I strongly believe that anyone can learn philosophy. Why then is it still considered difficult to grasp? I think part of the problem is that we’re missing a clear study plan, with adequate resources that will help someone to self-study philosophy, and hopefully get some appreciation for the subject. The goal of this page is to create one such study plan in the spirit of this great resource. I will try to organize this study plan in a similar fashion, using references to free courses whenever I can. I do not claim to know philosophy perfectly well, so any comment or suggestion is more than welcome. I also need to mention that most philosophy I have read is Western philosophy with a few exceptions. I apologize in advance if my bias shows, any suggestion is more than welcome. For most classes, I will try my best to give a resource that is free for everyone to watch and/or read, but reading a lot is crucial to one’s development in philosophy. As such, most classes will have a reading component, an assignment component and (hopefully) video lectures or lecture notes of some sort.
Here are a few questions I want to answer immediately before learning philosophy proper.
How to follow this study plan: I highly suggest you go through the introductory classes and the core courses in a linear fashion. Sometimes, classes have to be taken at the same time and I will always explicitly say that in the short write-up before the classes in question. Sometimes, I will provide two classes for one specific topic. It is up to you whether you want to do both or not. I suggest mixing and matching. For instance, if one class has video lectures but no assignments and no readings, but the other does, then watch the lectures as you read and go through the assignments. Usually, the first link in a class table is required, but I will sometimes add another (or multiple) other links that would be interesting to watch but are not necessarily required reading. Some courses can overlap.
Am I too old/stupid/something to learn philosophy?: Literally anyone with an interest in philosophy can follow this study plan, from high school students to aerospace engineers and dance teachers. See this section if you think you lack a certain attribute or talent to be able to study philosophy.
Duration: A key thing to keep in mind is that the duration and effort per week estimates are only that, estimates. It is extremely hard to estimate properly how much time it will take you to read a text, analyze it, understand it and digest it well enough to explain the core arguments in an essay. As such, I will use the duration/effort periods when they are given by the instructors themselves, and there will be an asterisk when the duration/effort number is a pure guess.
I disagree with what is considered core: That is totally fair. I think it’s hard to say what is a “core sequence” in philosophy, because it’s very wide in scope and everyone has different interests. If something doesn’t interest you, no one’s judging you. The core sequence simply represents classes that I think are important to an undergraduate education in philosophy.
What about books? Will you include X’s book on Y?: The short answer is no unless it’s already required reading in a class. I’m looking for actual courses, with assignments and specific reading. This also excludes very popular books like Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Plato’s Republic (say). The reason why is that this is usually too difficult for a beginner in philosophy. Jumping straight into Aristotle’s massive Collected Works can be tough because you need to learn a specific, historically contingent vocabulary and a way of thinking that requires time and effort to develop. That is not to say there is no point in reading from the source directly. Actually, I advise you to look into various philosophers you enjoyed reading about and look at their work, either directly or with a secondary source. But I want to make sure the classes have additional information on helping you wade through the books, either in the form of video lectures or lecture notes, or more simply with specified readings with assignments that make sure you’re challenging what you’re reading and you’re taking time to really assimilate the various arguments the author is making.
Before we do any philosophy, I want to talk a bit about learning itself. Most of us that have gone through the usual school system firmly believe that the only way to learn is to have someone impart their knowledge onto us. While having a teacher is certainly useful, this is not the only way one can learn. The further you go into your field of interest, be it computer science or gender studies, the more you’ll have to rely on yourself to learn, understand and digest the material in front of you. Anyone can self-study anything, they just need the right tools and enough time. To this end, I think everyone regardless of major or interest should take the following course. It will help dispel common myths around learning and will truly teach you how to learn. It will also help you with anxiety stopping you from studying and achieving your full potential. Of special interest is the section on procrastination, which is a problem a lot of us face in some way during our studies.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Learning How to Learn | 4 weeks | 4h/week | none |
The purpose of this section is to get you acquainted with philosophy. You should run the first two classes simultaneously as they will complement each other. The first one is an introduction to some essential themes in philosophy, and the second one covers logic, fallacies and what constitutes a good argument. Philosophy is not a spectator’s sport however, and you have to construct arguments yourself at some point. The logic class will help with that. Lastly, the third class is an alternative version of the first one, with less breadth but more depth. Before you start, I highly suggest reading this and this.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Philosophy | 12 weeks | 5-6h | Learning How to Learn |
| Language, Proof and Logic | 15 weeks | 5-10h | Learning How to Learn |
| Relativism, Reason and Reality | 14 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Learning How to Learn |
This section will deal with common topics that a wide range of philosophy undergraduate students will encounter at some point. Sometimes, only an introduction to the topic will be given, but a more advanced class can be taken in the electives section.
