Books That Have Made History - Books That Can Change Your Life.pdf - ttc - rhea137

Books That Have Made

History:

Books That Can Change

Your Life

Part I

J. Rufus Fears, Ph.D.

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

J. Rufus Fears, Ph.D.

David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics, University of Oklahoma

J. Rufus Fears is David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics at the University of

Oklahoma, where he also holds the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the

History of Liberty. He rose from Assistant Professor to Professor of History at

Indiana University. From 1986 to 1990, he was Professor of Classics and

Chairman of the Department of Classical Studies at Boston University.

Professor Fears holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has been a Danforth

Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Harvard Prize Fellow. He has been a

Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim Fellow, and twice a

Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research has been

supported by grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American

Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the

Kerr Foundation, and the Zarrow Foundation. He was chosen as Indiana

University’s first Distinguished Faculty Research Lecturer. He is listed in Who’s

Who in America and Who’s Who in the World .

Professor Fears is the author of more than one hundred articles, reviews and

historical plaques on Greek and Roman history, the history of liberty, and the

lessons of history for our own day. His books and monographs include Princeps

A Diis Electus: The Divine Election of the Emperor as a Political Concept at

Rome , The Cult of Jupiter and Roman Imperial Ideology , The Theology of

Victory at Rome , and The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology and

Selected Writings of Lord Acton . He has also lectured widely in the United

States and Europe, and his scholarly work has been translated into German and

Italian. He is very active in speaking to broader audiences, and his comments on

the lessons of history for today have appeared on television and been carried in

newspapers and journals throughout the United States and abroad. Each year,

he leads study trips to historical sites in the United States and Europe.

On 21 occasions, Dr. Fears has received awards for outstanding teaching. In

1996, 1999, and again in 2000, students chose him as the University of

Oklahoma Professor of the Year. In 2003, he received the Excellence in

Teaching Award from the Great Plains Region of the University Continuing

Education Association. In 2005 he was named the national winner of the

Excellence in Teaching Award from the University Continuing Education

Association. The Senior Citizens Great Books Course, which he teaches at the

University of Oklahoma, was cited prominently in this National Excellence in

Teaching Award.

Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life is the fifth

course Professor Fears has produced with The Teaching Company. His other

courses include Famous Greeks , Famous Romans , A History of Freedom , and

Churchill .

Table of Contents

Books That Have Made History:

Books That Can Change Your Life

Part I

Professor Biography ........................................................................................... i

Course Scope ...................................................................................................... 1

Lecture One Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison .......... 4

Lecture Two Homer, Iliad .............................................................. 8

Lecture Three Marcus Aurelius, Meditations ................................. 12

Lecture Four Bhagavad Gita ........................................................ 16

Lecture Five Book of Exodus ...................................................... 21

Lecture Six Gospel of Mark ....................................................... 26

Lecture Seven Koran ...................................................................... 32

Lecture Eight Gilgamesh ............................................................... 38

Lecture Nine Beowulf ................................................................... 43

Lecture Ten Book of Job ............................................................. 47

Lecture Eleven Aeschylus, Oresteia ................................................ 52

Lecture Twelve Euripides, Bacchae ................................................. 57

Timeline ............................................................................................................ 62

Glossary ............................................................................................................ 64

Biographical Notes ........................................................................................... 67

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 72

Books That Have Made History:

Books That Can Change Your Life

Scope:

This course, Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your

Life , is a companion to my earlier Teaching Company courses: A History of

Freedom , Famous Greeks , Famous Romans , and Winston Churchill . Like these

courses, Books That Have Made History rests upon the conviction that history is

made by great individuals, great events, and great ideas. This course explores

these great ideas through a discussion of some of the most seminal writings in

history, books that have shaped the minds of great individuals and events of

historic magnitude.

Our earlier courses, A History of Freedom , Famous Greeks , Famous Romans ,

and Winston Churchill , have all discussed some of the great books that have

made history. In those contexts, we have studied such works as the Apology of

Socrates, Oedipus the King , the Iliad , the Odyssey , the Aeneid , and the

magisterial histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Gibbon, and

Churchill. We will return to some of these treasured books from entirely new

perspectives, but for the most part, we will strike off on new paths with new

books.

The books we will discuss range in time from the 3 rd millennium B.C . to the 20 th

century. Our geographical scope will carry us from Mesopotamia and China to

Europe and America. It is the ideas that are important, and our course will be

organized thematically around eternal questions that endure throughout history

and that every thoughtful person must seek to answer. Either by conscious

choice or by omission, nations, groups, organizations, and corporations, as well

individuals, answer these questions:

•

Question 1: God. Does God or do gods exist? What is the nature of the

divine? Does God or do the gods care about humans and their actions?

This is the first question with which every thoughtful person must come to

grips. The other questions and some of the answers will flow from it.

•

Question 2: Fate. What is fate? Do events, great and small, happen because

they are predetermined by divine will or simply by chance and random

occurrence? Do humans have free will? Do you determine your life, or is it

already predetermined? Are you free to choose, or has your DNA already

made the choice for you?

•

Question 3: Good and evil. What do we mean by good and evil? Are there

consequences for our actions, whether freely chosen or predetermined? If

there are consequences for our actions, does this mean that there are

standards by which to judge these actions? Who or what determines those

standards? Are those standards enduring for all time? Or are there no

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