Portable Professor

Update: For anyone interested in the discontinued Portable Professor series, they are all available under new titles at The Modern Scholar.

I think I may have mentioned previously on this blog a series Barnes & Noble has called the Portable Professor. From the Barnes & Noble web site:

PORTABLE PROFESSOR™ is a series of exciting and informative lectures recorded by some of today's most renowned university and college professors. Each course introduces listeners to fascinating, and sometimes startling, insights into the intellectual forces that shape our understanding of the world. Each package includes 14 riveting lectures presented by notable professors as well as a book-length course guide.

I have four of them. So far I've listened to What Would Socrates Do? The History of Moral Thought and Ethics by Doctor Peter Kreeft, and I'm in the middle of Masterpieces of Western Music: Classics from the Baroque to the Modern by Doctor Jeffrey D. Lependorf. I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this series. Ever since high school, philosophy has interested me, but I never really tried to learn it. What Would Socrates Do? has inspired me to finally begin. Not only do I want to learn who taught what and when such-and-such an idea was dreamed up, but I'm interested in the great themes of philosophy. My last post mentioned on in an off-hand way: how is chastity positive, and how is it positively lived out in one's life?

After I finished the lecture, I picked up Philosophy 101 and a copy of Plato's Apology of Socrates. Both Doctor Kreeft's book and Plato's Apology are designed to help one begin being a philosopher. The things I'm learning! Not just about philosphy, but also about Socrates. I hope that when Christ descended to the dead and declared Himself the hope that the righteous dead had been looking for, that Socrates was among those who went to heaven with Him. It seems Socrates really wanted to know the truth. If so, how could he not have followed Truth to heaven? We don;t know for sure, of course, but we can hope.

Doctor Lependorf's Masterpieces of Western Music is very interesting, as well. I've always enjoyed Vivaldi's "Spring" from the Four Seasons, but now that I know a little more about it, it's better! This series is making the music more enjoyable and also teaching me how to pronounce the names of certain works (e.g. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik). Tonight I begin Lecture Seven: How to Make a Piano Sing--Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat. (Yes, it's Saturday and I won't be hanging out with friends. I work from 7pm to 7am [insert sad face here] and so will listen to the lectures.)

After this lecture series, I learn about economics because I have no idea how an economy works. C.S. Lewis apparently didn't either, so I don't feel too bad about that.