12:00 PM to 01:15 PM MW
Online
Section Information for Spring 2021
The aim of this course is to provide a general introduction to philosophy. There are many ways of doing this. One way is to embark on a whistle-stop tour of the history of philosophy, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, to give a sense of how the discipline has changed over its remarkably long history. Another is to pick out a few classic philosophical problems and consider different ways of addressing them. This course does neither. Instead of approaching the subject chronologically or thematically, it does so by examining the nature of philosophical inquiry itself. What is philosophy? How should we do it? And why should we bother to?
By focusing on the practice of philosophy rather than its subject matter, this course introduces students to different styles of philosophical reasoning—Analytic vs. Continental, scientistic vs. humanistic, pure vs. applied—that illustrate the wide range of ways of doing philosophy. It also shows how philosophy can be viewed as a distinct perspective, or set of tools, that can be fruitfully brought to bear on other disciplines.
No prior experience of philosophy is required, so no such experience is presupposed. Nevertheless, this course provides a solid foundation for those interested in pursuing further studies in the subject.
PHIL 100 DL2 is a distance education section
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Credits: 3
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