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The Modern Scholar
- Enlightenment: Reason, Tolerance, and Humanity
- Narrated by: Professor James Schmidt
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
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excellent
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Erudite but boring
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The Modern Scholar
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Nationalist history by textbook authors and the descendants or biographers of the famous and infamous have given history students a very skewed vision of our true history - indeed, the true history of mankind. This course is designed to enlighten and encourage you to consider the factual basis of many of our most-cherished yet glossed-over stories and the real-life characters who populate them.
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A worthy course
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The Modern Scholar: The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer
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One of the Modern Scholar’s most popular professors, Timothy B. Shutt, brings his literary acumen and trademark enthusiasm to the study of the epic poems that sit at the very wellspring of Western culture. The earliest surviving works of Greek literature, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey exert a continuing influence on modern culture, even today shaping people’s values and conduct. In the tales of Achilles and Hector, of Odysseus and Penelope, Homer explored the notion of arête, which translates as "excellence" or "virtue".
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wonderful introduction to fundamental texts
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What listeners say about The Modern Scholar
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- Scott
- 10-11-12
Brilliant--nearly flawless
Nicely read, well thought out. Connects the dots on many points in history. An important series of lectures.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Lou Harrison
- 10-11-22
An Undiscovered Gem
I’ve accessed several lecture series on the Enlightenment, but Professor Schmidt’s is clearly the best. You cannot understand today’s world, or tomorrow’s, without a firm understanding of the Enlightenment. Here Professor Schmidt can save you a heck of a lot of very difficult reading.
We join the lectures after Protestantism poured a river of blood across Europe and opened the floodgates of empiricism to Christian doctrine. Professor Schmidt takes us down the winding back alleys of the Enlightenment, into the salons, the coffee houses, the private libraries -- and the secret societies. We learn of a spate of revolutions as we see the ardor for liberty catch and spread, the rule of kings give way to the rule of law, and the domination of religion give way to reason and conscience.
He covers the very important subject of the influence of aboriginal Americans on the European Enlightenment: What counts as men? Women? People of color? How did it affect the Enlightenment to discover that the so-called savages who haven’t even been exposed to Christianity can be happier and more moral than Europeans? Does civilization create misery?
Finally, Professor Schmidt leaves us with the understanding that toleration was the great ideal of the Enlightenment, and “Where reason rules, toleration is possible.”
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