Hocbigg - Philosophy

Last updated on: 2026-09-13

Introduction

Philosophy is the systematic examination of fundamental questions concerning reality, knowledge, reason, mind, and value. Unlike disciplines that rely on empirical data collection or laboratory experimentation, philosophy operates through conceptual analysis, logical deduction, thought experiments, and disciplined argument evaluation. Studying philosophy trains you to identify unexamined assumptions, detect fallacious reasoning, and articulate complex positions with precision.

This curriculum is designed for self-directed learners starting from scratch, with no prior formal background assumed. It provides a lean, rigorous foundation covering the central historical traditions, logical tools, and systematic subfields that define an undergraduate education in philosophy.

This core does not attempt to cover the entire discipline. Advanced subfields, specialized methodologies, and technical concentrations (such as modal logic, decision theory, philosophy of science, and critical theory) are reserved for Advanced Topics. To engage directly with primary source literature, refer to Readings; to explore structured lecture series, consult Courses; and to apply these methods through independent writing and argument analysis, visit Projects.

Recommended Study Path

The subjects are sequenced intentionally into three progressive phases, moving from basic reasoning mechanics to historical frameworks and systematic questions:

• Orientation and Philosophical Tools: Begin with Introduction to Philosophy and Critical Reasoning and Informal Logic, followed by Formal Logic. Logic functions as the operating system of philosophy. Learning how to translate claims, test validity, and spot informal fallacies provides the analytical equipment you will need to engage with every subsequent subject.
• Historical Foundations: Next, study Ancient Greek Philosophy and Early Modern Philosophy. Philosophical problems rarely make sense in isolation; they are parts of an ongoing historical dialectic. Understanding Plato and Aristotle, followed by early modern debates between rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) culminating in Kant, establishes the vocabulary and conceptual problems that modern philosophers still debate.
• Systematic Core Fields: With logical methods and historical context in place, proceed to the primary areas of systematic inquiry: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics, Political Philosophy, and Philosophy of Mind. While these systematic fields can be studied in any order according to your intellectual focus, tackling Epistemology and Metaphysics first is advantageous, as questions of justification, truth, and ontology frequently inform positions in ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of mind.

Communities

• Forums:
  • The Philosophy Forum
  • Online Philosophy Club
  • Philosophy Now Forum
  • Able2Know Philosophy
• Subreddits:
  • r/philosophy
  • r/askphilosophy
  • r/AcademicPhilosophy
  • r/historyofphilosophy
  • r/Ethics
  • r/EasternPhilosophy
• Discord servers:
  • The Philosophy Chat
  • The Philosophy Cafe
  • Brainiac
  • Colloquiallum
• Other:
  • FediPhilosophy (Mastodon Instance)
  • zirk.us (Arts & Humanities Mastodon)
  • hcommons.social (Humanities Commons Mastodon)
• You can also interact through GitHub issues. If there is a problem with a course, or a change needs to be made to the curriculum, this is the place to start the conversation. Read more here.

Curriculum

Introduction to Philosophy

Surveys foundational questions regarding reality, knowledge, consciousness, personal identity, and the examined life.

The Problems of Philosophy (Bertrand Russell / Project Gutenberg) - A concise, public-domain foundational text focusing on the distinction between appearance and reality, the limits of knowledge, and the intrinsic value of philosophical contemplation.

Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (Simon Blackburn / Oxford University Press) - A modern, highly accessible thematic alternative to Russell, exploring central problems such as free will, mind-body interaction, God, and moral reasoning.

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature (Open Yale Courses / Tamar Szabo Gendler) - A video lecture course pairing canonical philosophical texts from Plato, Aristotle, and Mill with contemporary cognitive science and psychology; ideal as a multimedia companion to either introductory book.

Critical Reasoning and Informal Logic

Covers the identification, diagramming, and evaluation of everyday natural-language arguments, with emphasis on deductive validity, inductive strength, and common informal fallacies.

Critical Reasoning for Beginners (University of Oxford Podcasts / Marianne Talbot) - A foundational six-part audio lecture series that guides beginners through recognizing arguments, parsing premises and conclusions, and avoiding standard fallacies.

Introduction to Philosophy: Logic (Open Textbook Library / Rebus Community) - An open-access introductory reader that reinforces argument analysis, fallacy detection, and the transition toward formal methods; designed to be read alongside Talbot's lectures.

Formal Logic

Introduces formal deductive systems, symbolic propositional logic, truth tables, natural deduction proofs, and basic first-order predicate calculus.

forall x: An Introduction to Formal Logic (P.D. Magnus) - A standard open-access textbook covering truth-functional propositional logic, formal semantics, and natural deduction proofs.

Logic I (MIT OpenCourseWare / Jack Spencer) - A complete university-level introductory formal logic course providing lecture handouts, problem sets, and exams; complements the forall x text with structured exercises.

