Stats for nerds
0recommend
2mentions
2people
2019–2021years
100% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Incidentally, it did not escape my notice that medieval philosophy appears nowhere on this list.
A more careful reading will show that Anthony Kenny's Medieval Philosophy appears in two different positions on the list, under Histories of Philosophy and under Electives. There's also another medieval text listed which I'm not familiar with that includes readings from the familiar trifecta of Aquinas, Augustine, and Scotus among others.
> If we consider ideas, it is only because we are trying to determine if they're true and no other reason.
I hope this is a definitional quibble (a poorly thought out one, I think) about what it means to be doing "philosophy" and not literally a statement of what you believe to be true. If we observe fallacious or false ideas popping up in literature or culture it's normal to do some work trying to understand the thinking that brings those about. That is work that has nothing to do with determining those ideas' truth or falsehood, which we've already decided upon.
- I was excited to see a class on "Ancient and Medieval Philosophy", though i see it's just an archive of the course material -- lectures and readings.
Lectures and readings are great, but it's a far cry from learning what the material really means without the discussion section. MOOCs are good for learning facts-and-figures type things, and it's an OK way to learn the tools of the trade (including the trade of programming). But the thing that makes a top university really "top" is the interaction, challenging your thinking and learning to read and understand closely, not just study a craft.
I'm very excited by what they're doing at Signum University[1], which is working on college-level classes without the overhead of a campus. It's not free; you can't really teach an in-depth education for free. But the direction it's going, you'll be able to get all the things that we prize about a four-year college (the things that many employers consider more valuable than somebody who studied at a place like Devry).
Related
A History of Western Philosophy
64 recommend · 126
2007–2026
Baroque Cycle
115 recommend · 298
A little history of philosophy
3 recommend · 4
Aquinas on mind
0 recommend · 2
The History of Medieval Europe
1 recommend · 3
The shape of ancient thought
5 recommend · 12
