Adicted to Learning

Steve Bettis, one of the original founders of the company I work for, recently purchased two lecture series on DVD from a company called The Teaching Company (www.thegreatcourses.com) - the first one being: The Foundations of Western Civilization, and the second one being: Great World Religions.

He was kind enough to lend me the first one while he and his family watched the second one, so I have set myself a schedule – god knows I can’t do anything without a schedule – and am settling in to learn about The Foundations of Western Civilization.

This course is a series of 48 lectures – each one lasting 30 minutes – divided onto 8 DVDs. The instructor for the series is Thomas F. X. Noble, Ph.D., from the University of Notre Dame.

Mr. Noble is standing in a room that is without a doubt merely a set, and I must say it reminds me of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood for some odd reason. There is a window thru which you can see a brick wall with a tree in front of it: these are obviously not real – you can almost see the brush strokes. The “room” is made to look as if the speaker and the audience were in somebody’s living room or den. I imagine it is to make you feel more comfortable, thereby more conducive to such heavy learning.

He is, despite the artificial surroundings, a very good speaker. He uses no notes, rarely ever says “Uh”, and throws in just the right amount of humor. I am curious to see if his tie ever changes throughout the series: I am on lecture number 3 so far, and it is still red with blue stripes.

I do admit to feeling a bit overwhelmed. This is a college level class, after all, and as I am a little too fond of pointing out constantly – I did not go to college. But it is a subject that is very interesting to me, and I am finding that it is a familiar subject as well. Somehow, over the years of reading 1-2 books a week, I have managed to cobble together a fairly cohesive understanding of the subject!

I only hope I can complete the series before Steve asks for it back. I also hope he will be kind enough to loan the Great World Religions once he has finished with it.

The titles of the lectures are:

1. “Western,” “Civilization,” and “Foundations”
2. History Begins at Sumer
3. Egypt—The Gift of the Nile
4. The Hebrews—Small States and Big Ideas
5. A Succession of Empires
6. Wide-Ruling Agamemnon
7. Dark Age and Archaic Greece
8. The Greek Polis—Sparta
9. The Greek Polis—Athens
10. Civic Culture—Architecture and Drama
11. The Birth of History
12. From Greek Religion to Socratic Philosophy
13. Plato and Aristotle
14. The Failure of the Polis and the Rise of Alexander
15. The Hellenistic World
16. The Rise of Rome
17. The Roman Republic—Government and Politics
18. Roman Imperialism
19. The Culture of the Roman Republic
20. Rome—From Republic to Empire
21. The Pax Romana
22. Rome's Golden and Silver Ages
23. Jesus and the New Testament
24. The Emergence of a Christian Church
25. Late Antiquity—Crisis and Response
26. Barbarians and Emperors
27. The Emergence of the Catholic Church
28. Christian Culture in Late Antiquity
29. Muhammad and Islam
30. The Birth of Byzantium
31. Barbarian Kingdoms in the West
32. The World of Charlemagne
33. The Carolingian Renaissance
34. The Expansion of Europe
35. The Chivalrous Society
36. Medieval Political Traditions, I
37. Medieval Political Traditions, II
38. Scholastic Culture
39. Vernacular Culture
40. The Crisis of Renaissance Europe
41. The Renaissance Problem
42. Renaissance Portraits
43. The Northern Renaissance
44. The Protestant Reformation—Martin Luther
45. The Protestant Reformation—John Calvin
46. Catholic Reforms and "Confessionalization"
47. Exploration and Empire
48. What Challenges Remain?