Description

What is the meaning of life? It’s a question every thoughtful person has pondered at one time or another. Indeed, it may be the biggest question of all. Most of us have asked ourselves this question at some time, or posed it to somebody we respect. It is at once a profound and abstract question, and a deeply personal one. We want to understand the world in which we live, but we also want to understand how to make our own lives as meaningful as possible; to know not only why we’re living, but that we’re doing it with intention, purpose, and ethical commitment. But how, exactly, do we find that meaning, and develop that commitment? How can we grasp why we are here? Or how we should proceed? And to whom, exactly, are we supposed to listen as we shape the path we will walk? The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions is an invigorating way to begin or to continue your pursuit of these questions, with no previous background in philosophical or religious thought required. Its 36 lectures offer 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. Guided by Professor Jay L. Garfield of Smith College—as well as of the University of Massachusetts, Melbourne University in Australia, and the Central University of Tibetan Studies in India—you’ll gain insights from a broad array of sources, including these: * Ancient Indian texts, including the Bhagavad-Gita * Foundational Chinese texts such as the Daodejing and the Chuang Tzu * Classical Western texts such as Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations * Modern philosophers such as David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Leo Tolstoy * The unique perspectives offered by Native Americans; in this case, the Lakota Sioux medicine man and writer, John Lame Deer * More recent and contemporary philosophers, such as Mohandas Gandhi and the Dalai Lama 00. Professor Bio 01. Meaning-A Question and a Commitment 02. Hero and Saint-Mapping the Cultural Genome 03. The Heroic Age-The Greek Worldview 04. Heroism and the Tragic View of Life 05. Plato-Politics, Justice, and Philosophy 06. Plato’s Republic-The Hero’s Reward 07. The Heroic Ideal in Late Stoicism 08. ”In the Beginning”-The Hebrew Worldview 09. Father Abraham, the First Saint 10. Saintly Types in the Hebrew Bible 11. Jesus as Saintly Innovator-Forgiving Love 12. Hero or Saint – Saul of Tarsus 13. Hero or Saint – Augustine of Hippo 14. Mohammed-The Prophet as Saintly Innovator 15. Saint Francis and Dante-Saintly Troubadours 16. The Agony and Ecstasy of Michelangelo 17. Enlightenment Patterns of Cultural Mutation 18. Mt. Moriah Revisited-Saintly Transgression 19. A History of Suspicion-Marx, Darwin, Freud 20. Nietzsche-The Return of the Tragic Hero 21. Dostoevsky-The Return of the Saint 22. A Century of Trauma 23. The Quantum Leap 24. Existentialism-Sartre and de Beauvoir 25. Camus and the Absurd Hero 26. Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Grace 27. The Holocaust and the Crisis of Forgiveness 28. Faulkner and Beckett-Images of the Forlorn 29. Viktor Frankl-Freedom’s Search for Meaning 30. Simone Weil-Imagining the Secular Saint 31. Simone Weil-A New Augustine 32. Identifying the Secular Saint 33. The Secular Saint at the Movies 34. Ernest Becker-The Denial of Death 35. Terror and Hope in a Planetary Age 36. The Secular Saint-Learning to Walk Upright *****************************Uploader’s Notes: a) This is the DVD format of the course (not the audio format that is already upped here) in case you want to watch the actual course, the way it was recorded. I recommend it. It’s always better to use 2 senses (seeing, hearing) when studying a course, than only 1 sense – hearing (audio).b) I have received permission to upload this product from Shao and grab.