This class will introduce you to a few important Western philosophers. You will read about various arguments these philosophers have put forth in multiple fields of philosphy and how they interact. It is imperative that you go through the assignments and exams. The class has a complete set of lecture notes but I would advise you to get the book recommended. The class is based on the second edition of this book so it might be useful to compare the differences with the third which is the commonly available one.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classics in Western Philosophy | 12 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
Ethics concerns our notions of right and wrong. The goal of this section is to think about difficult ethical questions and how to tackle them rigorously. The first course has a homepage at OCW MIT with assignments, additional readings and more. The second course is an interesting exploration into practical questions that concerns us to this day, ranging from poverty to environmental issues such as sustainable development. Various religious views on virtue are explored as well.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Ethics | 10 weeks | 5-7h | Introductory Classes |
| Ethics in Action | 10 weeks | 2-4h/week | Introductory Classes |
Epistemology is the study of knowledge in its various forms. What can we know? What is knowledge? The following class has readings and assignments but no lecture notes sadly.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theory of Knowledge | 14 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility. The first class will tackle various topics such as ontology, time and free will to name a few. It has readings and various assignments but no lecture notes. The second one is an alternative class focusing mainly on the concept of free will, but with lecture notes.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metaphysics | 13 weeks | 4-8h* | Introductory Classes |
| Metaphysics: Free Will | 12 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
The Philosophy of Mind is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the mind and its relationship to the body. Consciousness is another important topic in this field. The class has an associated MIT homepage that you should visit as well.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minds and Machines | 12 weeks | 4-6h/week | Introductory Classes |
Political philosophy is concerned with the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. It discusses topics such as freedom, government, laws and authority. The first class is a general introduction to the concept of justice, while the second one focuses on the philosophy of law in particular.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Justice | 13 weeks | 4-8h* | Introductory Classes |
| Philosophy of Law | 16 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
If you’ve completed core sequence, congratulations, you now know a decent amount of philosophy! This section here discusses undergraduate elective classes. The topics are either follow-ups of previous classes (such as ethics or logic) or completely separate topics. Classes should now be chosen primarily on the basis of interest. There is no linear ordering here, you can pick and choose sections as you see fit as long as the requirements are cleared.
This course will discuss ancient philosophy in more details, focusing mainly on Plato and Aristotle, although Epicurus and Lucretius are also mentioned at the end. The topics tackled are varied this course is a great follow-up to Classics in Western Philosophy for those that appreciated the earlier part of the course.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Philosophy | 13 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Classics in Western Philosophy |
Expanding on the first logic class in Introductory Classes, the first sequence will explore more advanced topics in logic from meta-theory to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. The other course focuses on modal logic. Another good resource on logic that could help you while going through is this book.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logic I | 13 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Language, Proof and Logic |
| Logic II | 13 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Logic I |
| Modal Logic | 14 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Logic I |
The purpose of this class is to investigate the nature of language, the relations between language, language users, and the world. I’ve also put an introduction to linguistics as I think this could be of use to a philosopher interested in the philosophy of language.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Philosophy of Language | 13 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
| Introduction to Linguistics | 14 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Learning How to Learn |
This section is a follow-up to Ethics discussing other topics and going further into the foundations of morality as well as other topics in ethics.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta-ethics | 14 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Ethics |
| Ethics | 13 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Ethics |
| Bio-ethics | 14 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Ethics |
The purpose of this section is to discuss philosophy arising out of movies or in relation to movies themselves. There are no hard prerequisites between the courses here, you can pick and choose what interests you most.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy In Film and Other Media | 12 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
| Philosophy of Film | 13 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
| Film as Visual and Literary Mythmaking | 12 weeks | 4-8h*/week | Introductory Classes |
This section is awfully short, considering how amazing and diverse so-called Eastern Philosophy actually is. More generally, I wish non-western philosophy classes would be more readily available on the internet. Any recommendation here especially would be more than welcome. In the mean time, here are two courses explaining Chinese philosophy, from Confucius to Zhuangzi and Xunzi.
| Course | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Path to Happiness | 13 weeks | 1-2h/week | Introductory Classes |
| Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought | 8 weeks | 2-3h/week | Introductory Classes |
If you’re here and you’ve already taken the core sequence and the electives that interested you, give yourself a pat on the back. Just like with electives, classes are now fully optional and you can decide to stop learning altogether. But if you’re still here after learning this much philosophy, you’re probably really interested in it by now. This section will be slightly different because of the difficulty of finding seminar or topics class online. Instead, I highly suggest you check out the graduate-level classes on the OCW MIT website and pick what interests you. Another thing you can do is go deeper into one particular subject or into one particular philosopher.