Vlogbrothers and “Nerdfighter” online personalities Hank and John Green set about conquering the world of educational media a few years ago—while also writing bestselling novels, recording popular albums, and creating startups and charitable organizations on the side. They’ve almost succeeded, with their “Crash Course” video series steamrolling its way through U.S. History, World History, and the History of Everything Else, as well as Psychology, Literature, the Sciences, and, now, Philosophy, just above, with Hank taking on the professorial duties. “It’s gonna be hard,” he says in the intro video above, “and enlightening, and frustrating, and if I do my job properly it’s going to stick with you long after you and I have parted ways.”
Hank begins where we generally do, in ancient Greece, and introduces the three main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Next up, in episode two above, he dives into logic and argumentation, subjects dear to the heart of an internet-based educator, whose audience is quite familiar with the contentious online commentariat. Hank’s style, like his brother’s, is hip, fast-paced, and full of witty editorial asides, enhanced by clever editing, pop-culture references, and animated visual aids. In short, he’s exactly what you wish your college professors were like in the classroom.
Is taking one of the Green’s “crash courses” the equivalent of a college intro course? I guess it would depend on the college, the class, and the instructor. Your mileage may vary with any educational experience, and everyone has their own way of learning. If you’re comfortable having information delivered at the speed of advertising—which I do not mean as an insult, but as an accurate description of their pacing—then you may find that the Green’s methods work perfectly well. If you need to mull things over, take careful notes, hear in-depth explanations, etc., you may consider these videos as fun ways to get your feet wet. Then when you’re ready to dive in, consider taking one of the many free online philosophy courses we feature on the site, and supplementing with podcasts, free eBooks, and other resources.
If you follow this playlist, you can find more Crash Course Philosophy videos as they become available.
In a recent entry in the New York Times’ philosophy blog “The Stone,” Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle locate a “momentous turning point” in the history of philosophy: its institutionalization in the research university in the late 19th century. This, they argue, is when philosophy lost its way—when it became subject to the dictates of the academy, placed in competition with the hard sciences, and forced to prove its worth as an instrument of profit and progress. Well over a hundred years after this development, we debate a wider crisis in higher education, as universities (writes Mimi Howard in the Los Angeles Review of Books) “increasingly resemble global corporations with their international campuses and multibillion dollar endowments. Tuition has skyrocketed. Debt is astronomical. The classrooms themselves are more often run on the backs of precarious adjuncts and graduate students than by real professors.”
It’s a cutthroat system I endured for many years as both an adjunct and graduate student, but even before that, in my early undergraduate days, I remember well watching public, then private, colleges succumb to demand for leaner operating budgets, more encroachment by corporate donors and trustees, and less autonomy for educators. Universities have become, in a word, high-priced, high-powered vocational schools where every discipline must prove its value on the open market or risk massive cuts, and where students are treated, and often demand to be treated, like consumers. Expensive private entities like for-profit colleges and corporate educational companies thrive in this environment, often promising much but offering little, and in this environment, philosophy and the liberal arts bear a crushing burden to demonstrate their relevance and profitability.
Howard writes about this situation in the context of her review of Friedrich Nietzsche’s little-known, 1872 series of lectures, On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, published in a new translation by Damion Searls with the pithy title Anti-Education. Nietzsche, an academic prodigy, had become a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel at only 24 years of age. By 27, when he wrote his lectures, he was already disillusioned with teaching and the strictures of professional academia, though he stayed in his appointment until illness forced him to retire in 1878. In the lectures, Nietzsche excoriates a bourgeois higher education system in terms that could come right out of a critical article on the higher ed of our day. In a Paris Review essay, his translator Searls quotes the surly philosopher on what “the state and the masses were apparently clamoring for”:
as much knowledge and education as possible—leading to the greatest possible production and demand—leading to the greatest happiness: that’s the formula. Here we have Utility as the goal and purpose of education, or more precisely Gain: the highest possible income … Culture is tolerated only insofar as it serves the cause of earning money.
