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Service 1
History of Philosophy - the Online
Course
Key Benefits
 | Clear presentation of material. No extra book to buy. All textual
material included, along with an eBook of the Philosophy Poem Handbook. |
| Encouragement of students to think through an issue and
develop their own view on it. |
| Help with expression and writings skills, which students find
useful in general, or if they are taking, or planning to take, college
courses. |
| The
present cost of the whole class is currently just $95. It is taught by an
instructor with a Ph.D in philosophy, nine years of bricks and mortar
classroom teaching experience and five years of online teaching experience.
This course is comparable in scope and scholarship to a three credit
philosophy course at a college, costing many
times as much. |
| If you are currently taking a Philosophy course at a college, and need
some help, then, you have found the right place, and we'll help you get up to
speed, and succeed in your course. |
| You've
come to the right place to
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Course
Description |
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Why
spend hundreds of dollars on a college Philosophy course, when you
could take a college level course for a fraction of that cost? This
course is taught by a former college instructor, with nine years
classroom teaching experience in the field, and five in online
teaching, and who has advanced degrees in
Philosophy (MA and Ph.D from University at Buffalo- part of State
University system of NYS).
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This
course is also ideal for college students, or prospective college
students. The material we cover is designed to deepen your
understanding of Philosophy, and to improve your writing skills, as
well. Through the required class assignments and optional term
paper, the instructor works with each student on a one-to-one basis,
to help each member of the class, who wishes, to improve their
writing skills.
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This
course presupposes no knowledge of Philosophy, only a student’s
willingness to explore ideas. Each lesson is written to make the
concepts as clear as possible. To help make the learning experience
enjoyable to all, the basic material is supplemented by a series of
easy-to-understand poems, written by the instructor. This is
an inexpensive and professional way to increase your understanding
and knowledge of Philosophy, and enhance your written communication
skills.
 | PLEASE
NOTE: This course has been tested in the classroom, and was
taught for 5 years at universalclass.com. It is now now offered
only here, by the same course developer and instructor. To give
you a sense of the scope of the course, their
quick stats show, during that time: |
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| 9
Lessons (now offered exclusively here)|9 Assignments | 9 Exams | 11 NetLinks | |
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Course
Requirements
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| All of the required course content is included in the
Lessons. The content was written to be as clear as possible, so that
it could be read and understand by a person with basic reading skills.
The focus here is on ideas, and not on one's reading level. 'Jargon'
is kept to an absolute minimum, and philosophical terms are clearly
defined. |
| We will use our class discussions to go over terms and concepts.
Thus, each student will have many opportunities to clarify their
thoughts, to ask questions of the instructor and their classmates, and
to express their own thoughts. |
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Course
Goals |
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By the end of the course, each student will have acquired a basic
understanding of the History of Philosophy, from the time of the
classical Greeks through the present. We will seek to integrate the
so-called "Great Questions" with each student's own personal philosophy
quest. Thus, we will provide each student with an opportunity to write
an Optional paper on how the course helped them to better understand a
philosophical issue, that is of concern to them. |
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Course
Materials |
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All of the course material will be presented in the Lessons.
Suggested online sources are included in the course. |
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Instructor's Note |
| The
Instructor endeavors to clearly distinguish between his own thoughts,
the ideas of the philosophers, and the thoughts of the students in the
class. |
InCourse
Materials
structor's
Note:
Course Requirements |
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Suggested
Reading List |
| Here is a
listing of supplemental reading of individual books available on Amazon.com |
Excerpts From the Lessons (total of 9)
(this is from Lesson 1, on philosophy of religion)
Religion is an issue of interest to many students. Therefore, I included a
section in this lesson on the traditional proofs for God's existence. This
excerpt is about one of these proofs.
| The teleological argument states that there is a purpose or end
in nature ( telos ) which is ascribed to God -- this need not be a
personal God but a God who simply sets the wheels of the cosmos in motion and
then "leaves" the world (deism). Many of the American "Founding Fathers" as
Benjamin Franklin were deists. Scientists, who study the simplicity, or
complexity or patterns in nature sometimes will sometimes infer God s
existence from the above; in so doing, they are expressing the teleological
argument. It is however, a belief, not a fact, i.e. one could not examine
"purpose" under a microscope in the way one might examine the structure of an
organism. |
from the lesson on
Plato:
| Let us say that something is beautiful.
