Philosophy and Religion in the West

By: Phillip Cary, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Phillip Cary

Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Professor Cary explores thousands of years of deep reflection and brilliant debate over the nature of God, the human self, and the world in these 32 lectures. It's a debate that serves as a vivid introduction to the rich and complex history shared by the West's central religious and philosophical traditions.

Whether you're a believer, a seeker, or both, you'll find much to spark your deepest ponderings in these talks on the long and rich interplay between faith and reason. You'll join Professor Cary on the fascinating search for answers about the similar questions philosophy and faith ask: What is the ultimate reality? What can we know, or what should we believe about it? To learn how these crucial issues have been discussed over the past three millennia is to enter the core of our intellectual heritage - to find the origin of some of our deepest perplexities and most cherished aspirations. It is a comprehensive journey - intellectually, philosophically, and spiritually - but one which requires no special background. By the end of these lectures, you'll gain a new or sharpened fluency in issues that include the historical interaction between philosophical traditions (such as Platonism) and religious traditions (such as Judaism and Christianity); the synthesis of philosophy and religion that characterized the "classical theism" of the medieval period; the most prominent philosophical criticisms of religion; and the reasons why many religious thinkers of the 20th century are suspicious of the alliances between philosophy and religion.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1999 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1999 The Great Courses

Worth listening twice

I immensely enjoyed this lecture series and didn't want it to end. There's so much information and insight that it is worth listening to at least twice. One gains a deeper level of understanding the second time around.

Amazing and so beautifully structured.

This lecturer has very rare skill to powerfully and simply explain very complex topics. I swallowed this course in several days and I only regret that Phillip Cary doesnt have something not for 16, but for 50 hours.

Worth listening

I learned a lot from this lecture series. His examples are helpful and add value to each philosopher.

best history of western philosophy n religion

this is my 3rd time listening to this and it's a great refresher. always gets to the heart of the matter.

Excellent content and delivery.

The information was present coherently and succinctly without sacrificing core content. I will listen a second time through.

If the topic sounds interesting, you'll like this

I am assuming the listener has a pretty good attention span and pretty good patience with walking through a lot of moderately abstract words and ideas. The person who would not like this is one who would quickly start rolling eyes and glazing over at any description of the details of religious doctrine. I love this lecture set. From days of sitting in Episcopal church as a little boy, I have always scratched my head at its odd (to my boy self) utterances, such as the Nicene Creed. Hey WHAT?! As a little boy with a hunger for vocabulary, I had a hunger to grab those words and phrases and follow them like strings back to whoever and wherever they came from. What does that MEAN? What did those people THINK? How did my "ordinary" neighbors and family members come to reel off all this jargon with apparently little deep understanding of it? How could they say they base their lives on that? As with political matters (where I read just today some impassioned, blustery comment on the Constitution's 14th Amendment, of which the writer was clearly utterly clueless), I have had the same feeling with almost all religious remarks and assertions I hear. How could people seem so ignorant and yet be hurling this stuff at each other and fighting about it? In other words, I am a scholar by temperament. I HAVE to dig into this stuff. And here, I am mightily rewarded. I am swimming in this stuff. And the presentation is ideal. This is as listenable as I could imagine this topic being. As I strive to do as a professor, this professor uses the most clear, plain examples possible to open our minds' eyes to some pretty fancy ideas. This is first-rate. Not only Plato and Aristotle, but inquiring minds might want to know, who was Plotinus? Philo of Alexandria? Maimonedes? Augustine? On and on.

Absolutely incredible.

I loved this lecture series. Phillip Cary is a great thinker. Well worth the listen.

Plato sure did a number on Christianity

Sheesh... the chapters where the author had to describe the attempted reconciliation between Platonic traditions of the divine and Biblical Christianity truly left me more confused than anything else. I knew this course would be more difficult than other's I've listened to, by the nature of its subject, but I didn't think Plato messed up Christianity that badly. So many recursive creeds!! "Yes I'm no, no I'm yes". I thought there would be more words from the medieval theologians and less explanation of the various concepts of the divine itself. The stuff about Platonic philosophy was great, but once Neo-Platonism got involved it all seemed to go screwy. More thought on the "Good Life" would have been preferable as I'm not the greatest theologian in Catholic history.

Great Course... literally!

Philip Cary does an impressive job waking through Christian, Jewish, and Islamic history (it seems more could have been covered on Islam). I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in keeping up with religious philosophical conversation today.

Great presentation

I found my self taking notes. looking deeper into sections of philosophy and theology that I never even considered. I loved the ending with an invitation to understand each other's points of view. to considered possibly being wrong and you can always change your mind or opinion.