The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions
Season 1
What is the meaning of life? How do we find that meaning? To whom should we listen as we shape the path we will walk through the world? This course is an invigorating way to begin or continue your pursuit of these and other questions. Embark on an intellectually gripping course that is every bit the equal of the monumental subject it sets out to explore.
2020
36 episodes
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Documentary
Included with your The Great Courses Signature Collection subscription
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S1 E1 - The Meaning of the Meaning of Life
June 1, 2020
33min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Establish the solid ground from which your journey will begin. You'll learn the meanings that the word "meaning," itself, may embody and preview the approaches you will take to the question that gives the course its name.
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S1 E2 - The Bhagavad-Gita - Choice and Daily Life
June 1, 2020
30min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
One of the core texts of the Mahabharata - a major moral and religious text for most Hindus - introduces you to the critically important skill of truly reading a text, deeply and with comprehension. It also begins your consideration of the concept of human choice.
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S1 E3 - The Bhagavad-Gita - Discipline and Duty
June 1, 2020
30min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Plunge more deeply into the Bhagavad-Gita's wisdom by grasping the three kinds of yogas, or disciplines, embedded in its metaphors. See why these disciplines of action, knowledge, and devotion are all required if life is to be coherent, integrated, and rational.
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S1 E4 - The Bhagavad-Gita - Union and Purpose
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Conclude your reading of the Bhagavad-Gita with an appreciation of the theophany - Krishna's revelation of the nature of divinity. True freedom, says the Gita's final message, comes from disinterested action, reflective knowledge, and a finding of value at the cosmic level of a universe divine in its own right.
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S1 E5 - Aristotle on Life - The Big Picture
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Shift your perspective from India to the roots of Western thought about life's meaning by beginning your study of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. This introductory lecture sets out the framework of Aristotle's view, as set forth in the lecture notes kept by his son and pupil, Nichomacheus.
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S1 E6 - Aristotle - The Highest Good
June 1, 2020
30min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Explore Aristotle's search for the "highest good." It is a search that takes you through his famous "function argument" and offers an explanation of the comprehensive state of being known as eudaimonea, the fully flourishing life that may well elude evaluation until long after death.
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S1 E7 - Aristotle - The Happy Life
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Your examination of Aristotle's ethical teachings concludes with his explanation of virtue, its key dimensions, and its necessary coupling with action. Special attention is also paid to the importance of friendship.
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S1 E8 - Job's Predicament - Life Is So Unfair
June 1, 2020
30min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
As you move to the Hebraic tradition, you grasp how the core question has shifted. Instead of seeking our answer in our relationship to the cosmos, as in the Indian tradition, or to society, as in that of the Greeks, the focus is now on our relationship to a personal God.
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S1 E9 - Job's Challenge - Who Are We?
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
The book of Job brings an encounter with a troubling conclusion. Although life may indeed have meaning, it is a meaning shrouded by a mysterious divine, and we may need to live in ignorance of what that meaning may be.
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S1 E10 - Stoicism - Rationality and Acceptance
June 1, 2020
29min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Your focus moves to the beginnings of Stoic moral theory in the writings of Seneca and Epictetus. Their accounts of a good life describe one that is moderate, reasonable, and controlled, living in harmony with the universe and society, and accepting of the inevitability of death.
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S1 E11 - Human Finitude - The Epicurean Synthesis
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
A brief introduction to Lucretius, the foremost Epicurean philosopher, serves as a gateway to the thought of Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius's Meditations synthesizes Stoic ideas about rational order and the importance of emotional control with Epicurean ideas about finitude and impermanence.
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S1 E12 - Confucius - Order in the Cosmos and in Life
June 1, 2020
29min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Your focus shifts to China and the ideas attributed to the man known to the West as Confucius. Hear what his teachings have to say about concepts like warm-heartedness, propriety, virtue, filial piety, the nature of the universe, and the achievement of an effortless excellence of character.
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S1 E13 - Daodejing - The Dao of Life and Spontaneity
June 1, 2020
30min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
An exploration of a very different Chinese approach to understanding than that set forth in Confucianism begins with a cautionary demonstration of the startling differences in interpretation that will always be present among various translations of a text.
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S1 E14 - Daodejing - The Best Life Is a Simple Life
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Some beautiful readings from the Daodejing bring out the profound differences in outlook that set it apart from Confucianism. Grasp how it turns away from social structures and the "cultivation" of individual excellence in favor of a simple, natural life.
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S1 E15 - Daodejing - Subtlety and Paradox
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Conclude your immersion in the Daodejing with this examination of some of its most important aspects. Take in its perspectives on the nature of the universe, the subtlety and suppleness of virtue, the value of "negativity," and the delicacy of life.
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S1 E16 - Zhuangzi on Daoism - Impermanence and Harmony
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Your exploration of Daoism ends with its longest classical text, the Zhuangzi. You find not only the themes of spontaneity and the suspicion of logic, but also ridicule of the Confucian emphasis on ritual, propriety, and rigid relationships.
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S1 E17 - The Teachings of the Buddha
January 23, 1970
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
This lecture begins with the search for enlightenment by a young Indian prince and concludes with an introduction to what he found - the so-called Four Noble Truths, including the eightfold path to sharing that enlightenment.
