"I love teaching the 17th and 18th centuries, when thought changed fundamentally. The Great Courses experience has made it yet more of a joy."

Alan Charles Kors

Ph.D., Harvard University

University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Alan Charles Kors is Henry Charles Lea Professor of European History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching since 1968. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. He received postdoctoral fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Professor Kors won two awards for distinguished college teaching and the Engalitcheff Award for defense of academic freedom. He is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Professor Kors is the author and editor of several books on European intellectual history, including D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris; Atheism in France, 1660-1729: The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief; and Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany. He is editor-in-chief of the four-volume Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. With Harvey A. Silverglate, he is coauthor of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses.

Professor Kors has served as a member of the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities and on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals.

Save Up To $520	Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition Professor Alan Charles Kors This course brings together 12 professors for 84 lectures on more than 60 of the most important thinkers in history. Enjoy the benefit of learning from the finest scholar-teachers active today while you study the key ideas of influential philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the Postmodernists. The curriculum is comprehensive, incisive, and thought-provoking—in short, an intellectual experience to be treasured.

	Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment Professor Alan Charles Kors In Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment, leading intellectual historian and Professor Alan Charles Kors shares with you his view of Voltaire as one of the most intriguing, influential—and elusive—thinkers of the modern world. Focusing on the most enduring aspects of Voltaire's work and thought, Professor Kors sketches a vibrant, thought-provoking vision of Voltaire as "the father of the Enlightenment" and one of the great literary personalities of all time. What was his world like? What writers and thinkers influenced him? What questions and dilemmas did he ponder? And what is his legacy on the history of both Western philosophy and literature?

	Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries Professor Alan Charles Kors Between 1600 and 1800, Europe was seized by an intellectual revolution that challenged previous ways of understanding and sparked radical changes in thought and life. Learn about the age of Newton, Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Rousseau, and more from one of world’s leading intellectual historians.

	Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition & Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition (Set) Professor Alan Charles Kors Get a comprehensive look at more than 3,000 years of Western intellectual ideas and the profound philosophers who developed them. Start by surveying more than 60 of our intellectual tradition's greatest minds in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition. Then, continue your exploration of Western philosophy with The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, in which you focus on the concepts and theories behind these enduring intellectual thinkers.

	Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition & Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory (Set) Professor Alan Charles Kors Uncover answers to some of Western philosophy's greatest questions in this two-course set filled with profound thinkers and their groundbreaking views. Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition is a comprehensive survey of Western philosophy from its origins in classical Greece to the revolutionary views of the 20th century. Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory places the key theories of political power formulated by several of history's greatest minds within your reach.

	Masters of Greek Thought & Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition (Set) Professor Alan Charles Kors Meet some of Western philosophy's greatest thinkers and explore their undeniable impact on how we view and understand the world around us with this two-course set. Start with an engaging introduction to the three ancient thinkers who gave birth to our intellectual tradition in Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Then, get a comprehensive survey of Western philosophy as it extends from its origins in classical Greece up to the dilemmas of the late 20th century in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition.

	Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition & Skeptics and Believers (Set) Professor Alan Charles Kors Strengthen your understanding of history's most powerful and enduring philosophical ideas and issues with this illuminating two-course set. Start by surveying Western intellectual thought as it extends from its origins in classical Greece up through the dilemmas of the late 20th century in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition. Continue with Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition, which leads you on a fascinating journey through the more than 300-year-long debate about the nature of religious faith and its compatibility with reason.

	Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida & Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Set) Professor Alan Charles Kors Embark on an intriguing and illuminating foray into the development of modern philosophical concepts, ideas, and thinkers with this two-course set. First, explore the foundations of modern and contemporary Western approaches to reality and knowledge with The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida. Then, solidify your understanding of modern philosophy by taking a closer look at its roots in the 1600s and 1700s with The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries.

	Modern Intellectual Tradition & Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition (Set) Professor Alan Charles Kors Travel the world in search of history’s greatest thinkers in this enlightening two-course set. First, in The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida, you’ll take an engaging journey that encompasses prominent figures like Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger—intellectual radicals whose ideas completely revolutionized how we look at and understand the world around us. Then, discover an often-overlooked, but equally important, side of human philosophy with Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition—a comprehensive survey of the people responsible for molding Asian philosophy and giving birth to a wide variety of spiritual and ideological systems, including Hinduism, Daoism, Confucianism, Sufism, and Buddhism.

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Alan Charles Kors