[Lecture Eight] Eight Great Plays as Literature and as Philosophy
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 16 minutes
Course summary: In this course, Dr. Leonard Peikoff selects eight great plays from Western literature to analyze. He examines the literary and philosophic qualities of each play and indicates how the drama concretizes certain ideas from a variety of philosophies. Peikoff masterfully situates each play in its historical period, both from the world events and philosophic context, as he discusses them. Peikoff builds the whole course around a demonstration of how to arrive at objective esthetic judgments about art. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture reviews the insights and lessons from the analysis of the first seven plays. Dr. Peikoff compares and contrasts the literary and philosophic quality of the plays and ranks them.
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:55:48 | Several times during the lectures you have pointed out the beauty and majesty, such as the line from Le Cid: “half my life has put the other half in the grave.” Could you please talk about what epistemological principle distinguishes a momentous and moving line from a run-of-the-mill one? |
| 2:00:33 | I’m enjoying your analyses of the seven plays. I’d like to select another 7–10 plays on my own, applying the six-step method you taught us. Without any guidance, I’d probably select another play by each of the playwrights from this course, but I’d rather read plays that you suggest. Can you suggest great plays worth the time and effort? For example, were there other plays that nearly made it into this course but were cut for lack of time? |
| 2:13:52 | I want to know more about the course you are working on. |