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S1 E18 - Santideva - Mahayana Buddhism
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Here you begin your study of one of the major evolutions in Buddhist thought, the Mahayana, and one of its major texts - Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara - a "how-to" manual for leading an enlightened life.
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S1 E19 - Santideva - Transforming the Mind
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Enhance your grasp of Mahayana Buddhism and Santideva's description of the meaningful life, achieved only through the "six perfections" - the pursuit of generosity, propriety, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom.
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S1 E20 - Zen - The Moon in a Dewdrop and Impermanence
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Expand your understanding of Buddhism with an introduction to Zen. This path to Buddhahood is aimed at direct transformation. Knowledge is handed directly from mind to mind, with great emphasis placed on a teacher-disciple lineage that each Zen master can trace directly to Zen's originating moment.
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S1 E21 - Zen - Being-Time and Primordial Awakening
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
This lecture takes you through Zen concepts like duality and non-duality, perception and conception, Dogen's presentation of time as the very nature of our world, and what is required to reawaken our primordial Buddha-nature.
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S1 E22 - Taking Stock of the Classical World
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
A look back at the classical traditions studied thus far reveals that although there is no unanimity, there are common dimensions, as well as a consensus about the value of a virtuoso life attained through contemplation and practice.
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S1 E23 - Hume's Skepticism and the Place of God
June 1, 2020
32min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
European modernity brings the first challenges of science and reason to the primacy of theology. David Hume argues that, although theism may well be reasonable, it cannot be rational, establishing the foundation for separate public and private spheres.
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S1 E24 - Hume's Careless and Compassionate Vision
June 1, 2020
31min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
You explore Hume's distinctions between Nature and Second Nature, the importance of our social lives to our cognitive lives, and the key roles our passions and imagination play in our beliefs and actions.
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S1 E25 - Kant - Immaturity and the Challenge to Know
June 1, 2020
30min
PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
The work of Immanuel Kant is considered the demarcation line for modern academic philosophy. Here you take up Kant's view of the Enlightenment as a call for people to emerge from their self-imposed immaturity and realize their nature as fully formed human beings.
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S1 E26 - Mill's Call to Individuality and to Liberty
June 1, 2020
32min
PG
Readings from John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" reveal the first purely individualistic doctrine of the meaning of life encountered in the course. Mill presents the strongest possible defense of the connection between a meaningful life and a liberal social order.
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S1 E27 - Tolstoy - Is Everyday Life the Real Thing?
June 1, 2020
31min
PG
A novella by Tolstoy presents a very different and critical view of modernity, suggesting that its values of secularization and mass society invariably lead us, in fact, to a life that is meaningless.
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S1 E28 - Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols
June 1, 2020
30min
PG
Nietzsche initiates postmodernism in philosophy - its first sustained attack on modernity. Through readings from his "Twilight of the Idols", you grasp Nietzsche's dismissal of modernity's core values, including philosophical progress, reason, systematicity, god, and transcendent value.
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S1 E29 - Nietzsche - Achieving Authenticity
June 1, 2020
30min
PG
Nietzsche's repudiation of modernity's concept of a meaningful life does not mean he lacks his own. This lecture presents his vision of life as a successful creative act on a grand scale, with oneself as the hero of a great autobiography.
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S1 E30 - Gandhi - Satyagraha and Holding Fast to Truth
June 1, 2020
31min
PG
Your introduction to the thought of Gandhi reveals him as even more radical than Nietzsche. Although a realization of Gandhi's views would admittedly sacrifice many of modernity's benefits, including much of technology, medicine, and law, it is a price he says we must be willing to pay.
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S1 E31 - Gandhi - The Call to a Supernormal Life
June 1, 2020
31min
PG
Gandhi's own life serves as an example of the supernormal life he advocates. See how his argument for what he believes to be the only meaningful life includes echoes from almost every text we've examined.
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S1 E32 - Lame Deer - Life Enfolded in Symbols
June 1, 2020
28min
PG
Readings from "Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions" offer a different vantage point for seeking meaning: a symbolic view of life. It is not that modernity lacks its own symbolism or is without meaning, says this Lakota Sioux holy man, but that it means the wrong things.
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S1 E33 - Lame Deer - Our Place in a Symbolic World
June 1, 2020
33min
PG
Go deeper into Lame Deer's critique of modernity, examining his ideas about the impact of money and our fetishism about it, the alienation from nature it brings about, and modernity's simultaneous denial and spreading of death.
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S1 E34 - HH Dalai Lama XIV - A Modern Buddhist View
June 1, 2020
32min
PG
You are introduced to the Dalai Lama's Buddhist-inflected but very modern, secular vision about the universal human goal of happiness. You learn its components and the relationship between their pursuit and the interconnectedness of human life.
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S1 E35 - HH Dalai Lama XIV - Discernment and Happiness
June 1, 2020
32min
PG
A vigorous discussion of how to achieve happiness reveals how the Dalai Lama's views of a meaningful life, modern as they are, also contain a deep traditionalist thread. We must still commit to the bodhisattva path, the altruistic aspiration to attain awakening for the benefit of all.
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S1 E36 - So, What Is the Meaning of Life?
June 1, 2020
34min
PG
Tempting as it may be to form a single answer agreed on by all, there is none to be found. What is clear is that there are recurrent themes, with the answer that works for you likely to be found among them.
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