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Ancient Philosophy Courses

Eavesdrop on the rich philosophical conversations that started it all with these courses on ancient Greek philosophers and other early attempts to describe and make sense of the world.

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	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 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.
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.
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.
Save Up To $215	St. Augustine’s Confessions Various Professors This course examines all 13 books, or chapters, of this masterpiece that inspired Dante and Martin Luther and encouraged Christianity to accept the thinking of Plato. It provides the background needed to understand the Confessions as Augustine intended and analyzes his account—told in stories that are as powerful as any in world literature—of the events leading to his Christian conversion.
	Ethics of Aristotle Father Joseph Koterski, S.J. Happiness. Moral excellence. For more than 2,000 years, thoughtful people have turned to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to learn how to teach and attain these and other profound concepts. In *The Ethics* of Aristotle**, a meditation on the ancient Greek philosopher and one of his paramount texts, Professor Joseph W. Koterski shows you how and why this work can help deepen and improve your own thinking on questions of morality and living a "good" life. The aim of this course is to provide you with a clear and thoughtful introduction to Aristotle as a moral philosopher, and to suggest ways in which this ancient thinker still speaks to the deepest concerns of our own era.
Save Up To $215	Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory Professor Dennis Dalton 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, and can be traced right through to the 20th century’s most extreme examples of idealism and realism, Gandhi and Hitler.
	Introduction to Greek Philosophy Professor David Roochnik Professor David Roochnik is your host and moderator for Western civilization’s greatest debate. What is reality? What are ethics, justice, and happiness? How shall we best live our lives? More than 2,000 years later, the issues the ancient Greeks pondered continue to challenge, fascinate, and instruct us.
	Practical Philosophy: The Greco-Roman Moralists Professor Luke Timothy Johnson Imagine a course that teaches you not only how to think like the great philsophers, but how to live. Greeks and Romans of the early imperial period are often overlooked in the annals of philosophical study, but provided down-to-earth advice on how to live a solid, happy life. Professor Luke Timothy Johnson returns to The Teaching Company to study these geat thinkers with you.
Save Up To $110	Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues Professor Michael Sugrue Explore the meaning and importance of Plato’s towering achievement in immortalizing the thoughts of Socrates in 35 dialogues, which laid the philosophical basis for Western civilization. The dialogues cover ideas about truth, justice, love, beauty, courage, and wisdom. Learn not what to think, but how to think, as you experience the subtlety with which Plato weaves philosophy and poetry, dialectic and drama, and word and action.
	Plato's Republic Professor David Roochnik Explore why Plato’s Republic, more than 2,000 years after its appearance, remains astonishingly relevant in its own right as it addresses questions such as: What sort of person should rule the state? Are all citizens equal before the law? Is censorship of music and literature ever justifiable? And, perhaps most of all, what is justice itself?
	Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World Professor Daniel N. Robinson In the 12 lectures of Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World, explore the continuing influence of the classical Greek achievement on contemporary life. Your guide to the rise, fall, and return of Greek influence on Western culture is acclaimed Professor Daniel N. Robinson. He explores this rich legacy in specific aspects of our 21st-century lives, including: literature, art and architecture, learning, science and medicine, and government. By the final lecture, you'll have gained a fresh perspective on the remarkable continuity and preservation of the Greek ethos over thousands of years.