil leads to revelations about goodness.

Produced by the Eternal Word Television Network.
390 minutes; released 2006.
Father Thomas Dubay discusses how the ideas of authority and freedom, which many assume to be in conflict, in fact fit together beautifully.

Produced by the Eternal Word Television Network.
390 minutes; released 2006.
Using Aquinas's proofs of God's existence, Dr. Rice shows how humans can, apart from any reference to God or religion, discern right from wrong. But these evidential laws of right and wrong, says Dr. Rice, fit remarkably well with Christianity, which leads Dr. Rice into his discussion on faith and reason and ultimately to the Church, whose teachings alone can show mankind the path to salvation.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
Pt. 1. Classical origins -- pt. 2. Christian age -- pt. 3. From the Renaissance to the Age of Reason -- pt. 4. Enlightenment and its critics -- pt. 5. Age of ideology -- pt. 6. Modernism and the age of analysis -- pt. 7. Age of modernity.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
By explaining the fundamental approaches to this familiar debate, Professor Nichols thoroughly prepares you for an in-depth study of the complexities of free will and determinism. You discover what great thinkers through the ages believe about the choices we make and understand how we might deal with their implications.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
This course examines the history of the most important single idea in the Western political tradition: freedom. The lectures trace chronologically the history of liberty from its emergence in classical Greece to the modern day, considering great personalities, events, ideas, and thinkers in the context of liberty's history.

Directed by Robin Dashwood et al.
58-minute episodes; released 2005.
A series about how the first big artistic discoveries were made and how they have cascaded down the centuries to define the look of the present day.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
The first philosophers in Western history "the ancient Greeks" asked the most fundamental questions about human beings and their relationship to the world. More than 2,500 years later, the issues they pondered continue to challenge, fascinate, and instruct us. Is reality stable and permanent or is it always changing? Are ethical values like justice and courage relative? Or are values "absolute" - simply and forever right and true? What is justice? What is happiness? How shall we best live our lives? An Introduction to Greek Philosophy beckons you to join this eternal discussion.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
As Professor Jones notes, many people "would say [religion] is the most important part" of their lives and participate in the practices of their faith as a means of deepening their commitment to and understanding of the world around them. Whether one acts as an individual, a local community member, or part of a broader fellowship of believers, the approach to religion remains the same: viewing religion and religious life from the inside. How do scholars proceed with studying the ways the religious experience is felt, shared, and communicated? How do they explain how this extraordinarily powerful force can define and shape the communities it creates?

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
This course will explore the thought of three profoundly influential thinkers in the Western tradition, thinkers whose very names call to mind the spirit of philosophizing or the 'love of wisdom': Socrates (469-399 B.C.), Plato (c. 429-347 B.C.), and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). The three are most obviously linked by their historical epoch and their common devotion to the search for the truth. But they also share a more immediate bond, for Socrates was the teacher of Plato, and Plato in turn became the teacher of Aristotle.

Produced by Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
53 minutes; released 2004.
Bill Moyers interviews Leon R. Kass, a physician and philosopher who believes that scientific discoveries have raised questions which scientific reasoning can't answer.

Produced by Z Video Productions.
64 minutes; released 2002.
Danny Schechter recounts with humor and style the ins-and-outs of mainstream media organization, culture, and practice, and then discusses possibilities for organizing from within mainstream media.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Calling upon such diverse resources as the American Declaration of Independence, the Greek tragedy Antigone, Aquinas' Summa Theologica, and the stirring letter of Martin Luther King from Birmingham Jail, this course considers the argument that a higher law can be invoked to challenge written legislation. It looks at the history of natural law as the basis for the claim that acts such as slavery, torture, and blackmail are wrong because they violate the rights to which human beings, by their very nature, are entitled.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
This lecture course by Professor Robert C. Solomon of the University of Texas explores existentialism and the leading writers and philosophers who have been associated with this philosophical movement.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Twenty-four lectures on the philosophy of emotions.

