Philosophy for Beginners: A Free Course from Oxford University

Phi­los­o­phy does­n’t have to be daunt­ing. Thanks to the Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion pro­gram at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, you can ease into philo­soph­i­cal think­ing by lis­ten­ing to five lec­tures col­lec­tive­ly called Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners. (Find them above. They’re also on iTune­sU in audio and video, plus on YouTube.). 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. For those han­ker­ing for more phi­los­o­phy, see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Comments (4)
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  • yvonne says:

    What knowl­edge do we have if we base our knowl­edge on steril­i­ty? Why read, why live for that mat­ter and pro­claim knowl­edge if it is based on ‘just words’? So in oth­er words to know is also very much more to NOT KNOW* which is why quite pos­si­ble we have a brain that thinks objec­tive­ly.
    That quite pos­si­bly needs to be ques­tioned gener­i­cal­ly if you will? Why sub­mit to that which is already sub­ject to? Here is if you like a para­dox of either so called knowl­edge or actu­al knowl­edge which may or may not be con­nect­ed to ‘words’ or proof of knowl­edge. Thanks Yvonne

  • Robert Heredia says:

    I’ve nev­er had a for­mal edu­ca­tion because I had cheat­ed myself dur­ing my childhood.The knowl­edge I have hun­gered for is now real­i­ty because of “OPEN CULTURE” At 51 years old, I’m final­ly going to a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege and learn­ing basics again. Some­times I get over­whelm about the next coarse but I feel bet­ter when I will get help from “OPEN CULTURE”.

  • Lupe says:

    Seems very inter­est­ing.

  • Simon Abraham says:

    I would like to ease into the field of phi­los­o­phy by first tak­ing
    the “begin­ners course of of Five lectureship”by
    Mar­i­ann Tal­bot.

    It would be of great help if you could please e‑mail a lec­ture a
    day to me.

    I am a retired physi­cian and an 85 years old. If I can man­age
    grasp the ideas you present you can count on me for the long haul.
    Simon Abra­ham

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