Philosophy for Beginners
By Oxford University
To listen to an audio podcast, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to download and subscribe to podcasts.
Description
Philosophy has been studied for thousands of years. It involves the use of reason and argument to search for the truth about reality - about the nature of things, ethics, aesthetics, language, the mind, God and everything else. This series of five introductory lectures, aimed at students new to philosophy, presented by Marianne Talbot, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, will test you on some famous thought experiments and introduce you to some central philosophical issues and to the thoughts of some key philosophers.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
CleanA romp through the history of philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the present day. | A romp through the history of philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the present day. | 13 11 2008 | Free | View in iTunes |
|
2 |
CleanThe philosophical method - logic and argument | Logic and Argument: the joys of symbolic and philosophical logic. | 9 1 2009 | Free | View in iTunes |
|
3 |
CleanEthics and politics | Moral and Political Philosophy: how should we live? What constitutes a just state? | 9 1 2009 | Free | View in iTunes |
|
4 |
CleanMetaphysics and Epistemology | Metaphysics and Epistemology: what exists, what is its nature and how can we acquire knowledge of it? | 9 1 2009 | Free | View in iTunes |
|
5 |
CleanPhilosophy of language and mind | Language and Mind: What is rationality? What is consciousness? How do we manage to express our thoughts and experiences in language? | 9 1 2009 | Free | View in iTunes |
| 6 | CleanReading List (Slides) | Reading list for the Philosophy for Beginners series of podcasts. | 16 4 2012 | Free | View in iTunes |
| 7 | CleanFurther reading and more... (Slides) | So you've finished this series of podcasts. Find out where to go from here... | 16 4 2012 | Free | View in iTunes |
| 7 Items |
Customer Reviews
A wonderful peek into the world of philosophy
Marianne Talbot's lectures are engaging, accessible and entertaining, striking the right balance between challenging the listener to make cognitive leaps and leaving them lost without hope of grasping the key concepts. She is clearly a very gifted teacher, not only because of her obvious enthusiasm for philosophy, but also because she is very mindful of her students' perspective, allowing her to guide them through the thought experiments step by step, making sure they truly grasp the topic at hand.
She clearly defines specialist vocabulary and concepts allowing the listener to follow without difficulty. Even without the aid of the diagrams she draws for her audience, very little is lost through the audio format as she explicates and reiterates her arguments so well.
These lectures have been a wonderful introduction to philosophy and have genuinely inspired me to learn far more about this fascinating subject. I hope that more become available soon, I will be sure to listen to them if they do!
Difficult to follow
The poor sound quality and inaudible responses from the audience makes this a difficult listen which is a shame.
Not so impressive
I must say that I am not a beginner in Philosophy studies, so I might have put my expectations higher than it was supposed to. Locke had a wonderful theory explained but that has been trivialised in property when the distinction with intangible property and apples counting as the example given by her could have helped better in understanding the theory. Aristotle and the examples for moral
standards are very personalised for beginners to grasp the model, no wonder the questions poured in; it would have been better to have an example of a let's say a survivor on the sea with one life saviour and others to be saved in worse position, that would have been more useful than the hairdo of mum or little sister.
Listeners also subscribed to
- Free
- Category: Higher Education
- Language: English
- © Oxford University; the media items are released with a Creative Commons licence