Directed by Terry Carlyon.
56 minutes; released 2004.
A documentary about philosopher Peter Singer and his controversial views on euthanasia, abortion, and infanticide.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
From the rise of Greek philosophy to the postmodern era, the traditions of philosophy and religion in Western thought have been, at different times: separate and non-competitive; allies; open antagonists. The course traces this historically shifting and often uneasy relationship, examining how philosophy and religion have interacted to address fundamental questions of religious belief, including existence, the concept of God, creation, sin, mercy, redemption, and man's relationship with the infinite.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Professor Erickson discusses how some of the greatest minds of the past three centuries have pondered why we are here and what journey we might be on: post-Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and other European philosophers. These ideas persist to the present day, as contemporary philosophers have taken up the intellectual route so irresistible to the likes of later intellectuals -- Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Foucault, and Habermas.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
A thorough exploration of what we know and don't know abut our mental functioning, Philosophy of Mind is an incomparable introduction to the various issues that revolve around the question of what, exactly, the mind is. It makes you think, evaluate your own opinions, and change your mind not a few times as you grapple with the endlessly interesting phenomena of mind.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Examines religion from a philosophical point of view.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Science can't be free of philosophy any more than baseball can be free of physics." With this bold intellectual swing for the fences, philosopher Jeffrey L. Kasser launches an ambitious and exciting inquiry into what makes science science, using the tools of philosophy to ask: Why is science so successful? Is there such a thing as the scientific method? How do we distinguish science from pseudoscience? Is science rational, cumulative, and progressive?

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
This course charts how the question of life's meaning has been pursued through the ages, highlighting the Western philosophical and religious paths in the human search for meaningful living.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
In Plato's Republic, Professor David Roochnik leads you through the brilliant dialogue Plato crafted both to define and examine the issues with which political philosophy still grapples. Chapter by chapter - what the Republic presents as "books" - Professor Roochnik introduces you to Plato's literary recasting of his own great teacher, Socrates, and the dialogue through which Socrates and the Republic's other characters create the hypothetical "ideal city". It is by dissecting life in this presumably just city - the "Republic" of Plato's title - that the nature of justice itself can be examined.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1991.
This course contrasts two conflicting views that have long shaped political theory and practice, idealism and realism. The debate between them starts with the origins of philosophy in ancient India and Greece through the 20th century's most extreme examples of idealism and realism, Gandhi and Hitler. You also examine Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Freud. These exceptional thinkers sculpted, piece by piece, Western political thought from its inception in 5th-century (B.C.) Athens.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Discussions of philosophers and philosophical themes from ancient Greece and Rome.

Directed by Catherine Tatge.
30 minutes; released 1988.
Bill Moyers interviews philosopher Sissela Bok about the psychology of lying, the consequences of deception, and the perils of keeping secrets.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Philosophical examination of the wide range of decisions all of us encounter in pursuing our lives. Professor Grim places the accent on individual choice covering questions about evolution and ethics, about whether punishment is justified by retribution or by deterrence and about the differing lessons drawn from life's worst horrors by both religious and anti-religious traditions.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Are philosophy and religion - reason and faith - fundamentally at odds? From today's strict division between questions of logic and questions of belief, one might think so. But for 1,000 years during a pivotal era of Western thought, reason and faith went hand-in-hand in the search for answers to the most profound issues investigated by Christianity's most committed scholars. Questions posed by the great philosophers of the Middle Ages bear no resemblance to the stereotypical medieval dispute about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin₇a problem that apparently no one in the Middle Ages discussed. Instead, they are emblematic of an extraordinarily rich period of intellectual ferment, when the best minds of the age participated in a common struggle with transcendent questions, using reasoning in the service of faith.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Discusses the evolution of the understanding of what is encompassed by the term "human rights" ; the forces and individuals which brought about changes in thought and behavior and the interconnection of human rights with history, religion, philosophy, literature, economics, science, technology, and the arts.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Everyone has to think in order to function in the world, and this course will equip you with the tools to reason effectively in your pursuit of reliable beliefs and useful knowledge. Whether you are a budding philosopher searching for ultimate truths, a science student grappling with the nature of scientific proof, a new parent weighing conflicting child-rearing advice, or a concerned citizen making up your mind about today's issues, Tools of Thinking will help you cut through deception and faulty reasoning to get closer to the essence of a matter.

Directed by Trevor Green.
50-minute episodes; released 2002.
The highlights of western philosophy: the ancient Greeks, the Middle Ages, the age of reason, the British Empiricists, and the twentieth century. Narrated by Trevor Nichols.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps the most mysterious and least understood philosopher. His aphorisms are widely quoted - and misappropriated by many he would have despised - but he remains an enigmatic figure. He launched powerful challenges to some of our most cherished beliefs. Much of morality is, in fact, a scheme to bring down one's superiors through guilt, and repression, religion, and rationalization often assist in this scheme. As unsettling as he can be, when viewed in full, this course finds in Nietzsche's thought a powerful argument for a fully aware and active life.

Directed by Betsy McCarthy.
57 minutes; released 1991.
Bill Moyers talks with Sam Keen about the importance of "personal storytelling" - a way of looking back at life to make sense of where you are today.

Directed by Astra Taylor.
71 minutes; released 2005.
Documentary follows the eccentric Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek as he travels around the world lecturing. In English and Slovene dialogue; English subtitles.