February 16, 2024

Michael Sugrue’s Free Great Minds Course from the Great Courses

Professor Michael Sugrue passed away last month after a long battle with cancer. Dr. Sugrue was a professor at Princeton and numerous other colleges. In the 1990s he recorded courses for The Teaching Company including many of the lectures for a history of philosophy course entitled Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition. The course has gained a renewed interest on Dr. Sugrue’s YouTube Channel. Apparently, the rights to this edition of the course reverted to him, and he was able to upload them. The course also features Professor Darren Staloff, who taught and maybe still teaches at the City College of New York. Dr. Staloff has appeared in videos on Dr. Sugrue’s channel as well. Dr. Sugrue’s channel, which features lectures from his old Teaching Company courses and more recent lectures he gave on YouTube, currently has over 200,000 subscribers and over 13 million views.

It took me a few hours, but I was able to put together the Great Minds course in chronological order, with about 60 out of the 72 lectures. I used this helpful Great Minds lecture list to help me put them in order. I believe some of the lectures are from the first edition of the course, but most of them are from the second edition of the course, which has a little better audio and video. You can check out the playlist on YouTube here:

Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition Lectures Playlist on YouTube

I was delighted to see his lectures pop up on YouTube as 20 years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I listened to Professor Sugrue’s course Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues (which you can currently get on Audible). Back then, I was listening to Teaching Company courses on audio cassettes in my car as I delivered pizzas all summer. It was a delightful course, and Dr. Sugrue was undoubtedly a superstar lecturer. Many years later The Teaching Company became The Great Courses which are available on audio download through Audible and on streaming video through Wondrium.

The Great Courses did record a 3rd Edition of Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, which you can purchase from Audible. But it’s great to have the 2nd Edition available for free on YouTube. Professor Sugrue also uploaded an old Teaching Company course entitled The Bible and Western Culture. I also remember listening to this course oh so long ago! Rest in peace, Dr. Sugrue. A true lover of wisdom!