Above, you can watch 81 video lectures tracing the history of philosophy, moving from Ancient Greece to modern times. Arthur Holmes presented this influential course at Wheaton College for decades, and now it’s online for you. The lectures are all streamable above, or available through this YouTube playlist.
Philosophers covered in the course include: Plato, Aquinas, Hobbes Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre and more.
A History of Philosophy has been added to our list of Free Online Philosophy courses, a subset of our meta collection, 1200 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.
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porkel on April 26th, 2017 at 08:53 UTC »
Arthur Holmes is great. I don't know why he gets such heat from you guys. In his defense, I've watched this whole series while attending courses on the same topics in my university, and he's been a real aid to me.
His rhetoric is excellent, his ability to write give structure to the material on the board is unequal, and his pace might be slow for some but once you get to know him there's actually a very specific rhythm to it which helps tremendously. As for those who say that his lectures are superficial, well, he covers the content as much as he can in the time allotted to him. Seriously guys, match your expectations to what is offered. If you're looking for a detailed analysis of say, Hume's Fork, of course you'll only get about 15 minutes of it because that's to be expected if his claim is to cover everything From Ancient Greece to Modern Times. With that in mind, however, there are certain topics to which he would dedicate more time than usual. That is also to be expected. For instance, there are 6 lectures dedicated to Kant, whose obviously had a tremendous impact on (post-)modern philosophy. That's six hours in which he accomplishes A LOT: his project, definitions, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and criticism.
Now, besides Arthur's ability to teach and the content that is taught, there's also a great good in having one lecturer take you on this journey. Because you get intimate with him. I've already mentioned that "rhythm", and by that I mean that due to earlier acquaintance you actually realize when he's going to pause between sentences and what that pause is about. Arthur has a thing with his eyebrows and the phrase "you see...?" which is also telling. Most importantly, you understand his language, since he's been working very hard to base sound definitions and distinctions along the way, which he uses again when appropriate. But even better, he understands your own language - that is, if you've been following him from the beginning, he goes out of his way to never introduce foreign concepts without basing them first. So when explaining something new, he will base it on a distinction or definition that you already hold from previous lectures.
Ahhh... what a great fella. I would've loved to have him as my professor. Shame he's dead.
thecity2 on April 26th, 2017 at 05:53 UTC »
I'm listening to the Audible version of The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, which is around 32 hours at 1x.
Qwill2 on April 25th, 2017 at 16:28 UTC »
Crossposted from /r/HistoryofIdeas.