Perhaps little has changed but the scale and the appearance of the university. However, Nietzsche did admire the fact that the school system “as we know it today… takes the Greek and Latin languages seriously for years on end.” Students still received a classical education, which Nietzsche approvingly credited with at least teaching them proper discipline. And yet, as the cliché has it, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; or rather, a little knowledge does not an education make. Though many pursue an education, few people actually achieve it, he believed. “No one would strive for education,” wrote Nietzsche, “if they knew how unbelievably small the number of truly educated people actually was, or ever could be.” For Nietzsche, the university was a scam, tricking “a great mass of people… into going against their nature and pursuing an education” they could never truly achieve or appreciate.
While it’s true that Nietzsche’s critiques are driven in part by his own cultural elitism, it’s also true that he seeks in his lectures to define education in entirely different terms than the utilitarian “state and masses”—terms more in line with classical ideals as well as with the German concept of Bildung, the term for education that also means, writes Searls, “the process of forming the most desirable self, as well as the end point of the process.” It’s a resonance that the English word has lost, though its Latin roots—e ducere, “to lead out of” or away from the common and conventional—still retain some of this sense. Bildung, Searls goes on, “means entering the realm of the fully formed: true culture is the culmination of an education, and true education transmits and creates culture.”
Nietzsche the philologist took the rich valence of Bildung very seriously. In the years after penning his lectures on the educational system, he completed the essays that would become Untimely Meditations(including one of his most famous, “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life”). Among those essays was “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in which Nietzsche calls the gloomy philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer his “true educator.” However, writes Peter Fitzsimons, the “image” of Schopenhauer “is more a metaphor for Nietzsche’s own self-educative process.” For Nietzsche, the process of a true education consists not in rote memorization, or in attaining cultural signifiers consistent with one’s class or ambitions, or in learning a set of practical skills with which to make money. It is, Fitzsimons observes, “rather an exhortation to break free from conventionality, to be responsible for creating our own existence, and to overcome the inertia of tradition and custom”—or what Nietzsche calls the universal condition of “sloth.” In “Schopenhauer as Educator,” Nietzsche defines the role of the educator and explicates the purpose of learning in deliberately Platonic terms:
…for your true nature lies, not concealed deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which you usually take yourself to be. Your true educators and formative teachers reveal to you what the true basic material of your being is, something in itself ineducable and in any case difficult of access, bound and paralysed: your educators can be only your liberators.
As in Plato’s notion of innate knowledge, or anamnesis, Nietzsche believed that education consists mainly of a clearing away of “the weeds and rubbish and vermin” that attack and obscure “the real groundwork and import of thy being.” This kind of education, of course, cannot be formalized within our present institutions, cannot be marketed to a mass audience, and cannot serve the interests of the state and the market. Hence it cannot be obtained by simply progressing through a system of grades and degrees, though one can use such systems to obtain access to the liberatory materials one presumably needs to realize one’s “true nature.”
For Nietzsche, in his example of Schopenhauer, achieving a true education is an enterprise fraught with “three dangers”—those of isolation, of crippling doubt, and of the pain of confronting one’s limitations. These dangers “threaten us all,” but most people, Nietzsche thinks, lack the fortitude and vigor to truly brave and conquer them. Those who acquire Bildung, or culture, those who realize their “true selves,” he concludes “must prove by their own deed that the love of truth has itself awe and power,” though “the dignity of philosophy is trodden in the mire,” and one will likely receive little respite, recompense, or recognition for their labors.
After a long hiatus, the RSA (The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) has returned with another one of the whiteboard animated-lectures they pioneered five years ago.
The animated reboot (above) brings to life the thoughts of another Stanford psychology professor, Carol S. Dweck. The author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success(a book that appeared on Bill Gates’s Best of 2015 list), Dweck has looked closely at how our beliefs/mindsets strongly influence the paths we take in life. And, in this clip, she talks about how well-meaning parents, despite their best intentions, might be creating the wrong mindsets in their kids, paving the way for problems down the road. You can watch the complete, unanimated lecture here.
