How to Teach and Learn Philosophy During the Pandemic: A Collection of 450+ Philosophy Videos Free Online

The term phi­los­o­phy, as every intro­duc­to­ry course first explains, means the love of wis­dom. And as the old­est intel­lec­tu­al dis­ci­pline, phi­los­o­phy has proven that the love of wis­dom can with­stand the worst human his­to­ry can throw at it. Civ­i­liza­tions may rise and fall, but soon­er or lat­er we always find ways to get back to phi­los­o­phiz­ing. The cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the most fright­en­ing glob­al event most of us have seen in our life­times, does­n’t quite look like a civ­i­liza­tion-ender, though it has forced many of us to change the way we live and learn. In short, we’re doing much more of it online, and a new col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos free online is keep­ing phi­los­o­phy in the mix.

“In order to aid phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors dur­ing the pan­dem­ic as they tran­si­tion from in-per­son to online teach­ing, Liz Jack­son (ANU) and Tyron Gold­schmidt (Rochester) cre­at­ed a spread­sheet of vide­o­record­ed phi­los­o­phy class­es and lec­tures,” writes Dai­ly Nous’ Justin Wein­berg. At the time of Wein­berg’s post on Mon­day, the spread­sheet, avail­able as an open Google doc­u­ment, con­tained more than 200 videos, a num­ber that has since more than dou­bled to 457 and count­ing.

You’ll find an abun­dance of intro­duc­to­ry cours­es to the entire sub­ject of phi­los­o­phy as well as to sub­fields like log­ic and ethics, and also spe­cial­ized lec­ture series on every­thing from Hume and Niet­zsche to Sto­icism and meta­physics to death and the prob­lem of evil.

Wein­berg adds that “any­one can add their own videos or ones that they know about,” so if you’re aware of any video phi­los­o­phy cours­es that haven’t appeared on the spread­sheet yet, you can con­tribute to this ongo­ing effort in at-home phi­los­o­phy by insert­ing them your­self. Even as it is, Jack­son and Gold­sh­midt’s course col­lec­tion offers more than enough to give your­self a rich philo­soph­i­cal edu­ca­tion in this time of iso­la­tion — or, if you’re a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor your­self, a way to enrich any remote teach­ing you have to do right now. Putting as it does so close at hand lec­tures by such fig­ures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture as Nigel War­bur­ton, Michael Sandel, Peter Adam­son, and the inim­itable Rick Rod­er­ick, it reminds us that the love of wis­dom is best expressed in a vari­ety of voic­es.

In addi­tion to the spread­sheet, can find many more phi­los­o­phy videos in our col­lec­tion, Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

via Dai­ly Nous

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Phi­los­o­phy with a Wealth of Free Cours­es, Pod­casts and YouTube Videos

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

350 Ani­mat­ed Videos That Will Teach You Phi­los­o­phy, from Ancient to Post-Mod­ern

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.