1 lesson
A counterexample workshop
Test how far a claim reaches by finding a case in which it fails, and practice on general statements, inferences and fair repairs to an argument.
Course connections: Entering the conversation
Open this studyChoose your route
42 lessons
7 studies
More time with a question
Focused studies
Work closely with a text, follow an argument or practice a way of thinking. Each study has a starting point of its own and identifies any useful preparation.
Begin wherever your interests lead. The 42 lessons across 7 studies give you time to follow a question through its own sequence.
Choose a study
Follow the question that interests you.
1 lesson
Knowing oneself in Poimandres
How could knowing oneself transform a life, and what warrants trusting a teacher who promises salvation? Follow the teaching encounter in Poimandres and examine how the work connects knowledge with divine life.
Course connections: Reason, faith and translation · Responsibility in a shared world
Open this study2 lessons
Inference under challenge
What makes a sign a reason to believe something we cannot see? Follow selected Nyāya accounts and Dharmakīrti’s argument to examine the connection a sign needs, our grounds for relying on it and what a countercase can show.
Course connections: Inquiry and liberation in South Asia
Open this study9 lessons
Whitehead: becoming, experience and the world
An experience receives a world it did not make, yet becomes something that was not there before. How can both be true? Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality builds a philosophy around that difficulty, asking us to begin with occasions of becoming and to explain enduring things, perception, judgment and value through their relations.
Course connections: Meaning, experience and social criticism · Knowledge, justice and experience · Responsibility in a shared world
Open this study12 lessons
Heidegger: being, a shared world and its limits
Begin with familiar encounters and follow Heidegger’s questions about being, a finite life, truth, art, dwelling and technology. Examine what the arguments explain, what they leave open and how they fare under political and ethical criticism.
Course connections: Meaning, experience and social criticism
Open this study9 lessons
Husserl and Merleau-Ponty: experience, embodiment and a shared world
Follow Husserl and Merleau-Ponty from the appearance of a familiar thing to time, bodily skill, expression and other people. Test what their descriptions establish, where their methods differ and what still needs evidence or an ethical argument.
Course connections: Meaning, experience and social criticism
Open this study8 lessons
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths
Follow Nāgārjuna’s arguments that nothing has an intrinsic nature of its own, from causes and motion to persons, the two truths and the charge that the argument undermines itself. Ask what the arguments leave standing: can things exist, change and matter without such a nature?
Course connections: Inquiry and liberation in South Asia
Open this studyThree ways to read
The Guided course connects 88 lessons in one continuous sequence. Focused studies give particular questions more room, and Explore gathers readings by topic, thinker, concept or text.
Progress is shown for each route. A reading you complete stays complete wherever you find it.