--- title: Philosophy description: This topic introduces the fundamental questions of human existence, knowledge, ethics, and reality. You will study the historical development of critical thinking and learn to analyze complex arguments systematically. category: social-sciences subcategory: philosophy difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/humanities-philosophy --- # Philosophy This topic introduces the fundamental questions of human existence, knowledge, ethics, and reality. You will study the historical development of critical thinking and learn to analyze complex arguments systematically. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 1 Courses • 6 Websites ## Websites ### 1. Philosophy Now Issue archive of the UK magazine Philosophy Now, founded in 1991, with short accessible articles by academics and writers on ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and political thought, useful for sampling current debates before reading primary texts. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://philosophynow.org/issues **Tags:** philosophy, ethics, philosophy-of-mind, metaphysics, philosophy-magazine ### 2. 1000-Word Philosophy An anthology of introductory philosophy essays, each about a thousand words, written by academic philosophers and peer-reviewed before publication. Each entry defines a problem, sets out the main arguments, and points to further reading on ethics, metaphysics, logic and more. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://1000wordphilosophy.com/ **Tags:** philosophy, introductory essays, ethics, metaphysics, open access ### 3. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Peer-reviewed reference work written by academic specialists, with entries on thinkers, movements and problems across metaphysics, ethics, logic and the history of the discipline. Articles are pitched more accessibly than Stanford's and are freely available. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://iep.utm.edu/intro/ **Tags:** philosophy, encyclopedia, reference, ethics, metaphysics ### 4. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Epistemology Stanford's scholarly entry on the theory of knowledge, tracing what knowledge is, how belief is justified, and where the main disputes lie. Denser than an introductory text, with an extensive bibliography for following any thread further. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ **Tags:** epistemology, philosophy, theory-of-knowledge, justification, reference ### 5. philpapers.org PhilPapers is a comprehensive online index and bibliography of philosophy literature, aggregating scholarly articles, books, theses, and reviews from journals and publishers. It provides powerful search and browse tools by topic, author, and subfield, with links to full texts when available. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://philpapers.org **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, philosophy ### 6. plato.stanford.edu The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a peer‑reviewed online encyclopedia of philosophy featuring in‑depth, scholarly articles written and regularly updated by experts, including comprehensive coverage of logic topics. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu **Tags:** websites, mathematics-statistics, discrete-math ## Youtubes ### 1. 8-Bit Philosophy Wisecrack's animated video series that explains major philosophers and ideas, including Plato's cave, Descartes' doubt, Nietzsche, existentialism and the absurd, using retro video-game scenarios. Gives newcomers a short, memorable first grasp of core arguments before reading the primary texts. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://youtube.com/@8-bitphilosophy **Tags:** philosophy, history-of-philosophy, existentialism, video-essays ## Podcasts ### 1. Philosophy Bites **Author:** David Edmonds, Nigel Warburton Interview podcast in which leading academic philosophers each explain one topic in about fifteen minutes, spanning ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, aesthetics and historical figures. Listeners get clear, expert entry points to specific debates and the arguments behind them. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.philosophybites.com **Tags:** philosophy, analytic-philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, interviews ### 2. The Partially Examined Life **Author:** Mark Linsenmayer, Wes Alwan, Seth Paskin, Dylan Casey Discussion podcast in which former philosophy graduate students read one primary text per episode, from Plato and Hume to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, and work through its arguments in detail. Listeners gain guided, close readings of canonical works without prior training. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** en-us | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://partiallyexaminedlife.com **Tags:** philosophy, primary-texts, history-of-philosophy, close-reading ### 3. Hi-Phi Nation **Author:** Barry Lam Narrative podcast by UC Riverside philosopher Barry Lam that pairs reported stories from law, science and everyday life with interviews with academic philosophers. Episodes examine questions of justice, knowledge, personal identity and morality, showing how philosophical arguments apply to real cases. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://slate.com/podcasts/hi-phi-nation **Tags:** philosophy, ethics, epistemology, applied-philosophy, narrative-journalism ### 4. Philosophize This! **Author:** Stephen West Episodic podcast surveying the history of philosophy in roughly chronological order, from the Presocratics through medieval, modern and twentieth-century thinkers. Listeners without formal training come away understanding major arguments and how later ideas respond to earlier ones. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.philosophizethis.org **Tags:** history-of-philosophy, western-philosophy, philosophers, introductory ## Books ### 1. Sophie's World **Author:** Jostein Gaarder A teenage girl receives mysterious letters that walk her through the Western philosophical tradition from the pre-Socratics to Sartre. Readers finish with a narrative map of the major thinkers, their central questions, and how each era answered the previous one. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1857992911?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, philosophy ### 2. The Story of Philosophy **Author:** Will Durant A 1926 narrative history built around individual philosophers, from Plato and Bacon through Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche and Bergson, told through their lives and circumstances. Readers gain a readable, opinionated overview of Western thought, though coverage stops before twentieth-century analytic philosophy. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/067120159X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, philosophy ### 3. Think **Author:** Simon Blackburn Blackburn works through knowledge, free will, personal identity, God, and reasoning by reconstructing the actual arguments rather than summarising positions. Readers finish able to follow analytic philosophy's method: stating a claim precisely, then pressing it for counterexamples. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192854259?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, philosophy ## Courses ### 1. History of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh's fourteen-module survey, taught by nine researchers, covering epistemology, philosophy of science, mind, morality, political obligation, and free will. Students come away able to state each field's core problem and follow the standard arguments on both sides. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/philosophy **Tags:** courses, humanities-social-sciences, humanities --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/humanities-philosophy