Beyond the books
Listen, watch and history
Not everyone learns best from a page. Here are podcasts, lectures, audiobooks, videos and films worth your time, and the histories that explain how each question came to be asked. Each names the questions it helps with.
To listen to
Podcasts, recorded lectures and free audiobooks: for the commute, the walk, the dishes.
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Peter Adamson, 2010 · hundreds of 20-minute episodes · The whole history of philosophy, a short episode at a time, including the late antique, Byzantine, Islamic and medieval thinkers other surveys skip.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; God's essence and His energies; Why is the good good?; Where does knowledge begin?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What makes you this one and no other?; Is there a spiritual soul?
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Stephen West, 2013 · about 200 episodes · A clear, popular survey of philosophy, strongest on the moderns. Not Catholic: listen to understand the thinkers the Church is answering.
Helps with: Where does knowledge begin?; Is truth objective?; Are you free?; Person and community
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Matt Fradd, 2016 · weekly episodes and long interviews · Conversations and debates on God, morality and the Church, starting from St. Thomas. Also on video.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; What is happiness?; Marriage, sex and the body's meaning; Rules or character?
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Peter Kreeft · many talks, most under an hour · A Boston College philosopher on God, suffering, heaven and happiness: clear, funny, and easy to listen to on a walk.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; What is suffering for?; What is happiness?; Is truth objective?; What is heaven's happiness, at its heart?
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St. Augustine · about 13 hours · Free volunteer recordings of the public-domain translations at LibriVox.
Helps with: How does grace move the will?; How fallen is human nature?; What is happiness?
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The Thomistic Institute · hundreds of recorded lectures, about an hour each · Lectures given by Dominicans and Catholic scholars on university campuses, on God, the soul, ethics and grace in the tradition of St. Thomas.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Is there a spiritual soul?; Are you free?; How does grace move the will?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What is happiness?
To watch
Documentaries, video courses and films that carry an argument.
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The Thomistic Institute, 2020 · short videos, about 10 minutes each · A free video course in the thought of St. Thomas, taught by Dominican friars.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; Do natures and essences really exist?; Is there a spiritual soul?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?
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Film Of Gods and MenXavier Beauvois, 2010 · about 2 h · The Trappist monks of Tibhirine, living among their Muslim neighbors, decide whether to stay as civil war closes in.
Helps with: What is suffering for?; May a Christian take up the sword?; Who can be saved?
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Film The Island (Ostrov)Pavel Lungin, 2006 · about 1 h 50 min · A Russian Orthodox monk, a holy fool, lives in repentance for a sin of his youth.
Helps with: The way of prayer; What is salvation for?; What is suffering for?
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Film SilenceMartin Scorsese, 2016 · about 2 h 40 min · Two Jesuits in seventeenth-century Japan face the persecution of Christians, from Endō's novel. Hard, and argued over.
Helps with: Should the faith take the forms of each culture it enters?; What is suffering for?; What is conscience?
The history behind the questions
Many disagreements make sense only once you know how they arose. Start with the approachable ones.
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The Great HeresiesHilaire Belloc, 1938 · about 160 pages · Arianism, Islam, the Albigensians, the Reformation and the modern attack, told briskly as the Church's great quarrels. Partisan, and meant to be.
Helps with: How are we made right with God?; Who interprets revelation?; The office of Peter; The body and its desires
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A History of PhilosophyFrederick Copleston, SJ, 1946 · 9 volumes · The standard survey from the Greeks to the twentieth century, by a Jesuit who explains each thinker fairly before weighing him. Read the medieval volumes for the background to most questions here.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; Where does knowledge begin?; Why is the good good?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Is truth objective?; What makes you this one and no other?
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Augustine of Hippo: A BiographyPeter Brown
Helps with: How does grace move the will?; How fallen is human nature?; Church and state
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History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle AgesÉtienne Gilson, 1955 · about 800 pages · Gilson's detailed history of how Christian thinkers from the Fathers to the fourteenth century used and changed philosophy.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; Why is the good good?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What makes you this one and no other?; How does creation speak of God?