Entering the conversation

Part 1 · Learning to ask and read

A disagreement at a garden gate can hold several questions at once: what happened, what a word means and what would be fair. We begin by pulling those questions apart, then ask what reasons support each answer and what they leave unsettled.

The three lessons move from asking questions to testing arguments and then to reading historical evidence; the last follows an old work through the copying, translation and interpretation by which it reaches us. The next module puts these habits straight to work on an Egyptian teaching and a Mesopotamian epic, and we will return to them throughout the course.

Time, place and approach. This opening module is about method: how to ask questions and read carefully. Plato appears briefly as one example of inquiry, without any suggestion that philosophy began with him or takes the same form everywhere.

After these lessons

• Tell factual, conceptual and normative questions apart within a single disagreement.
• Explain what a reason supports and what it leaves open.
• Separate a work’s setting, composition and surviving copy.

Useful preparation

No previous study of philosophy is needed; just bring an everyday disagreement you’re willing to examine patiently. The optional articles below give extra help with arguments and sources.