For Plato, beauty does not exist as a concept in the mind to which we compare
beautiful objects. Rather, beauty exists because it imitates an imperishable
Form of Beauty. By this, Plato means the Idea, or archetype or model of
Beauty, which exists apart from this world in a supersensible realm.
Similarly, a physical chair exists insofar as it imitates, or participates in
the Form of chairness. This world, for Plato, is, then, literally only an
imitation or shadow, of what he calls the "real" world, or the spiritual world
of the Forms. A glimmer of Plato's concept of the world of Forms is found in
the very phrase, Platonic love. People understand this to be love in the
highest spiritual and non-physical or erotic sense. In general, religious
imagery and art often seeks to reflect the spiritual world. For Plato, the
purpose of art is not to imitate life, but to imitate, however imperfectly,
the world of Forms. |
From the second part of the lesson of Greek
philosophy, we develop parallels between the Classical Greek Stoics and
Epicureans, to the philosophies of Buddhism and the 12 Step Alcoholic
Anonymous-derived programs:
Stoicism
and Epicureanism
(+ references to Buddhism and The
Serenity Prayer)
There were many
schools of thought in ancient Greece, before and after Plato and Aristotle,
which became part of Roman philosophy, and later Western philosophy.
Stoicism and Epicureanism are two influential
Greco-Roman philosophical schools, whose influence extends to the present time.
Two famous stoic philosophers were the Greek slave, Epictetus
and the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, who lived around 100
AD and 200 AD, respectively. Both schools of thought regard suffering as caused
by people who want things and circumstances, to be other than what they are
actually are. As they put it, it is not things but our opinions about things
that cause us to suffer.
The view has
important similarities to Buddhism. In Buddhism, (1) the fact of suffering, (2)
is caused by craving, (3) which is caused by ignorance, (4) and is alleviated by
people not clinging to expectations that cannot be met, and living a lifestyle
characterized by simplicity and moderate, non-acquisitive living (the
Eightfold Path). These four concepts are called the Four Noble
Truths of Buddhism. By way of criticism, this viewpoint might be
regarded as complacency or a blind simple acceptance of the status quo.
However, I think that the famous Serenity
prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr, in
1926, presents the ethical implications of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
Buddhism, in a more
dynamic way: " God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the ."
(This Serenity Prayer is a cornerstone of treatment in the 12 Step Treatment
programs, as those of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
Having cited Neibuhr's prayer as
expressing the ethical thrust of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Buddhism (early
Buddhism, or Theravada Buddhism), it is very important to add the following:
these philosophies do not maintain the existence of a personal God. Stoicism
maintains the existence of the Logos as the underlying source
of existence, and a creative principle inherent in all things. The Logos is not
a personal deity, or God, however. The Epicureans,
who are materialists and atomists, believe that the world is composed of matter
without spirit or a spiritual principle. Because the material world, and beings
in it, decompose over time, they believe that one should not cling to what has
either passed away, nor yet arisen. This leads to an approach of equanimity, not
dissimilar to the Stoics and Buddhists.
Although the word, "epicurean" has passed
into English as referring to the life of the senses and pleasure, the Epicureans
actually believed that one ought to practice moderation in all things. This is
similar in practice to Aristotle's conception of the Golden Mean,
that one ought to seek the balance between the extremes of excess and
deficiency. Hedonism, which existed as
a Greek and Roman school of thought, did emphasize the importance of extreme
sensuous pleasure, as part of the physical nature of human beings. This term has also
passed into the English language, with the correct classical connotation. A
version of the Golden Mean is practiced in Buddhism, described as temperance, or
the Middle Path (between extremes). Like the Epicureans and unlike the Stoics,
the Buddha did not advocate belief in God as a personal being or impersonal
force, though he did speak of Nirvana as the realm characterized by cessation of
change, and hence, of suffering.
In this brief
discussion about Stoicism, Epicureanism, Buddhism and the Serenity Prayer, it is
interesting to note that different philosophical beliefs and assumptions could
lead to similar ethical conclusions. Thus, as described above, we see how these
different traditions hold that suffering is caused not by things, but our
reactions to things, and our expectations.
You've come to the right
place to
| Study Philosophy Online |
| Obtain tutoring in Philosophy |
| Get help with you college course
|
| Enroll any time- continuous enrollment |
| $95 |
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Suggested
Reading List |
| Here is the
listing, of individual books available on Amazon.com |
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