Philosophy for Beginners: A Free Introductory Course from Oxford University

in Online Courses, Philosophy | March 26th, 2018 10 Comments

Phi­los­o­phy does­n’t have to be daunt­ing. Thanks to the Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion pro­gram at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, you can now ease into philo­soph­i­cal think­ing by lis­ten­ing to five lec­tures col­lec­tive­ly called Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners. (The video above is admit­ted­ly grainy, so you could always explore the audio options avail­able on iTunes or this Oxford web­site.) Taught by Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Lec­ture 1 starts with a “Romp Through the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy” and moves in a brief hour from Ancient Greece to the present. Sub­se­quent lec­tures (usu­al­ly run­ning about 90 min­utes) cov­er the fol­low­ing top­ics: log­ic, ethics, pol­i­tics, meta­physics, epis­te­mol­o­gy, and lan­guage.

Lec­ture One: A Romp Through the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy from the Pre-Socrat­ics to the present day

Lec­ture Two: The Philo­soph­i­cal Method: Log­ic and Argu­ment

Lec­ture Three: Ethics and Pol­i­tics

Lec­ture Four: Meta­physics and Epis­te­mol­o­gy

Lec­ture Five: Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage and Mind

You can find more cours­es by Tal­bot in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon. If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners Will Teach You Right from Wrong

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

The Entire Archives of Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Fou­cault, Alain Badiou, Judith But­ler & More (1972–2018)

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks


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Comments (10)
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  • Kamal uddin says:
    March 27, 2018 at 11:58 am

    I am a begin­ner in phi­los­o­phy and I think this course will be help­ful for me.

    Reply
  • Salum Iddi says:
    March 28, 2018 at 3:01 am

    I have always been inter­est­ed in learn­ing phy­los­o­phy but could­nt get the opportunity.Now I think I can start learn­ing it.

    Reply
  • Steve Swartbooi says:
    March 30, 2018 at 5:57 am

    Despite my advance age now 64 but still strug­gling to make ends meet I wish to have a clue about phi­los­o­phy.

    Reply
  • Roy Meléndez says:
    April 16, 2018 at 5:41 pm

    I fol­lowed the 5 video and lec­tures of this course of Phi­los­o­phy for begin­ners, and I thanks Mar­i­anne Tal­bot for mak­ing easy to under­stand a sub­ject that always I had thought it was quite dif­fi­cult to learned. The prin­ci­ples of moral­i­ty, ethics, and good will pre­sent­ed for Pla­to and Aris­to­tle more than 2,300 years ago, should be fol­lowed for cit­i­zens of the XXI cen­tu­ry, and we may have a bet­ter world.

    Reply
  • Stephen Renny GALOGITHO says:
    October 14, 2018 at 8:27 am

    Thank you very much. Phi­los­o­phy has always been my pas­sion. I hope I will be able to self teach myself with guid­ance from this new found asso­ci­a­tion. Thanks again.

    Reply
  • Stephen Renny GALOGITHO says:
    October 16, 2018 at 3:11 am

    Phi­los­o­phy is such a sat­is­fy­ing ven­ture. How I just wish every homo sapi­ens is a philoso­pher. Most of the prob­lems on earth caused by stu­pid­i­ty would only exist in his­to­ry books. But what would it cost the world to turn every Tom, Dick, and Har­ri­ett into a philoso­pher? Is it cheap­er for the world to have the entire major­i­ty of its inhab­i­tants being igno­rant of phi­los­o­phy?

    Reply
  • Joseph C D Ifo says:
    January 12, 2019 at 9:56 am

    Pls my What­sApp con­tact is 08152588633 or +2348152588633
    I need you guys help and guide and advice…pls add me up..I appre­ci­ate.

    Reply
  • Aqeel Aamir says:
    May 3, 2019 at 4:58 am

    I obtained M.A in Eng­lish twen­ty three years ago and have had longed to do anoth­er M.A in Phi­los­o­phy but had no mon­ey to enroll in any insti­tu­tion in Pak­istan and final­ly my desire to study it died out. How­ev­er I received gifts to join A the­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Pak­istan to be a min­is­ter and obtained M.Div.
    I have excit­ed to know the avail­abil­i­ty of phi­los­o­phy audio books on YouTube which I enjoy often. I also came across oth­er relat­ed mate­r­i­al which I study but I think I need to study in a dis­ci­plined envi­ron­ment which seems so the free course I found here today.
    I shall be so delight­ed and grate­ful if some one has old Phi­los­o­phy books to donate!

    Reply
  • Aqeel Aamir says:
    May 3, 2019 at 5:00 am

    I obtained M.A in Eng­lish twen­ty three years ago and have had longed to do anoth­er M.A in Phi­los­o­phy but had no mon­ey to enroll in any insti­tu­tion in Pak­istan and final­ly my desire to study it died out. How­ev­er I received gifts to join A the­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Pak­istan to be a min­is­ter and obtained M.Div.
    I have excit­ed to know the avail­abil­i­ty of phi­los­o­phy audio books on YouTube which I enjoy often. I also came across oth­er relat­ed mate­r­i­al which I study but I think I need to study in a dis­ci­plined envi­ron­ment which seems so the free course I found here today.
    I shall be so delight­ed and grate­ful if some one has old

    Phi­los­o­phy books to donate!
    My What­sApp 00923316296605

    Reply
  • Abderrahim ABAIDA says:
    July 17, 2022 at 1:32 pm

    I am hon­ored to write these words to you and I hope to receive a pos­i­tive response from you about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of obtain­ing a degree for free after com­plet­ing all the cours­es due to the finan­cial inabil­i­ty to pay for the study. With all thanks and appre­ci­a­tion.

    Reply

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