Summary: Few literary works have inspired as diverse and impassioned opinions as Machiavelli's The Prince. While some have denounced it as epitomizing the immorality and cynicism of despotic political rulers, others have considered it a paragon of pragmatism and lucidity in political affairs-including Napoleon Bonaparte, who deemed The Prince the only book that deserved to be read. In this program, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Thomas More's Utopia, one of the most significant texts of English humanism, has become the ideal for a society based on fundamental human principles of fairness and justice. This program follows the progress of More's intellectual development, from his early friendship with the influential humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, to his rise to power as a member of Parliament and later Chancellor of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program chronicles the life and work of John Locke, the 17th-century English philosopher and political theorist considered by many to be the first notable thinker of the Enlightenment. Without a doubt, Locke's legacy is vast: his articulation of empiricism laid the intellectual groundwork for an explosion of scientific activity that continues to this day, and his political philosophy is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, a treatise that would forever change our understanding of how work, value, and money are interrelated. This program details Smith's life and traces the impact of his work as Europe began the arduous transition from mercantilism to the laissez-faire philosophy of the Physiocrats. After Smith, labor was seen as the source of a country's wealth,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: With a novelist's attention to psychological detail, a diarist's love of personal history, and a moralist's penchant for spinning parables, the Roman writer Plutarch created an altogether new kind of biographical history with his Parallel Lives, a series of paired portraits of major figures from classical Greece and Rome. In this program, Plutarch himself is held up for scrutiny, and he gives...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: If wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. Thus wrote the 1st-century Roman philosopher Seneca in one of the many letters he wrote to his disciple, Lucilius. These letters were later collected together to form Moral Epistles, one of the central ethical works of the classical period. This program examines Seneca's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005