If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bundled in one email, each day.
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!
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the most prominent public defender of science education and funding, frequently comes in for some good-natured ribbing for his genial pedantry, ascension to Carl Sagan’s unofficial spokesmanship, and downgrading of the beloved Pluto from planet status. But he takes it all in stride. As another science communicator, Phil Plate the “Bad Astronomer,” has written, “The man is brilliant, charming, a pillar of science education, and a glutton for punishment. But I think he secretly revels in it.” If you follow Tyson’s Twitter account and watch him engage with cranks, or if you’ve seen him in any of the hundreds of public debates and panels he attends, it seems he more than revels in it; he’s totally in his element, so to speak, publicly modeling the mix of confidence, humility, and curiosity that drives science forward.
In the video above, Tyson dares to try and fill the shoes of another great communicator—and no, I don’t mean Ronald Reagan, but the president whose most famous speech Charles Sumner called “a monumental act.” And though Abraham Lincoln was not nearly as comfortable in front of an audience as Tyson is, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address set the bar for how to get a point across with the maximum amount of eloquence and minimum of redundancy and rambling. Can Tyson deliver the goods like Lincoln did with only 272 words to work with? Is the attempt to “reply” to the “Gettysburg Address” an act of hubris or the ultimate tribute? Decide for yourself as you listen to Tyson’s April, 2015 acceptance speech at the National Academy of Science for the Public Welfare Medal, the Academy’s “most prestigious award.”
Tyson’s speech has been enhanced with a dramatic animation and sound effects for a technological impact Lincoln never could have achieved, though by most accounts he didn’t need it. Not a solemn occasion like Gettysburg, the awards ceremony nonetheless called for at least a little pomp, as well as some history. Tyson points out that “during the bloody year of his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln chartered the National Academy of Sciences.” For more of that story, see the short video above, where you’ll learn, among other things, that Lincoln was the first and only American president to hold a patent on a scientific invention.
Of the rare and extraordinary times in U.S. history when the U.S. government actively funded and promoted the arts on a national scale, two periods in particular stand out. There is the CIA’s role in channeling funds to avant-garde artists after the Second World War as part of the cultural front of the Cold War—a boon to painters, writers, and musicians, both witting and unwitting, and a strange way in which the intelligence community used the anti-communist left to head off what it saw as more dangerous and subversive trends. Most of the highly agenda-driven federal arts funding during the Cold War proceeded in secret until decades later, when long-sealed documents were declassified and agents began to tell their stories of the period.
Of a much less covertly political nature was the first major federal investment in the arts, begun under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and championed in large part by his wife, Eleanor. Under the 1935-established Works Progress Administration (WPA)—which created thousands of jobs through large-scale public infrastructure projects—the Federal Project Number One took shape, an initiative, write Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard, that “marked the U.S. government’s first big, direct investment in cultural development.” The project’s goals “were clearly stated and democratic; they supported activities not already subsidized by private sector patrons… and they emphasized the interrelatedness of culture with all aspects of life, not the separateness of a rarefied art world.”
Thousands more whose names have gone unrecorded were able to fund community theater productions, literary lectures, art classes and many other works of cultural enrichment that kept people in the arts working, engaged whole communities, and gave ordinary Americans opportunities to participate in the arts and to find representation where they otherwise would be overlooked or ignored. Federal One not only “put legions of unemployed artists back to work,” writes George Washington University’s Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, “but their creations would invariably entertain and enrich the larger population.”
“If FDR was only lukewarm about Federal One,” GWU points out, “his wife more than made up for it with her enthusiasm. Eleanor Roosevelt felt strongly that American society had not done enough to support the arts, and she viewed Federal One as a powerful tool with which to infuse art and culture into the daily lives of Americans.”
Now, thanks to the Library of Congress, we can see what that infusion of culture looked like in colorful poster form. Of the 2,000 WPA arts posters known to exist, the LoC has digitized over 900 produced between 1936 and 1943, “designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and education al programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia.”
