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Philosophy & Intellectual History

What is the meaning of life? How do you define a just society? How should political systems work in order to best serve the will of the people? For more than 3,000 years, human beings have pondered over questions like these. With these courses, you can shape your own answers.

Ancient Philosophy 12, Medieval & Religious Philosophy 8, Modern Philosophy 28, Understanding the Mind 4, Intellectual History 26, Special Sets 0

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Include Sale items only (24)
  • Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition
    Quick Look
    Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition Professor Daniel N. Robinson
  • Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition
    Quick Look
    Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition Various Professors
  • Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition
    Quick Look
    Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition Professor Grant Hardy Save up to $310
  • Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition
    Quick Look
    Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition Professor David Zarefsky
  • Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions
    Quick Look
    Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions Professor Jay L. Garfield
  • Books That Have Made History:  Books That Can Change Your Life
    Quick Look
    Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life Professor J. Rufus Fears
  • Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle
    Quick Look
    Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle Professor Robert C. Bartlett Save up to $310
  • No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
    Quick Look
    No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life Professor Robert C. Solomon
  • Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines
    Quick Look
    Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines Professor Patrick Grim Save up to $215
  • Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World
    Quick Look
    Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World Professor Steven L. Goldman Save up to $310
  • Wisdom of History
    Quick Look
    Wisdom of History Professor J. Rufus Fears Save up to $310
  • Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason
    Quick Look
    Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason Professor James Hall Save up to $215
  • Consciousness and Its Implications
    Quick Look
    Consciousness and Its Implications Professor Daniel N. Robinson
  • Thinking about Capitalism
    Quick Look
    Thinking about Capitalism Professor Jerry Z. Muller
  • Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
    Quick Look
    Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Various Professors
  • Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition
Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition
Professor Daniel N. Robinson
These lectures offer a coherent and beautifully articulated introduction to the great philosophic conversation of the ages. They cover an enormous range of seminal thinkers and perspectives, but always from the vantage point of the enduring questions: What can we know? How ought we to act? How should we order our life together? Dr. Robinson's lectures make the ideas of philosophy thrilling, passionate, human, and divine. Customers agree: "Professor Robinson explains multiple disciplines like no one since Aristotle. His scope is awesome. A professor's professor."
  • Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition
Various Professors
This course brings together 12 professors for 84 lectures on more than 60 of the most important thinkers in history. Enjoy the benefit of learning from the finest scholar-teachers active today while you study the key ideas of influential philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the Postmodernists. The curriculum is comprehensive, incisive, and thought-provoking—in short, an intellectual experience to be treasured.
  • Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition Save Up To $310
Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition
Professor Grant Hardy
Discover an often-overlooked, but equally important, side of human philosophy with Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition—a comprehensive survey of the East's most influential thinkers. In 36 lectures, award-winning Professor Grant Hardy introduces you to the people responsible for molding Asian philosophy and for giving birth to a wide variety of spiritual and ideological systems, including Hinduism, Daoism, Confucianism, Sufism, and Buddhism.
  • Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition
Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition
Professor David Zarefsky
Reasoning, tested by doubt, is argumentation. We do it, hear it, and judge it every day. We do it in our own minds, and we do it with others. What is effective reasoning? And how can it be done persuasively? This is equally a course in argument and in reasoning. This course teaches how to reason. It teaches how to persuade others that what you think is right. And it teaches how to judge and answer the arguments of others—and how they will judge yours.
  • Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions
Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions
Professor Jay L. Garfield
What is the meaning of life? How do we find that meaning? To whom should we listen as we shape the path we will walk through the world? The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions is an invigorating way to begin or continue your pursuit of these and other questions. Professor Jay L. Garfield's 36 lectures offer you a rigorous and wide-ranging exploration of what various spiritual, religious, and philosophical traditions from both the East and the West have contributed to this profound line of questioning.
  • Books That Have Made History:  Books That Can Change Your Life
Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life
Professor J. Rufus Fears
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? Professor J. Rufus Fears presents his choices of some of the most essential writings in history—works that shaped the minds of great individuals and offer an extraordinary gift of wisdom. This course focuses on intellectual history and ethics and what the ideas in each great work can mean in your life today.
  • Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle Save Up To $310
Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle
Professor Robert C. Bartlett
The arguments of the Greek thinkers Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle represent daring leaps into some of the most profound and intellectually exciting concepts in philosophy. Challenge and satisfy your intellectual curiosity with Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, an in-depth exploration of the dramatic turn in philosophical direction that began with these three philosophers. Award-winning Professor Robert C. Bartlett guides you through this astonishing era in the history of human thought—one that permanently altered our approach to the most important questions humanity can pose.
  • No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
Professor Robert C. Solomon
The message of Existentialism, unlike that of many more obscure and academic philosophical movements, is about as simple as can be. It is that every one of us, as an individual, is responsible—responsible for what we do and responsible for whom we are. If you want to enrich your own understanding of this philosophical movement, the thinkers it brought together, and the prominent role it still plays in contemporary thought, you now have an opportunity to do so with this 24-lecture course.
  • Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines Save Up To $215
Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines
Professor Patrick Grim
The quest to understand the mind has motivated some of history's most profound thinkers. Only in our own time are we beginning to see the true complexity of this quest. In the scientific search for the mind, the role of philosophers is to sharpen our concepts, untangle the morass of questions, and systematically explore alternate approaches. These 24 half-hour lectures will make you think, evaluate your own opinions, and change your mind not a few times as you grapple with the endlessly interesting phenomena of mind.
  • Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World Save Up To $310
Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World
Professor Steven L. Goldman
In this course you will explore ideas that—when society has been willing to pursue them—have helped form the foundation of modern life. You’ll discover there is no sharp distinction between ideas that are classified as scientific and those that are classified as philosophical or mathematical, or even between scientific ideas and political, religious, or aesthetic ideas. In each lecture, you also will examine the content of a single idea that is fundamental for science, how that idea arose, and what its impact has been throughout the centuries.
  • Wisdom of History Save Up To $310
Wisdom of History
Professor J. Rufus Fears
Professor J. Rufus Fears believes not only can we learn from history—we must. In this course, he draws on decades of experience as a world-renowned scholar and classical historian to examine the patterns of history. Ignoring them, by choice or because we've never learned to see them, is to risk becoming their prisoner, doomed to repeat the mistakes that have toppled leaders, nations, and empires throughout time.
  • Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason Save Up To $215
Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason
Professor James Hall
What is the best way to prove a case, create a rule, solve a problem, justify an idea, invent a hypothesis, or evaluate an argument? In other words, what is the best way to think? In Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason, Professor James Hall turns his friendly but intellectually rigorous approach to the problem of thinking, introducing you to a wide range of proven techniques used in effective reasoning and the pursuit of knowledge.
  • Consciousness and Its Implications
Consciousness and Its Implications
Professor Daniel N. Robinson
Join distinguished philosopher, psychologist, and award-winning Professor Daniel N. Robinson and explore fascinating questions about human consciousness in Consciousness and Its Implications. You'll probe the depths of this mysterious subject from the perspective of the philosopher, the psychologist, the scientist, and the doctor. A master storyteller, Professor Robinson brings this riveting topic to life with real-world examples and striking anecdotes about smart computers, sleepwalkers, comatose patients, zombies, and more. An in-depth guide to a subject we're learning more about every day, this course will change how you think about your own mind.
  • Thinking about Capitalism
Thinking about Capitalism
Professor Jerry Z. Muller
In an era of increasing globalization, capitalism plays a dramatic role in the world economy and your everyday life. Explore the wealth of perspectives on this pervasive economic force in Thinking about Capitalism, and gain fresh insights into capitalism's history, its proponents and opponents, and its startling impact on our world. Drawing on his exceptional ability to frame each thinker's concerns within its historical context, intellectual historian and Professor Jerry Z. Muller takes you beyond economic analysis to look at capitalism's many moral, political, and cultural ramifications. These 36 engaging lectures are the perfect way to grasp the intricacies of this vital economic system.
  • Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Various Professors
Among shapers of contemporary thought, Friedrich Nietzsche is the most mysterious and least understood. To provide flow to Nietzsche’s often puzzling and misunderstood works, this course focuses on the ideas that preoccupied him, while tracing the profound themes that shaped his oeuvre. Is it possible that these themes form the basis of modern Humanistic culture?
  • Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition
  • Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition
  • Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition SALE
  • Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition
  • Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions
  • Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life
  • Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle SALE
  • No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
  • Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines SALE
  • Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World SALE
  • Wisdom of History SALE
  • Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason SALE
  • Consciousness and Its Implications
  • Thinking about Capitalism
  • Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida
  • Philosophy of Religion SALE
  • Natural Law and Human Nature
  • Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition SALE
  • St. Augustine’s Confessions SALE
  • Science and Religion
  • Great Philosophical Debates: Free Will and Determinism
  • Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries
  • Mathematics, Philosophy, and the "Real World"
  • History of Freedom SALE
  • Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian SALE
  • Questions of Value SALE
  • Conservative Tradition SALE
  • Machiavelli in Context SALE
  • Augustine: Philosopher and Saint
  • Philosophy of Science SALE
  • Reason & Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages
  • Philosophy and Religion in the West SALE
  • Philosophy, Religion, and the Meaning of Life
  • Darwinian Revolution
  • Ethics of Aristotle
  • Between Cross and Crescent: Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza SALE
  • Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment SALE
  • American Ideals: Founding a "Republic of Virtue"
  • Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey
  • America and the World: A Diplomatic History
  • American Mind SALE
  • Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory SALE
  • Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century
  • Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It
  • From Plato to Post-modernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author
  • Cycles of American Political Thought
  • Philosophy as a Guide to Living
  • Tocqueville and the American Experiment
  • Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions
  • Introduction to Greek Philosophy
  • Great Debate: Advocates and Opponents of the American Constitution
  • Practical Philosophy: The Greco-Roman Moralists
  • History of Science: 1700–1900 SALE
  • Rights of Man: Great Thinkers and Great Movements
  • Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues SALE
  • European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century
  • Plato's Republic
  • History of Science: Antiquity to 1700
  • European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century
  • Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement
  • Enlightenment Invention of the Modern Self
  • Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, and the Modern Experience
  • Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World
  • Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation SALE
  • Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions & Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition (Set) SALE
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