Presents an introduction to the history of Western civilization's religious and philosophical traditions.

Lectures by Dr. David Zarefsky, Professor of Argumentation and Debate and Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, cover the history of rhetoric and debate as well as analysis of different types of arguments in various situations.

The "Long Debate" on the nature of truth, the scale of real values, the life one should aspire to live, the character of justice, the sources of law, and the terms of civic and political life is encompassed by the name philosophy. Three persistent themes--understood as problems--are knowledge, conduct, and governance, on which there is a storehouse of insights, some so utterly persuasive as to have shaped thought itself. Beginning with Plato and...

Examines the political and social influences during the flourishing period of Machiavelli and its influence on his works.

"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,...

Twelve 30-minute lectures by Professor Lawrence M. Principe on the relation between science and religion from early times to the present.

"The goal of this course is to illuminate the original foundations of our American civic culture by reenacting the Great Debate, from 1787 to 1788, over ratification of the proposed constitution. We will focus on the most profound intellectual and philosophic levels of the contoversy, centered on the competing republican visions held by the proponents of the constitution (Federalists) and their opponents (Anti-Federalists)"--Course guidebook p. 1....

Thirty-six lessons on the world history taught by Professor J. Rufus Fears from University of Oklahoma.