Reviews for History of Friedrich II of Prussia

The average rating for History of Friedrich II of Prussia based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-30 00:00:00 Rob McGee I had watched this video course 10 years ago and had absolutely loved it. I would tell strangers how great it was. Rufus Fears was my epitome of wisdom and I wanted to know what he knew. If I could be just as wise, erudite, certain and well just as smart, I thought, I would be fixed for life. Well a funny thing happened in those proceeding 10 years, I started reading those books in this course on my own, listened to many different Great Course lectures and delved deeply into history, science and philosophy on my own, and now after having re-listened to this course, I realize that Fears is full of shit. To wit, he’ll say a variation of each of these things in this lecture: Moses was most certainly a historical figure; universal values are real; wisdom requires suffering; there is absolute morality and evil is real; duty, honor, and responsibility are lacking today and we need to relearn those virtues. Rufus Fears has a logos centric simplistic world view. By that expression, logos centric, it might not be obvious what I mean, but it relates to Derrida and how all of Western Philosophy up to before Nietzsche assumes the truth is out there and that there is such a thing as justice. Well I got news for my fellow truth seekers, just because we can ask a question such as ‘what is justice’, it doesn’t mean that justice actually exist, and when we put a label onto something, such as evil, it doesn’t mean that it necessarily exist either. (I’ll quote Steinbeck: ‘there is no virtue, there is no sin, there is just people doing things’). Rufus Fears just knows the truth is out there and evil is real and universal values are the only kind of values worth having and we just don’t have the right virtues anymore. Oh, and btw, the Homeric war in the Iliad was a necessary ‘preemptive Middle East war’ and preemptive Middle East war is a good thing. I think every single lecture is full of crap with the exception of one. I do like the way he juxtaposed Pericles with Lincoln (please, please, do yourself a favor and read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, you won’t regret it). The first time I had watched this Course, I thought I wasn’t able to read the works on my own. I thought I needed a great story teller (and he is a great synoptic story teller) to filter the classics for me in order to understand. I was wrong. The first time I watched this I was overwhelmed by his presentation and didn’t realize his neoliberal conservative bias which actually tended toward an Arnold Toynbee type conservative/fascist view point for history. (Toynbee wrote the world’s most boring and some say longest English written work on a single subject and was a self professed conservative and feted by Hitler for a reason. As a joke sometime Google search ‘Toynbee conservepedia’ and see how he is worshiped by modern day conservatives/fascists. And for those who weren’t alive in the 1960s, Toynbee at one time was the end all be all of pipe smoking National Review reading faux intellectuals and be thankful you weren’t alive in those days. Be thankful you never read Saul Bellow’s ‘Humboldt’s Gift’ where his character longs for the days when people read Toynbee). Rufus Fears does say one thing consistently that I agree with and that is we have to discover our own meaning for ourselves. If it takes a series of myopically presented lectures in order to light a fire in your belly by all means delve into these incredibly shallowly presented lectures. (BTW, I won’t hold his Dante lecture against him since one cannot in any way, shape or form present The Divine Comedy within a half hour lecture), and if you revisit this lecture series after 10 years and you feel exactly about them as you did the first time you watched them, perhaps you should be thankful that you didn’t grow one iota, or maybe you should question your certainties and expand your horizons.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-05-17 00:00:00 Paula Warner As a long time customer of The Teaching Company, I've listened to dozens of their courses over the years and this is, by far, the most enjoyable course I've encountered. The late Professor Fears is a classical scholar, delivering his lectures with a sense of moral assuredness that one would be hard pressed to encounter in these times, I'm afraid. The last lecture alone, his summation, is worth the price of this course and is one I'll listen to again. These lectures on great books aren't so much book summaries as a tour through the ages, not always in linear fashion, on a quest to explore the following themes: The meaning of life Truth Duty Justice Love Courage, honor and ambition Beauty and nature History Education Professor Fears' own convictions come through each lecture, and whether I agree with them or not, I respect them and admire the mind that assembled them There are so many gems in this course that it's difficult to choose which ones to point out, but here are a few: - Prof. Fears' style: Because of this Southern US accent, his words come across as homespun, almost humble, yet they are imbued with the strength of his convictions; - The discussion that perhaps great books should not be foisted upon the young and unready; - Prof. Fears' observation, from 2005 I believe, that "we may be entering an age that is radically different from the previous 5,000 years," (the acceptance of which is difficult yet necessary). I truly cannot recommend this series of lectures highly enough. Upon completion of this course, I immediately purchased all of the other courses Prof. Fears made for The Teaching Company (now The Great Courses) through Audible.