Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education

in Education | November 8th, 2012

E + duc­ere: “To lead or draw out.” The ety­mo­log­i­cal Latin roots of “edu­ca­tion.” Accord­ing to a for­mer Jesuit pro­fes­sor of mine, the fun­da­men­tal sense of the word is to draw oth­ers out of “dark­ness,” into a “more mag­nan­i­mous view” (he’d say, his arms spread wide). As inspi­ra­tional as this speech was to a sem­i­nar group of bud­ding high­er edu­ca­tors, it failed to spec­i­fy the means by which this might be done, or the rea­son. Lack­ing a Jesuit sense of mis­sion, I had to fig­ure out for myself what the “dark­ness” was, what to lead peo­ple towards, and why. It turned out to be sim­pler than I thought, in some respects, since I con­clud­ed that it was­n’t my job to decide these things, but rather to present points of view, a col­lec­tion of methods—an intel­lec­tu­al toolk­it, so to speak—and an enthu­si­as­tic mod­el. Then get out of the way. That’s all an edu­ca­tor can, and should do, in my hum­ble opin­ion. Any­thing more is not edu­ca­tion, it’s indoc­tri­na­tion. Seemed sim­ple enough to me at first. If only it were so. Few things, in fact, are more con­tentious (Google the term “assault on edu­ca­tion,” for exam­ple).

What is the dif­fer­ence between edu­ca­tion and indoc­tri­na­tion? This debate rages back hun­dreds, thou­sands, of years, and will rage thou­sands more into the future. Every major philoso­pher has had one answer or anoth­er, from Pla­to to Locke, Hegel and Rousseau to Dewey. Con­tin­u­ing in that ven­er­a­ble tra­di­tion, lin­guist, polit­i­cal activist, and aca­d­e­m­ic gen­er­al­ist extra­or­di­naire Noam Chom­sky, one of our most con­sis­tent­ly com­pelling pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, has a lot to say in the video above and else­where about edu­ca­tion.

First, Chom­sky defines his view of edu­ca­tion in an Enlight­en­ment sense, in which the “high­est goal in life is to inquire and cre­ate. The pur­pose of edu­ca­tion from that point of view is just to help peo­ple to learn on their own. It’s you the learn­er who is going to achieve in the course of edu­ca­tion and it’s real­ly up to you to deter­mine how you’re going to mas­ter and use it.” An essen­tial part of this kind of edu­ca­tion is fos­ter­ing the impulse to chal­lenge author­i­ty, think crit­i­cal­ly, and cre­ate alter­na­tives to well-worn mod­els. This is the ped­a­gogy I end­ed up adopt­ing, and as a col­lege instruc­tor in the human­i­ties, it’s one I rarely have to jus­ti­fy.

Chom­sky defines the oppos­ing con­cept of edu­ca­tion as indoc­tri­na­tion, under which he sub­sumes voca­tion­al train­ing, per­haps the most benign form. Under this mod­el, “Peo­ple have the idea that, from child­hood, young peo­ple have to be placed into a frame­work where they’re going to fol­low orders. This is often quite explic­it.” (One of the entries in the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary defines edu­ca­tion as “the train­ing of an ani­mal,” a sense per­haps not too dis­tinct from what Chom­sky means). For Chom­sky, this mod­el of edu­ca­tion impos­es “a debt which traps stu­dents, young peo­ple, into a life of con­for­mi­ty. That’s the exact oppo­site of what tra­di­tion­al­ly comes out of the Enlight­en­ment.” In the con­test between these two definitions—Athens vs. Spar­ta, one might say—is the ques­tion that plagues edu­ca­tion­al reform­ers at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els: “Do you train for pass­ing tests or do you train for cre­ative inquiry?”

