Philosophy
How to argue well about the questions that don't go away: what we can know, what exists, what minds are, and how to live, asked on every continent.
For: anyone who has lain awake over a big question, anyone thinking of studying philosophy or law, and anyone who wants to think more clearly about anything.
Shaped by the UK QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Philosophy, the core of programmes such as Oxford's and Harvard's, and the comparative-philosophy tradition of the University of Hawaiʻi; told worldwide, with Confucius, Nāgārjuna, Ibn Rushd, Zera Yacob and Sor Juana beside Plato, Kant and Wittgenstein, and every position reconstructed in its own best terms before it is criticised.
Year 1 · Learning to argue
-
01ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Logic & Argument: Why the Conclusion Follows, or Doesn’t
Validity, soundness, fallacies and the logic every other subject uses.
-
02ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Ethics: Five Ways to Answer “What Should I Do?”
Consequences, duties, virtues and care: the main theories of how to live.
-
03ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min
Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: The Questions Before the Questions
From the Presocratics and Plato to Augustine, Avicenna and Aquinas.
Year 2 · Knowledge and reality
-
04Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Epistemology: What Knowing Is, and When a Belief Is Earned
What knowledge is, scepticism, and how belief should follow evidence.
-
05Deep diveInteractiveQuiz17 min
Metaphysics: What Stays the Same When Everything Changes
Existence, identity, causation, time and free will.
-
06ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min
Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Nietzsche
Descartes, the empiricists, Kant, Hegel, Mill and Nietzsche.
-
07Deep diveInteractiveQuiz17 min
Chinese & Indian Philosophy: Old Argument Cultures, Read as Philosophy
Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism and the Indian schools, in their own terms.
Year 3 · Mind, science and language
-
08Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Philosophy of Mind: Why There Is Something It Is Like
Consciousness, the mind–body problem and machine minds.
-
09Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Philosophy of Science: What Makes Science Science
What makes science science, and how theories change.
-
10ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Philosophy of Language: What Words Mean and What They Do
Meaning, reference and what words do.
-
11Deep diveInteractiveQuiz17 min
Islamic, African & Latin American Philosophy: Arguments With the Ancients and With Power
Falsafa, African and Latin American philosophy.
Year 4 · Philosophy now
-
12Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min
Contemporary Philosophy: Analytic, Continental & Beyond
Analytic, continental and global philosophy since 1900.
-
13ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Political Theory: Justice, Power, Legitimacy and Liberty
Justice, power and legitimacy.
-
14ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Medical Ethics & Law: Whose Body, Whose Decision
Ethics where it is hardest: consent, life and death.
-
15ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Foundations: What Mathematics Stands On
Sets, logic and infinity: where philosophy meets mathematics.
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, free; the free OpenStax Introduction to Philosophy; the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's philosophy and religion pieces (07 and 33).
Environmental Science
How the planet works as one system, how people are changing it, and what the evidence says about the choices ahead.