The Foundations of Western Civilization I - The Great Courses

Written by The Great Courses
Read by Professor Thomas F. X. Noble
Format: MP3
Unabridged

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.
Within this series of 48 lectures, you’ll discover the many ways in which Western civilization has addressed those questions, from its first stirrings in the great river valleys of Iraq and Egypt in 3000 B.C to the beginning of the 17th century and the dawn of the modern world. Your learning will cover vast amounts of territory and thousands of years, beginning in the ancient Near East and moving to Greece and then Rome. You’ll explore ancient empires, including those of Persia, Alexander the Great, and Rome.
You’ll watch as western Europe gradually expands, both physically and culturally. And you’ll examine the globalizations of Western civilization with the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration and discovery.
This broad and panoramic series, ripe with the telling detail on which history can turn, will help you pull an enormous sweep of history together into one coherent - though by no means closed - framework as you watch history develop under the influence of such critical factors as ecology and environment, geography, and climate; government and economics; technology; religion; work and leisure; philosophy; literature; art and architecture; and virtues, values, and aesthetics.

NOTE: The accompanying reference material is available as a PDF.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
01 “Western”, “Civilization”, and “Foundations”
02 History Begins at Sumer
03 Egypt—The Gift of the Nile
04 The Hebrews—Small States and Big Ideas
05 A Succession of Empires
06 Wide-Ruling Agamemnon
07 Dark Age and Archaic Greece
08 The Greek Polis—Sparta
09 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?