William R. Cook (1) (1943–)

This course presents a decent overview of Augustine's life and work, but it lacks the intellectual rigor I expect from Teaching Company courses. The tag team of professors rambles on and on, and it seems they spend as much time talking about what they are going to talk about, or basically saying the same thing, that the actual content of this course could easily have been presented in half the time. More problematic is the complete lack of objectivity. They teach Augustine from a purely Catholic viewpoint, taking a brief moment to trash The Closing of the Western Mind along the way. There is none of the critical analysis I find in The Teaching Company's other courses on religion, where the presenters, whatever their personal beliefs, take time to acknowledge some of the critical opinions about or contradictions in the works they are teaching. Cook and Herzman come across as intellectual lightweights in comparison, whiling away their time in comfortable tenured positions at a university no one has heard of. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but this course just dragged on for so long, by the time it ended I was somewhat exasperated.… (more)