These posters, added to the Library’s holdings in the ‘40s, show us a nation that looked very different from the one we live in today—one in which the arts and culture thrived at a local and regional level and were not simply the preserves of celebrities, private wealth, and major corporations. Perhaps revisiting this past can give us a model to strive for in a more democratic, equitable future that values the arts as Eleanor Roosevelt and the WPA administrators did. Click here to browse the complete collection of WPA arts posters and to download digital images as JPEG or TIFF files.
Still, it’s hard to resist the preternaturally mature 11-year-old Björk reading the nativity story in her native Icelandic, backed by unsmiling older kids from the Children’s Music School in Reykjavík.
Particularly since I myself do not speak Icelandic.
It would also appear that little Björk, the fiercely self-reliant latchkey kid of a Bohemian single mother, was far and away the most charismatic kid enrolled in the Barnamúsikskóli.
(Less than a year later her self-titled first album sold 7000 copies in Iceland—a modest amount compared to Adele’s debut, maybe, but c’mon, the kid was 11! And Iceland’s population at the time was a couple hundred thousand and change.)
As to the above performance’s religious slant, it wasn’t a reflection of her personal beliefs. As she told the UK music webzine Drowned in Sound in 2011:
…nature is my religion, in a way… I think everybody has their own private religion. I guess what bothers me is when millions have the same one. It just can’t be true. It’s just…what?
Still, it probably wasn’t too controversial that the programmers elected to cleave to the reason in the season. Icelandic church attendance may be low-key, but the overwhelming majority of its citizens identify as Lutheran, or some other Christian denomination.
(They also believe in elves and 13 formerly fearsome Yule Lads, descendants of the ogres Grýla and Leppalúði. By the time Björk appeared on earth, they had long since evolved, through a combination of foreign influence and public decree, into the kinder, gentler, not quite Santa-esque version, addressing the studio audience at the top of the act.)
Cartoonist turned educator Lynda Barry is again permitting the world at large to freely audit one of her fascinating University of Wisconsin-Madison classes via her Tumblr. (To get to the start of the class, click here and then scroll down the page until you reach the syllabus, then start working your way backwards.)
As in previous classes, the syllabus, above, spells out a highly specialized set of required supplies, including a number of items rarely called for at the college level.
It’s become a time honored tradition for Barry’s students to adopt new names by which to refer to each other in-class, something they’ll enjoy hearing spoken aloud. For “Making Comics,” Barry is flying under the handle Professor SETI (as in “search for extraterrestrial intelligence”), telling the class that “images are the ETI in SETI.”
The students have responded with the following handles: Chef Boyardee, Ginger, Lois Lane, Rosie the Riveter, Regina Phalange, Arabella, Snoopy, Skeeter, Tigger, Arya Stark, Nala, Nostalgia, Akira, Lapus Lazuli, The Buffalo,Mr. November, The Short Giraffe, Nicki Minaj, Neko, Vincent Brooks, Regular Sized Rudy, and Zef.
(Sounds like a rough and ready crew. What name would you choose, and why?)
As usual, Barry draws inspiration from the dizzying bounty of images available on the net, bombarding her pupils with findings such as the lobed teeth of the crab-eater seal, above.
What to do with all of these images? Draw them, of course! As Barry tells her students:
Drawing is a language. It’s hard to understand what that really means until you’ve ‘spoken’ and ‘listened’ to it enough in a reliable regular way like the reliable regular way we will have together this semester.
That’s an important definition for those lacking confidence in their drawing abilities to keep in mind. Barry may revere the inky blacks of comics legend Jaime Hernandez, but she’s also a devotee of the wild, unbridled line that may be a beginner’s truest expression. (Stick figures, however, “don’t cut it.”) To her way of thinking, everyone is capable of communicating fluently in visual language. The current crop of student work reveals a range of training and natural talent, but all are worthy when viewed through Barry’s lens.