Chom­sky goes on to dis­cuss the tech­no­log­i­cal changes in edu­ca­tion occur­ring now, the focus of innu­mer­able dis­cus­sions and debates about not only the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion, but also the prop­er meth­ods (a sub­ject this site is deeply invest­ed in), includ­ing the cur­rent unease over the shift to online over tra­di­tion­al class­room ed or the val­ue of a tra­di­tion­al degree ver­sus a cer­tifi­cate. Chomsky’s view is that tech­nol­o­gy is “basi­cal­ly neu­tral,” like a ham­mer that can build a house or “crush someone’s skull.” The dif­fer­ence is the frame of ref­er­ence under which one uses the tool. Again, mas­sive­ly con­tentious sub­ject, and too much to cov­er here, but I’ll let Chom­sky explain. What­ev­er you think of his pol­i­tics, his eru­di­tion and expe­ri­ence as a researcher and edu­ca­tor make his views on the sub­ject well worth con­sid­er­ing.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Marilyn Monroe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Playground (1955)

in Film, Photography | November 8th, 2012

Dur­ing the 1950s, the pio­neer­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ist Eve Arnold took a series of por­traits of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. The now icon­ic pho­tos gen­er­al­ly present Mon­roe as a larg­er-than-life celebri­ty and sex sym­bol. Except for one. In 1955, Arnold pho­tographed Mon­roe read­ing a worn copy of James Joyce’s mod­ernist clas­sic, Ulysses. It’s still debat­ed whether this was sim­ply an attempt to recast her image (she often played the “dumb blonde” char­ac­ter in her ’50s films), or whether she actu­al­ly had a pen­sive side. (Her per­son­al library, cat­a­logued at the time of her death, sug­gests the lat­ter.) But, either way, Arnold explained years lat­er how this mem­o­rable pho­to came about:

We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was vis­it­ing Nor­man Ros­ten the poet.… I asked her what she was read­ing when I went to pick her up (I was try­ing to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been read­ing it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to her­self to try to make sense of it — but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it con­sec­u­tive­ly. When we stopped at a local play­ground to pho­to­graph she got out the book and start­ed to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I pho­tographed her. It was always a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of pho­tog­ra­ph­er and sub­ject where she was con­cerned — but almost more her input.

You can find more images of Mar­i­lyn read­ing Joyce over at The Retro­naut. Of course, you can down­load your own copy of Ulysses from our Free Ebooks col­lec­tion. But we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing time with this fine­ly-read audio ver­sion, which oth­er­wise appears in our list of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Jean Cocteau’s Avante-Garde Film From 1930, The Blood of a Poet

in Film | November 8th, 2012

In a 1946 essay Jean Cocteau cau­tions against mak­ing a quick inter­pre­ta­tion of his first film, The Blood of a Poet, with a quote from Mon­taigne:

Most of Aesop’s fables have many dif­fer­ent lev­els and mean­ings. There are those who make myths of them by choos­ing some fea­ture that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first and most super­fi­cial aspect. There are oth­ers that are more vital, more essen­tial and pro­found, that they have not been able to reach.

Cocteau con­ceived The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète) in late 1929, soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of his nov­el Les Enfants Ter­ri­bles. He had just kicked his opi­um habit and was enter­ing one of the most pro­lif­ic peri­ods of his career. The film is often called a sur­re­al­ist work, but Cocteau reject­ed the asso­ci­a­tion, say­ing that he had set out “to avoid the delib­er­ate man­i­fes­ta­tions of the uncon­scious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wan­dered as though in a labyrinth.” He goes on:

The Blood of a Poet draws noth­ing from either dreams or sym­bols. As far as the for­mer are con­cerned, it ini­ti­ates their mech­a­nism, and by let­ting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets mem­o­ries entwine, move and express them­selves freely. As for the lat­ter, it rejects them, and sub­sti­tutes acts, or alle­gories of these acts, that the spec­ta­tor can make sym­bols of if he wish­es.

Many of its first spec­ta­tors saw anti-Chris­t­ian sym­bol­ism in the film. Although pro­duc­tion end­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1930, Cocteau was not able to get his film shown pub­licly until Jan­u­ary of 1932. The Blood of a Poet fea­tures the only film appear­ance by Lee Miller, a not­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er and mod­el of Man Ray. (She plays a stat­ue.) The film is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic of exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma and is the first in what came to be known as Cocteau’s “Orphic Tril­o­gy,” which includes Orphée (1950) and Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus (1959). The Blood of a Poet will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

Anémic Ciné­ma: Mar­cel Ducham­p’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

Bal­let Méchanique: The His­toric Cin­e­mat­ic Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Fer­nand Legér and George Antheil

The History of Western Architecture: A Free Online Course Moving from Ancient Greece to Rococo

in Architecture, Online Courses | November 8th, 2012

Image by Arild Vågen, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you have plans to vis­it the Old World any time soon, you should spend a few good min­utes — make that hours — with The His­to­ry of Archi­tec­ture, a free course that recent­ly debuted on YouTube. Taught by Jacque­line Gar­gus at Ohio State, the course fea­tures 39 video lec­tures that col­lec­tive­ly offer a clas­sic sur­vey of West­ern archi­tec­ture. We begin in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, lay­ing the con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tions for what’s to come. Then we dive head­long into Islam­ic, Byzan­tine and Medieval archi­tec­ture, before spend­ing a good deal of time with Renais­sance, Baroque, and Roco­co styles. Of course, we encounter many great land­marks along the way: the pyra­mids of Egypt, the tem­ples of Ancient Greece, the Hagia Sophia in Con­stan­tino­ple, Chartres in France, Brunelleschi’s Duo­mo of Flo­rence, and the list goes on. The course appears on YouTube. Find the lec­tures below.

The His­to­ry of Archi­tec­ture has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. And if/when Prof. Gar­gus posts a sequel that gets us into mod­ern times, we’ll be sure to let you know.

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:

Enroll in Harvard’s Free Online Archi­tec­ture Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry & The­o­ry of Archi­tec­ture

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale

Take an Online Course on Design & Archi­tec­ture with Frank Gehry

Carnegie Mellon Takes Online Courses to Another Level with Its Open Learning Initiative

in Education, Online Courses | November 7th, 2012

Open online cours­es—mas­sive or otherwise—are rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing high­er edu­ca­tion by mak­ing learn­ing more and more acces­si­ble.

Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty has tak­en online cours­es to anoth­er lev­el, offer­ing vir­tu­al class­room envi­ron­ments based on deep research into how adults learn.

The cours­es are free. Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive cur­rent­ly offers 15 cours­es through a plat­form that pro­vides tar­get­ed progress feed­back to stu­dents.

The pro­gram doesn’t offer course cred­it or cer­tifi­cates but the cours­es are sophis­ti­cat­ed. CMU spent any­where from $500,000 to $1 mil­lion for each course to write the soft­ware, which includes a course builder pro­gram for instruc­tors and a sys­tem of feed­back loops that send stu­dent learn­ing data to the instruc­tor, the stu­dent and the course design team.

More than 10,000 stu­dents enrolled in OLI cours­es last year. So far CMU pro­motes OLI cours­es as sup­ple­men­tary to tra­di­tion­al class­room instruc­tion. But the cours­es are cer­tain­ly rich enough to be enjoyed by any­one. They’re most­ly in the sci­ences but include a few lan­guage and social sci­ence class­es too.

The list of cur­rent­ly-avail­able cours­es appears below. We also have them list­ed in our com­plete list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (many of which hap­pen to offer cer­tifi­cates too):

• Amer­i­can Eng­lish Speech
• Anato­my and Phys­i­ol­o­gy
• Argu­ment Dia­gram­ming
• Bio­chem­istry
• Ele­men­tary French 1
• Ele­men­tary French 2
• Engi­neer­ing Sta­t­ics
• Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy
• Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry
• Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy
• Log­ic and Proofs
• Media Pro­gram­ming
• Mod­ern Biol­o­gy
• Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Sta­tis­tics
• Sta­tis­ti­cal Rea­son­ing

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work on thenifty.blogspot.com and .

