Introduction to Philosophy: A Free Online Course

From John Sanders, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, comes Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy. In 10 lec­tures, Sanders’ course cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

Phi­los­o­phy is about the rig­or­ous dis­cus­sion of big ques­tions, and some­times small pre­cise ques­tions, that do not have obvi­ous answers. This class is an intro­duc­tion to philo­soph­i­cal think­ing where we learn how to think and talk crit­i­cal­ly about some of these chal­leng­ing ques­tions. Such as: Is there a sin­gle truth or is truth rel­a­tive to dif­fer­ent peo­ple and per­spec­tives? Do we have free will and, if so, how? Do we ever real­ly know any­thing? What gives life mean­ing? Is moral­i­ty objec­tive or sub­jec­tive, dis­cov­ered or cre­at­ed? We’ll use his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary sources to clar­i­fy ques­tions like these, to under­stand the stakes, to dis­cuss pos­si­ble respons­es, and to arrive at a more coher­ent, more philo­soph­i­cal­ly informed, set of answers.

Thinkers cov­ered include Aris­to­tle, Pla­to, and Descartes, among oth­ers. And along the way, the course intro­duces you to empiri­cism, ratio­nal­ism, onto­log­i­cal and tele­o­log­i­cal arguments–essentially the nit­ty grit­ty of phi­los­o­phy.

You can stream all the lec­tures above, or find them all on this YouTube playlist.

Sanders has also made oth­er cours­es avail­able on YouTube, includ­ing Social and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence, Pro­fes­sion­al Ethics, and Sym­bol­ic Log­ic.

They’ve all been added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Free: Lis­ten to John Rawls’ Course on “Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy” (Record­ed at Har­vard, 1984)\

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

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong