TTC - Смысл жизни с точки зрения великих мировых интеллектуальных традиций / TTC - Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the Worlds Great Intellectual Traditions

TTC - Смысл жизни с точки зрения великих мировых интеллектуальных традиций / TTC - Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions

Страна: США
Тематика: Философия
Тип раздаваемого материала: Видеоурок
Продолжительность: 36 лекций по 30 мин
Год выпуска: 2011
Язык: Английский
Перевод: Отсутствует
Описание: (ENG) What is the meaning of life? It's a question every thoughtful person has pondered at one time or another. Indeed, it may be the biggest question of all.
Most of us have asked ourselves this question at some time, or posed it to somebody we respect. It is at once a profound and abstract question, and a deeply personal one. We want to understand the world in which we live, but we also want to understand how to make our own lives as meaningful as possible; to know not only why we're living, but that we're doing it with intention, purpose, and ethical commitment.
But how, exactly, do we find that meaning, and develop that commitment? How can we grasp why we are here? Or how we should proceed? And to whom, exactly, are we supposed to listen as we shape the path we will walk?
The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions is an invigorating way to begin or to continue your pursuit of these questions, with no previous background in philosophical or religious thought required. Its 36 lectures offer a rigorous and wide-ranging exploration of what various spiritual, religious, and philosophical traditions from both the East and the West have contributed to this profound line of questioning.
(RUS) Что есть смысл жизни? Вопрос, который время от времени задает себе каждый мыслящий человек. В самом деле, это, пожалуй, самый значимый вопрос из всех.
Большинство из нас задаются этим вопросом сами или доверяют его людям, заслуживающим нашего уважения. Это одновременно и основательный, абстрактный вопрос и вместе с тем вопрос глубоко личный. Мы желаем понять мир, в котором живем, но также хотим понять как сделать нашу жизнь наиболее осмысленной; знать не только почему мы живем, но и с какими намерениями, целями и моральным долгом мы это делаем.
Но как именно мы обнаружим этот смысл и сможем постичь свой долг? Как мы поймем зачем мы здесь? Или как мы должны поступать? И к кому, собственно, нам следует прислушаться, так, чтобы мы сами формировали путь по которому пойдем?
The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions воодушевит нас начать или продолжить наше постижение этих вопросов, не требуя начальных познаний в философских или религиозных дисциплинах. 36 представленных лекций предлагают тщательный и обширный анализ всевозможных духовных, религиозных и философских традиций Востока и Запада, способствующих основательному развитию этого направления.

Подробное описание на английском
This course explores answers to the question “What is the meaning of life?” from a wide range of intellectual traditions and across a vast historical sweep. It also introduces a number of profound texts to foster an appreciation of the diversity of approaches to this central question.
The exploration begins with the Bhagavad-Gita, a classic of Hindu thought that is actually an episode from the great Indian epic Mahabharata. The hero in the Gita, Arjuna, finds himself on the eve of a battle in which he must lead his army against one led by many of his near relatives. The text counsels a life of action pursued with a certain kind of impersonal detachment in the context of a devotional attitude that allows one to understand one’s role in the universe.
We then turn to ancient Greece, reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s answer to our question contrasts dramatically with that offered by the Gita, locating happiness in the cultivation of a set of mundane virtues, such as courage, honesty, generosity, temperance, and the like, in the context of friendship and civic life. Aristotle develops a subtle moral psychology that paints an unusually detailed picture of the many dimensions of a meaningful life when understood from the human, as opposed to the cosmic, perspective.
A third approach is represented by the austere vision presented in the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. Here, the puzzle regarding whether life can have any meaning is posed in the context of the possibility of divine indifference and a fundamentally cruel universe.
We then turn to the work of Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius, two influential Roman thinkers, both of whom meditate extensively on the problem with which we started: How can anything as fleeting and small as a human life mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Each focuses his meditation on the consequent significance of death and impermanence, making direct contact with each of the three traditions with which we began.
The fourth ancient approach we consider emerges from classical China. We begin with an exploration of The Analects, in which Confucius (Kongfuzi) develops an account of human perfection in terms of careful social cultivation in the context of social relations. We will see this view challenged by Daoism, grounded in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, in which meaning is to be found by harmonizing one’s life with the fundamental structure of the universe. This requires not action or cultivation, as is suggested by the Confucian or Aristotelian approaches, but rather, a studied inaction and spontaneity.
The final ancient approach we consider is that of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the account of moral development and the goal of human life articulated by the 9th century Indian philosopher Santideva. We will then explore the ways that Indian Buddhism and Chinese Daoist thought merge in the Zen tradition of China and Japan.
At this point, our attention shifts to modernity; we will discuss Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Treatise of Human Nature; Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?”; and Mill’s On Liberty. We’ll explore the view that the meaningful life is that lived autonomously, with active engagement in the public sphere, involving the free exercise of one’s rights to thought and to speech, unfettered by religion or law.
Poignant critiques of this individualist, libertarian vision of modernity are offered by Tolstoy and Nietzsche. Tolstoy argues that modernity eviscerates life of spiritual values and interpersonal relations. Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols, argues that the central underpinnings of modernity are simply erroneous and defends a radically different view of the meaning of life.
The final section of the course looks at recent approaches to the meaning of life and their relation to those explored earlier. We consider Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha, or insistence on the truth, a challenging account of the demands of human existence, grounded simultaneously in the Gita, in Buddhist principles, and in a modernist conception of individual dignity.
We then turn to the Lakota philosopher Lame Deer, who sees human life as gaining its meaning from a complex relation to the natural world in the context of which it is lived. We finish with the perspective of the 14th Dalai Lama, who integrates the views of Santideva with those of European modernity, defending an account of the meaningful life in the modern world that takes seriously such modern values as human rights, liberty, and a secular order but demanding the cultivation of compassion.
Although we may not conclude by answering the question of the meaning of life once and for all, we will find that our attempt to answer it in conversation with this array of scholars will yield rich insight and an appreciation for the value of addressing profound questions with intellectual rigor and seriousness of purpose.

Подробное описание на русском
Этот курс рассматривает ответы на вопрос: 'В чем смысл жизни?', данные рядом интеллектуальных традиций в широком историческом диапазоне. Он также включает в себя некоторые содержательные тексты, способствующие пониманию многообразия подходов к этому ключевому вопросу.
Исследование начинается с Бхагават-Гиты, классического памятника индуистской мысли, являющегося, фактически, эпизодом из великого индийского эпоса Махабхарата. Главное действующее лицо Г