The Drinking Party, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Symposium to Modern Times

in Film, Philosophy | November 7th, 2012

The word “sym­po­sium” tends to con­jure images of a for­mal, aca­d­e­m­ic gath­er­ing, which it most often is these days. It’s kind of a stuffy word, but it shouldn’t be. In Plato’s day, it was sim­ply a drink­ing par­ty, the kind you might have with a group of brainy acquain­tances when the last course is cleared, there’s no short­age of wine, and no one has to work the next day. (This being ancient Greece, these were all-male affairs). Plutarch defined a sym­po­sium as “a pass­ing of time over wine, which, guid­ed by gra­cious behav­ior, ends in friend­ship.” Plato’s Sym­po­sium, the best-known of his dia­logues, is much more in the lat­ter vein—a cel­e­bra­tion among accom­plished friends to mark the tri­umph of the poet Agathon’s first tragedy. The dia­logue con­tains sev­en speech­es on love, includ­ing of course, one from Plato’s pri­ma­ry mouth­piece Socrates. But the main draw is com­ic play­wright Aristo­phanes; no under­grad­u­ate who takes a phi­los­o­phy course for­gets his roman­tic ori­gin myth, in which love actu­al­ly is a yearn­ing for one’s miss­ing oth­er half.

When writer and direc­tor Jonathan Miller decid­ed to adapt Plato’s clas­sic text into a film in 1965, he evi­dent­ly decid­ed to com­bine both the mod­ern, aca­d­e­m­ic def­i­n­i­tion of “sym­po­sium” and its clas­si­cal prece­dent. His film is called The Drink­ing Par­ty, and involves its share of that in mod­er­a­tion (as in the orig­i­nal), but it also trans­pos­es Plato’s casu­al gath­er­ing to a group of stu­dents in for­mal attire din­ing on a neo-Clas­si­cal ter­race with an Oxford don, their clas­sics mas­ter. Each char­ac­ter adopts the role of one of Plato’s Sym­po­sium speak­ers. A few things to note here: the excerpt above is of rel­a­tive­ly high qual­i­ty, but the com­plete film itself (below) did not fare near­ly as well: trans­ferred from a well-worn 16mm print from a uni­ver­si­ty archive, the film is mud­dy, scratched and quite dim. This is too bad. Miller’s film, which was shown to col­lege phi­los­o­phy stu­dents in the 60s and 70s, sunk into cul­tur­al obliv­ion for a cou­ple decades, and copies of it are very rare. Nonethe­less, this is well worth watch­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for stu­dents of phi­los­o­phy. The Drink­ing Par­ty was pro­duced as part of a mid-60s arts doc­u­men­tary series called “Sun­day Night,” which ran from 1965–1968.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find The Sym­po­sium and oth­er great works in our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Nicolas Cage, Paul Newman & Dennis Hopper Bring Their American Style to Japanese Commercials

in Television | November 7th, 2012

West­ern­ers who grew inter­est­ed in Japan dur­ing the past 30 years will remem­ber one point of ear­ly con­tact with the cul­ture: Japan­ese com­mer­cials. Tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments from the Land of the Ris­ing Sun have long offered the rest of the world a source of uncom­pre­hend­ing aston­ish­ment and mys­ti­fied laugh­ter. What a weird place Japan is, many must think to them­selves as they gaze upon spots involv­ing danc­ing dogs and salty snacks or brush fire and high blood-pres­sure tea. But as for­eign observers tend to dis­cov­er — and as I have had recon­firmed while vis­it­ing the coun­try for the past week — Japan may have many qual­i­ties, but pure weird­ness isn’t among them. Arti­facts that strike the rest of us as weird emerge accord­ing to log­ic, albeit a log­ic of their own. This goes dou­ble for the most prized Japan­ese com­mer­cials of the bunch: those star­ring Amer­i­can celebri­ties.

Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve fea­tured Woody Allen for Seibu and James Brown for Nissin. Please enjoy, at the very top of this post, the eccen­tric Nico­las Cage play­ing his Amer­i­can-ness to the very hilt. When pachinko machine man­u­fac­tur­er Sankyo recruit­ed Cage, they went all-out, get­ting him square-danc­ing in the mid­dle of a lone­ly south­west­ern high­way with a pack of met­al ball-head­ed aliens. Right above, we have Paul New­man flash­ing a smile and point­ing his fin­ger not once, but two times, in a 1980 com­mer­cial for Maxwell House. And speak­ing of eccen­tric­i­ty, below you’ll find per­haps the most oblique exam­ple of the Amer­i­can actor-star­ring Japan­ese com­mer­cial I’ve ever come across: Den­nis Hop­per for Tsumu­ra. Sofia Cop­po­la sat­i­rized all of this, of course, in Lost in Trans­la­tion, but the exchange of Japan­ese cor­po­rate mon­ey for a dose of dev­il-may-care Amer­i­can panache could hard­ly make bet­ter busi­ness sense.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Classic Charles Mingus Performance on Belgian Television, 1964

in Music | November 6th, 2012

In ear­ly 1964 Charles Min­gus put togeth­er one of the great com­bos in jazz his­to­ry. The sex­tet was com­posed of Min­gus on bass, Dan­nie Rich­mond on drums, Jaki Byard on piano, John­ny Coles on trum­pet, Clif­ford Jor­dan on tenor sax­o­phone and the extra­or­di­nary mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Eric Dol­phy on alto sax­o­phone, flute and bass clar­inet. Min­gus called his exper­i­men­tal group The Jazz Work­shop.

In April of that year Min­gus and his band embarked on a three-week tour of Europe, much of which is record­ed on film and audio­tape. The tour is remem­bered as one of the high-water marks in Min­gus’s career. As Rob Bow­man writes in the lin­er notes to the Jazz Icons DVD Charles Min­gus Live in ’64:

The tour effec­tive­ly intro­duced two new com­po­si­tions, “Med­i­ta­tions On Inte­gra­tion” and “So Long Eric”, while the band walked a fine line between Min­gus’s usu­al amal­gam of bop, swing and New Orleans jazz and the free-jazz lean­ings of the cat­a­clysmic Dol­phy. The result, of course, was some­thing that could only be called Min­gus Music–a gal­va­niz­ing, high-ener­gy son­ic stew that, while the prod­uct of the kinet­ic inter­play of six musi­cians, could only have been con­jured up with Min­gus as the mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

The per­for­mance above is from Charles Min­gus Live in ’64. It was record­ed by Bel­gian tele­vi­sion on Sun­day, April 19, 1964 at the Palais des Con­grés in Liège, Bel­gium. The band had unex­pect­ed­ly been reduced to a quin­tet two nights ear­li­er, when Coles col­lapsed onstage in Paris and was rushed to the hos­pi­tal with what was lat­er diag­nosed as an ulcer. In the Bel­gian TV broad­cast, pianist Byard makes up for the miss­ing trum­pet parts as the band plays three Min­gus com­po­si­tions:

1. So Long Eric
2. Peg­gy’s Blue Sky­light
3. Med­i­ta­tions on Inte­gra­tion

“So Long Eric” was named in hon­or of Dol­phy, who had announced before the band left Amer­i­ca that he would remain in Europe when the tour was over. Sad­ly, Dol­phy fell into a dia­bet­ic coma in Ger­many and died just two months after fin­ish­ing the tour. Min­gus would lat­er call the song “Pray­ing With Eric.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

How to Pot­ty Train Your Cat: A Handy Man­u­al by Charles Min­gus

Nirvana’s Home Videos: Watch Nirvana Rehearse in Krist Novoselic’s Mother’s House (1988)

in Music | November 6th, 2012

When Nir­vana hit it big I was in high school, a punk-rock purist with lit­tle time for their MTV revi­sion­ism or the fact that they inspired teen rebel­lion from peo­ple who’d nev­er heard “Teenage Kicks.” But even though I was trapped in a late-70s time warp, I found myself at home alone when no one else was lis­ten­ing slip­ping in a tape (that’s right, cas­sette) of Nev­er­mind and nod­ding my head. Cause, I had to admit, they were pret­ty damn good. When I got my hands on their debut, Bleach, I dug it even more, espe­cial­ly “About a Girl.” It’s still the tune that comes to mind unbid­den when I drift back to mem­o­ries of the band. And despite the cultish hype sur­round­ing Kurt Cobain’s sad end and his band­mate Dave Grohl’s rise to pop star­dom, I appre­ci­ate them for what they once were—a real­ly excel­lent garage band—talented, unpre­ten­tious, melod­ic, devoid of flash and ego and able to deliv­er the rock in one of the most impres­sive of con­fig­u­ra­tions: the pow­er trio.