The teacher’s philosophy is the binding element here, but don’t fret if you are unable to take the class in person:
We rarely speak directly about the work we do in our class though we look at it together. We stare at it and sometimes it makes us laugh or we silently point out some part of it to the classmate beside us. To be able to speak this unspoken language we need to practice seeing (hearing) the way it talks.
That earlier-alluded-to rigor is no joke. Daily diary comics, 3 minute self portraits on index cards, pages folded to yield 16 frames in need of filling, and found images copied while listening to prescribed music, lectures, and readingsare a constant, non-negotiable expectation of all participants. Her methodology may sound goose‑y but it’s far from loose‑y.
In other words, if you want to play along, prepare to set aside a large chunk of time to complete her weekly assignments with the vigor demanded of non-virtual students.
Those who aren’t able to commit to going the distance at this time can reconstruct the class later. Barry leaves both the assignments and examples of student work on her Tumblr for perpetuity. (You can see an example here.) For now, try completing the 20 minute exercise using the assigned image above, or by choosing from one of her “extra credit” images, below:
Set timer for three minutes and begin this drawing using a yellow color pencil. Try to draw as much of the drawing as you can in three minutes. You can draw fast, and in a messy way, The important thing is to get as much covered as you can in three minutes. You can color things in if you like. Look for the darkest areas of the photo and color those in.
Set a timer for another three minutes and using your non-dominant hand, draw with orange or color pencil to draw the entire drawing again, drawing right on top of the first drawing layer. The lines don’t have to match or be right on top of each other, you can change your mind as you add this layer. You can move a bit to the right rather than try to draw directly onto the first set of lines.
Set a timer for another 3 minutes and use a red pencil and draw it again, using you dominant hand, adding another layer to the drawing. Again, you don’t have to follow your original lines. Just draw on top of them.
Set a timer for another 3 minutes and use a dark green pencil to draw the entire drawing one more time on top of all the others.
Set a timer for 8 minutes and use a dark blue pencil to draw it one more time.
Spend the last 8 minutes inking the image in with your uniball pen. Remember that solid black is the very last thing you’d do given your time limit. You want to make sure to draw all the parts of the picture first.
John Cleese, you say, a spokesman for the American Philosophical Association? Why would such a serious organization, whose stated mission is to foster the “broader presence of philosophy in public life,” choose a British comedian famous for such characters as the overbearing Basil Fawlty and ridiculous Minister of Silly Walks as one of their public faces?
They chose him, I imagine, because in his various roles—as a onetime prep school teacher and student of law at Cambridge, as a comedy writer and Monty Python star, and as a post-Python comedian, author, public speaker, and visiting professor at Cornell—Cleese has done more than his part to spread philosophy in public life. Monty Python, you’ll remember, aired a number of absurd philosophy sketches, notable for being as smart as they are funny.
Given these credentials, and his ability to apply his intelligence, wit, and comic timing to subjects not often seen as particularly exciting by the general public, Cleese seems like the perfect person for the job, even if he isn’t an American philosopher. The APA, founded in 1900, has recently hosted conferences on religious tolerance and “Cultivating Citizenship.” In 2000, as part of its centennial celebration, the organization had Cleese record 22 very short “Public Service Announcements” to introduce novices to the important work of philosophy. These range from the very general “What Philosophers Do” at the top of the post to the influence of philosophy on social and political reformers like Martin Luther King, Jr., Jane Addams, and Simone de Beauvoir (above), showing philosophy’s “bearing on the real world.”
In this PSA, Cleese makes the controversial claim that “the 21st century may belong far more to philosophy than to psychology or even traditional religion.” “What a strange thought,” he goes on, then explains that philosophy “works against confusion”—certainly a hallmark of our age. There’s not much here to argue with—Cleese isn’t formulating a position, but giving his listeners provocative little nuts to crack on their own, should they find his PSAs intriguing enough to draw them into further study. They might as well begin where most of us do, with Socrates, whom Cleese introduces below.
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