Ancient Greek Philosophy

Examines the origins of Western philosophy in classical Greece, centering on the Presocratics, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle (S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, & C.D.C. Reeve, eds. / Hackett Publishing) - The canonical undergraduate survey anthology containing primary translations, introductory overviews, and explanatory notes from the Milesians through Aristotle.

The Internet Classics Archive (MIT) - A free public-domain collection providing direct access to Benjamin Jowett's translations of Plato's dialogues (including the Apology, Crito, Meno, and Republic) and Aristotle's major treatises; an open alternative to commercial anthologies.

Ancient Philosophy (MIT OpenCourseWare / Sally Haslanger) - A structured course framework with syllabi, reading schedules, and lecture notes covering early Greek metaphysics, epistemology, and virtue theory.

A History of Philosophy: Lectures 1 to 24 (Wheaton College / Arthur Holmes) - An in-depth recorded classroom lecture series tracing Western thought chronologically from Thales to Hellenistic philosophy; use as a sequential narrative lecture companion to the primary readings.

Early Modern Philosophy

Studies the profound philosophical revolution from Descartes through Kant, focusing on the debates between rationalism and empiricism concerning knowledge, substance, and causation.

Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Roger Ariew & Eric Watkins, eds. / Hackett Publishing) - The standard academic collection containing the primary texts of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.

Early Modern Texts (Jonathan Bennett) - A freely accessible repository featuring modern-spelling, lightly annotated editions of essential early modern works designed to make historical syntax and terminology accessible to self-taught readers.

General Philosophy (University of Oxford Podcasts / Peter Millican) - An eight-week introductory lecture series tracing modern epistemology and metaphysics through Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

A History of Philosophy: Lectures 32 to 54 (Wheaton College / Arthur Holmes) - Builds on Holmes's ancient series, providing exhaustive historical lectures covering the continental rationalists, British empiricists, and the Kantian critical philosophy.

Epistemology

Investigates the nature, sources, and scope of knowledge, justified belief, perception, skepticism, and the analysis of truth.

Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction (Jennifer Nagel / Oxford University Press) - A concise, lucid introduction to the foundational concepts of epistemology, including Gettier problems, skepticism, reliabilism, and contextualism.

Theory of Knowledge (MIT OpenCourseWare / Declan Smithies) - A structured university syllabus with reading lists, paper topics, and lecture handouts examining skepticism, perceptual justification, and responses to Moore and Descartes; best studied after reading Nagel.

Metaphysics

Investigates the fundamental structure of reality, including existence, universals, substance, causation, time, persistence, and modal necessity.

Metaphysics: An Introduction (Alyssa Ney / Routledge) - A comprehensive, rigorous introductory textbook covering contemporary ontology, persistence through time, mind-body physicalism, causation, and possible worlds.

Reality Bites: Introduction to Metaphysics (Coursera / Erasmus University Rotterdam / Tim De Mey) - A structured, free-to-audit video course that introduces core metaphysical puzzles—such as universals, substance, persistence, and composition—using intuitive analogies; ideal to take concurrently with Ney's textbook.

Ethics

Analyzes moral theory and normativity, focusing on metaethics, the three major normative frameworks (utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics), and applied ethical problems.

The Fundamentals of Ethics (Russ Shafer-Landau / Oxford University Press) - The most widely assigned undergraduate ethics textbook, notable for its clear reconstructive arguments evaluating hedonism, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, social contract theory, and moral realism.

Justice with Michael Sandel (Harvard University) - A full-semester Harvard video course introducing moral and political philosophy by confronting students with classic dilemmas and theoretical critiques from Aristotle, Kant, and Mill; serves as an engaging audio-visual counterpart to Shafer-Landau.

Political Philosophy

Examines the legitimacy of the state, political authority, liberty, justice, property distribution, and the rights and duties of citizens.

An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Jonathan Wolff / Oxford University Press) - A foundational, problem-oriented introduction organized around central questions: the state of nature, the justification of political power, the distribution of property, and the demands of democracy.

Introduction to Political Philosophy (Open Yale Courses / Steven B. Smith) - A complete university lecture series walking through seminal political treatises from Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Tocqueville; intended to be used alongside Wolff's topical text.

Philosophy of Mind

Studies the relationship between the mental and the physical, the nature of consciousness, intentionality, functionalism, and artificial intelligence.

Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (David J. Chalmers, ed. / Oxford University Press) - The definitive anthology in the field, gathering essential primary texts on dualism, behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism, qualia, and the explanatory gap.

Minds and Machines (MIT OpenCourseWare / Alex Byrne) - A structured course with detailed lecture notes, study materials, and syllabi exploring the Chinese Room argument, functionalism, and physicalist theories of consciousness; works as a syllabus guide through the Chalmers reader.

Philosophy of Mind Lectures (UC Berkeley / John Searle) - An audio lecture course covering intentionality, dualism, behaviorism, and consciousness directly from one of the discipline's most influential contributors; provides an alternative, conversational lecture format to Byrne's course notes.