Few places are Nirvana’s garage chops more in evi­dence than in home video of their ear­ly days, shot in grimy prac­tice rooms, stages, and the streets of Seat­tle. In the video above from 1988 (record­ed at Krist Novoselic’s moth­er’s house, Aberdeen 1988), the band bangs out a ver­sion of “About a Girl” with mut­ed feroc­i­ty. Strobe lights strobe, some dudes lounge around the door­way, and Cobain shouts the lyrics with his face pressed to the wall. It’s a per­fect lit­tle doc­u­ment of the band, look­ing more or less like they always did, but with­out light­ing banks, TV cam­eras, and scream­ing fans dis­tract­ing from their lo-fi fuzz-rock appeal; all that machin­ery that seemed so ridicu­lous sur­round­ing these guys. But we know that sto­ry.

The setlist of songs per­formed appears below:

0.07 Love Buzz

2:21​ Scoff

3:18​ About A Girl

6:17​ Big Long Now

10:38​ Immi­grant Song

13:17​ Spank Thru

16:19​ Hair­spray Queen

20:07​ School

22:58​ Mr. Mous­tache

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Take First-Class Philosophy Courses Anywhere with Free Oxford Podcasts

in Philosophy | November 6th, 2012

Image by llee wu, via Flickr Com­mons

When some­one devel­ops an inter­est in phi­los­o­phy, good luck try­ing to keep them away from it. They’ll find the stuff any­where. These days, the inter­net makes pos­si­ble such wide and instan­ta­neous dis­sem­i­na­tion of philo­soph­i­cal mate­ri­als that you lit­er­al­ly can find it any­where. (Take for exam­ple our list of 140 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.) With devel­op­ments in inter­net media, even the biggest insti­tu­tion­al play­ers in phi­los­o­phy have joined in. The appear­ance of con­ve­nient­ly pod­cast lec­ture cours­es from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford must count as an on-the-go phi­los­o­phy fan’s dream real­ized. Writ­ing this very post while trav­el­ing through west­ern Japan, I plan to sound­track my jour­ney with the John Locke Lec­tures, which rank “among the world’s most dis­tin­guished lec­ture series in phi­los­o­phy.” (Then again, I do have a strong sense of incon­gruity.) The archive includes David Coop­er’s “Ancient Greek Philoso­phies as a Way of Life,” David Chalmers’ “Con­struct­ing the World,” and Thomas Scan­lon’s “Being Real­is­tic About Rea­sons.”

But maybe you’d pre­fer to start from the begin­ning. Oxford offers phi­los­o­phy pod­casts on all lev­els, allow­ing you to gain a foot­ing on the sub­ject and climb upward. First lis­ten to Mar­i­anne Tal­bot’s “Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners,” which “will test you on some famous thought exper­i­ments and intro­duce you to some cen­tral philo­soph­i­cal issues and to the thoughts of some key philoso­phers.” Then try the same lec­tur­er’s “Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners,” fol­lowed by Peter Mil­li­can’s “Gen­er­al Phi­los­o­phy,” an eight-week course geared toward first-year phi­los­o­phy stu­dents. At that point, you’re not far from the likes of “Niet­zsche on Mind and Nature,” “Kan­t’s Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son,” and “Aes­thet­ics and the Phi­los­o­phy of Art,” all of which you can absorb through head­phones no mat­ter where you’re going or what you’re doing. Whether or not you con­sid­er phi­los­o­phy to be the most inter­est­ing branch of cul­ture, it’s cer­tain­ly the most open.

All cours­es men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

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

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

140 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.