Roy Fontaine, a colleague here at Penn College, introduced me to the Great Minds audiotapes. They are a fantastic way to learn about the major ideas in western thought, and the only problem with them is that they make me want to read the originals. (If only there were world enough and time!) I have taken the liberty of reproducing the contents of the series here.

Lecture One: Introduction to the Problems and Scope of Philiosophy (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Two: The Old Testament (Dr. Robert Oden, Ph.D. President, Kenyon College)

Lecture Three: The Gospels of Mark and Matthew (Elizabeth McNamer, Ph.D., Goggin Professor of Religion, Rocky Mountain College)

Lecture Four: Paul: His World  (Elizabeth McNamer, Ph.D., Goggin Professor of Religion, Rocky Mountain College)

Lecture Five: Presocratics: Ionian Speculation and Eleatic Metaphysics (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Six: Republic I: Justice, Power, Knowledge (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Seven: Republic II-V: Soul and City (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Eight: Republic VI-X: The Architecture of Reality (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Nine: Aristotle's Metaphysical Views (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Ten: Aristotle's Politics: The Golden Mean and Just Rule (Dennis Dalton, Ph.D., Barnard College, Columbia University.)

Lecture Eleven: Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: The Stoic Ideal (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Twelve: Augustine's City of God: Grace, Original Sin, and Theodicy  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture One: Aquinas and the Scholastic Synthesis (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Two: More's Utopia: Reason and Social Justice (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Three: Machiavelli's The Prince: Political Realism, Political Science and the Rennaissance (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Four: Bacon's New Organon: The Call for a New Science (Alan Kors, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania)

Lecture Five: Descartes' Epistemology and the Mind-Body Problem (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Six: Hobbes' Leviathan: Of Man  (Dennis Dalton, Ph.D., Barnard College, Columbia University.)

Lecture Seven: Hobbes' Leviathan: Of the Commonwealth  (Dennis Dalton, Ph.D., Barnard College, Columbia University.)

Lecture Eight: Spinoza's Ethics: Metaphysics and the Path to Salvation (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Nine: The Newtonian Revolution (Alan Kors, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania)

Lecture Ten: The Early Enlightenment and the Search for the Laws of History: Vico's New Science of History (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Eleven: Pascal's Pensees (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Twelve: The Philosophy of G. W. Leibniz (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture One: Locke's Theory of Knowledge (Alan Kors, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania)

Lecture Two: Locke's Political Theory (Dennis Dalton, Ph.D., Barnard College, Columbia University.)

Lecture Three: Montesquieu and the Beginnings of Political Science (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Four: Berkeley's Idealism and the Critique of Materialism (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Five: Hume's Epistemology (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Six: Hume's Theory of Morality (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Seven: Smith's Wealth of Nations (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Eight: Rousseau's Dissent: The Challenge to the Idea of Progress (Alan Kors, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania)

Lecture Nine: Kant's "Copernican Revolution": Epistemology and the Critique of Metaphysics (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Ten: Kant's Moral Philosophy (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Eleven: Burke and the Birth of Enlightened Conservatism (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Twelve: Naturalism and Materialism: The Boundaries of the Enlightenment (Alan Kors, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania)

Lecture One: Comte and the Origins of Sociology (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Two: Hegel: The Phenomenology of Geist (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Three: Hegel's Philosophy of History (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Four: Marx and the Problem of Alienation and Ideology (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Five: Marx's Historical Materialism (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Six: Kierkegaard"s Christian Existentialism (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Seven: Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Idea (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Eight: The Classical Doctrine of Liberal Democracy: John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Utilitarianism (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Nine: William Graham Sumner: The Darwinian Revolution in Social Thought (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Ten: Weber's Historical Sociology (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Eleven: Freud and Philosophy (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture One: Nietzsche's Critique of Christianity: The Genealogy of Morals (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Two: Nietzsche's Perspectivalism and the Critique of Philosophy (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Three: James' Pragmatism (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Four: Gadamer: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Five: Bergson's Elan Vital and Vitalism (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Six: John Dewey's Reconstructtion in Philosophy: The Pragmatic Critique of Traditional Philosophy (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Seven: Levi-Strauss: Structuralist Anthropology  (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Eight: Husserl: Phenomenology and the Life-World (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Nine: Martin Heidegger: Being and Time (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Ten: A.J. Ayer's Language Truth and Logic (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Eleven: The Latter Wittgenstein (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Twelve: The Frankfurt School (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture One: Kuhn's Paradigm Paradigm  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Two: Habermas's Critical Theory (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Three: Barthes, Semiotics and the Revolt Against Structuralism (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Four: Social Justice and Social Democracy in Contemporary Times: A Theory of Justice by John Rawls  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Five: Alvin Gouldner's Dark Side of the Dialectic: Social Theory, Renegade Sociology, and Outlaw Marxism  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Six: Foucault: Power, Knowledge, and Post-structuralism (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Seven: Quine's Ontological Relativism and the End of "Philosophy"  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Eight: Rorty's Neo-Pragmatism  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Nine: Jean-Francois Lyotard: The Post-modern Condition  (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)

Lecture Ten: Conclusion: The Theory of Knowledge and Language  (Darren Staloff, Ph.D. City College of New York)

Lecture Eleven: Conclusion: Political, Social and Cultural Criticism and Theory  (Michael Sugrue, Ph.D. Princeton University)