| | |  | DVDs | Home » » Introduction to the Study of Religion DVDs: The Teaching Company (The Great Courses) | | | | | | | Description: | | (24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 6121
Taught by Charles B. Jones
The Catholic University of America
Ph.D., University of Virginia
Course Lecture Titles
1. Understanding "Religion"
2. Theology and Religious Studies Part Ways
3. A Clean Break-David Hume
4. Auguste Comte-Religion, False but Necessary
5. Karl Marx-Religion as Oppression
6. Émile Durkheim-Society's Mirror
7. Max Weber-The Motor of Economics
8. Peter Berger-The Sacred Canopy
9. Rodney Stark-Rational Choice Theory
10. William James-The Description of Religion
11. Sigmund Freud-The Critique of Religion
12. Carl Jung-The Celebration of Religion
13. Brief Excursus on Immanuel Kant
14. The Victorians and The Golden Bough
15. British Functionalism
16. Symbolic Anthropology-Ferdinand de Saussure
17. Symbolic Anthropology-Claude Lévi-Strauss
18. Symbolic Anthropology-Clifford Geertz
19. From Fries to Otto
20. Mircea Eliade
21. The Women's Studies Perspective
22. Theory versus Reality-Case Studies
23. Theory in Action-Case Studies
24. How Religion Uses Religious Studies | | | Features: | |
• 4 DVD course in clamshell case
• Comes with guidebook
• High quality, university level teaching
• Great for homeschool or continued education!
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3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Small name scholar, Big time pedagogueAug 02, 2009
By cvairag
Foremost among the challenges for developing an adequate understanding of the nature and extent of human knowledge is that of dealing with the enormous bulk of information with which we are confronted. The acts of sifting, sorting, and prioritizing, become ever more difficult, and our worldviews, already de facto partial, limited and limiting, become ever more precarious, as information overload becomes itself an encumberance to learning, a self-defeating resource.
This brilliant lecture series, the work of an obscure scholar, Jones, is as good a Religious Studies 101 as you will find taught anywhere in the world. Now, most of us, when we hear the rubric "Religious Studies" think, "More Sunday School? Eh? Who needs it? Another soft Humanities course for flunkies." And Religion - the question for the Ancients (believe me - there were plenty of skeptics back then - before Socrates, Xenophanes, long before Xenophanes, the Carvakas): "Is morality dependent on religion?" The question for the Moderns and Post-Moderns: "Outside of noted weird and dangerous fundamentalisms, does religion still in any way meaningfully exist?"
Thus, for many, it will come as a surprise that the majority of the crucial shapers and scholars of the contemporary mind-set, including Marx, Nietzsche, Hume, Freud, Weber, Darwin, to name a few, were writing either directly in response to Religion or questions posed by Religion, or, in the broadest interpretion, centrally concerned with Religious issues. Religious Studies is that field which studies Religion as a phenomenon, from the standpoint of social science, and as a body of ideas influencing humanity, not as a Theology or Cosmology strictly, but how those ideas interact with and generate the development of social institutions and infrastructure. No view of the world which aspires to be accurate and relatively adequate can claim to be without a basic knowledge of the ideas and perspectives of the shapers of Religious Studies, a number of whom I mentioned above.
These tapes (in DVD, CD, or Casette) form are the most effective way of tapping into this, I reiterate, essential body of thought. After all, do you have the time to read Comte in the original to learn about his influence on Durkheim and thus Weber and Freud? There is a good book on the subject, Seven Theories of Religion, by Daniel L. Pals. These lectures are at least as thorough, further ranging into late Modernity, and more cohesive in articulating the flow of the entire body of thought, constituting the field as a whole. They are also much more quickly assimilated. A great investment. The very best introduction to Religious Studies and one of the most important series the wonderful Teaching Company offers.
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