Books That Matter: The Analects of Confucius

The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition

• ORIGINAL (30 hrs and 10 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Daniel N. Robinson

Grasp the important ideas that have served as the backbone of philosophy across the ages with this extraordinary 60-lecture series. This is your opportunity to explore the enormous range of philosophical perspectives and ponder the most important and enduring of human questions-without spending your life poring over dense philosophical texts.

The Foundations of Western Civilization

• ORIGINAL (24 hrs and 54 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Thomas F. X. Noble

What is Western Civilization? According to Professor Noble, it is "much more than human and political geography," encompassing myriad forms of political and institutional structures - from monarchies to participatory republics - and its own traditions of political discourse. It involves choices about who gets to participate in any given society and the ways in which societies have resolved the tension between individual self-interest and the common good.

Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science

• ORIGINAL (5 hrs and 57 mins)
• By The Great Courses, Robert Sapolsky
• Narrated By Professor Robert Sapolsky

Understanding our humanity - the essence of who we are - is one of the deepest mysteries and biggest challenges in modern science. Why do we have bad moods? Why are we capable of having such strange dreams? How can metaphors in our language hold such sway on our actions? As we learn more about the mechanisms of human behavior through evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and other related fields, we're discovering just how intriguing the human species is.

The New Testament

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 26 mins)
• By The Great Courses, Bart D. Ehrman
• Narrated By Professor Bart D. Ehrman

Whether taken as a book of faith or a cultural artifact, the New Testament is among the most significant writings the world has ever known, its web of meaning relied upon by virtually every major writer in the last 2,000 years. Yet the New Testament is not only one of Western civilization’s most believed books, but also one of its most widely disputed, often maligned, and least clearly understood, with a vast number of people unaware of how it was written and transmitted.

The Ethics of Aristotle

• ORIGINAL (6 hrs and 9 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Father Joseph Koterski, S.J.

In this 12-lecture meditation on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, you'll uncover the clarity and ethical wisdom of one of humanity's greatest minds. Father Koterski shows how and why this great philosopher can help you deepen and improve your own thinking on questions of morality and leading the best life. The aim of these lectures is to provide you with a clear and thoughtful introduction to Aristotle as a moral philosopher.

Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 26 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Pamela Bedore

Can literature change our real world society? At its foundation, utopian and dystopian fiction asks a few seemingly simple questions aimed at doing just that. Who are we as a society? Who do we want to be? Who are we afraid we might become? When these questions are framed in the speculative versions of Heaven and Hell on earth, you won't find easy answers, but you will find tremendously insightful and often entertaining perspectives.

The American Civil War

• ORIGINAL (24 hrs and 36 mins)
• By The Great Courses, Gary W. Gallagher
• Narrated By Professor Gary W. Gallagher

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 21 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Gary A. Rendsburg

Whether complete or only fragmentary, the 930 extant Dead Sea Scrolls irrevocably altered how we look at and understand the foundations of faith and religious practice. Now you can get a comprehensive introduction to this unique series of archaeological documents, and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance, with these 24 lectures. Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus.

The Iliad of Homer

• ORIGINAL (6 hrs and 4 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Elizabeth Vandiver

For thousands of years, Homer's ancient epic poem the Iliad has enchanted readers from around the world. When you join Professor Vandiver for this lecture series on the Iliad, you'll come to understand what has enthralled and gripped so many people.Her compelling 12-lecture look at this literary masterpiece -whether it's the work of many authors or the "vision" of a single blind poet - makes it vividly clear why, after almost 3,000 years, the Iliad remains not only among the greatest adventure stories ever told but also one of the most compelling meditations on the human condition ever written.

The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World

• ORIGINAL (24 hrs and 28 mins)
• By The Great Courses, Robert Garland
• Narrated By Professor Robert Garland

Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.

Thinking Like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making

• ORIGINAL (6 hrs and 10 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Randall Bartlett

Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, with these 12 fast-moving and crystal clear lectures, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.

The Italians before Italy: Conflict and Competition in the Mediterranean

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 8 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Kenneth R. Bartlett

Take a riveting tour of the Italian peninsula, from the glittering canals of Venice to the lavish papal apartments and ancient ruins of Rome. In these 24 lectures, Professor Bartlett traces the development of the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, showing how the modern nation of Italy was forged out of the rivalries, allegiances, and traditions of a vibrant and diverse people.

Mind-Body Philosophy

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 21 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Patrick Grim PhD

How is it that our brain creates all the subjective experiences of our lives every single day - the experiences we call reality? That is the mind-body problem. In Mind-Body Philosophy, Professor Patrick Grim of the State University of New York at Stony Brook leads an intellectually exhilarating tour through millennia of philosophy and science addressing one of life's greatest conundrums. But you won't just be a spectator as Dr. Grim engages and encourages each of us to come to our own conclusions.

The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis

• ORIGINAL (6 hrs and 5 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Louis Markos

What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology.

The Story of Human Language

• ORIGINAL (18 hrs and 15 mins)
• By The Great Courses, John McWhorter
• Narrated By Professor John McWhorter

Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.

No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 7 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Robert C. Solomon

What is life? What is my place in it? What choices do these questions obligate me to make? More than a half-century after it burst upon the intellectual scene - with roots that extend to the mid-19th century - Existentialism's quest to answer these most fundamental questions of individual responsibility, morality, and personal freedom, life has continued to exert a profound attraction.

The Analects of Confucius

• Abridged/Unabridged (3 hrs and 39 mins)
• By Confucius
• Narrated By Jim Roberts

Confucius was a Chinese philosopher who lived from 551 BC – 479 BC. Although he is usually listed as the author of The Analects ( wise sayings ), it was actually a group of his followers, years after his death, who wrote down his words and descriptions of his daily life. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized morality, "the proprieties" - correctness of social relationships - as well as justice and sincerity. A major goal of his conversations was to get his disciples to think deeply for themselves by relentless study of the world.

Food: A Cultural Culinary History

• ORIGINAL (18 hrs and 22 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Ken Albala

Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."