Kant’s philosophy is nothing short of revolutionary, fundamental, and wide-ranging.

Significant portions of philosophy as it is practiced today are directly shaped by Kant’s thought.

Like many philosophers before and since, Kant tried to rebuild philosophy from the ground up. While there is good reason to question whether such a project is ever really possible, if there was ever anyone who approached actually doing it, it would be Kant (the list of western philosophers who have a reasonable claim to have “rebuilt” philosophy is very short in my book: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger).

Kant wanted to show that philosophers and natural scientists would never be able to give final answers to questions about the nature of the physical world and of the human mind or soul, and about the existence and attributes of a supreme being.

Why?

Not because he was some kind of skeptic.

But because there were fundamental and important limitations on human reason that we must be aware of and respect.

Kant’s work changed philosophy’s conception of what can be known, and how it can be known.

After Descartes, “modern” philosophy really came to be centrally concerned with questions of knowledge and the relationship between mind and world.

As such, Kant’s philosophy forms the very core of modern philosophy.

As Gary Hatfield writes:

His criticism of previous work in metaphysics and the theory of knowledge, propounded in the Critique of Pure Reason and summarized in the Prolegomena, provided a comprehensive response to early modern philosophy and a starting point for subsequent work.

Kant rejected previous philosophical explanations of cognition (thinking), and was critical of his predecessors’s (Descartes) use of reason or “pure intellect” as the basis for making claims about God and the essences of mind and matter.

The big questions was this:

What can we really know through the pure use of human reason?

Kant famously argued that these philosophers could not possibly know what they claimed to know about such things, because direct knowledge of a mind independent reality exceeds the capacity of the human intellect.

This is why Kant is considered, to some extent, an “Idealist”.

Idealism is a general family of philosophical views which have different meanings, but for our purposes here, Kant is an idealist in the sense that what we can really know is limited to important truths about our own minds rather that “objective” reality.

Kant was therefore sympathetic to Empiricism and the work of philosopher such as Locke and Hume, who prescribed real limits to human understanding as a result of the limitations of human experience to contact ultimate reality.

Kant was not merely an empiricist, however.

He contended that because these philosophers did not also analyze human cognition properly, they lacked knowledge of the principles by which the boundaries of human knowledge might be outlined. Kant thought that, as a result, they did not understand how it metaphysics could be possible within the boundaries placed on human knowing. In other words, Kant believed that there were important truths we could know through pure thinking and rational argument, even if those truths were fundamentally limited.

In fact, Kant maintained that without a proper understanding of reason and its limitations, even the empiricist attitude to knowledge would inevitably lead human beings to making claims that go beyond its own domain in the world of nature, and therefore produce unjustified assertions about such topics as free will, the existence of God, and the nature of objective morality.

Kant was especially interested in the philosophical implications of Newton’s physics in relation to both metaphysics and morals, for he was concerned that the deterministic picture of the world in physics posed a threat to the idea of moral freedom. Without moral freedom, Kant thought, objective moral requirements are impossible.

Life And Work

Immanuel Kant was born in Konigsberg on April 22, 1724.

He went on to study at the University in Konigsberg from 1740 to 1746, supporting himself with the help of his uncle, by tutoring, and through his skill at billiards and card games.

During this period Kant came to admire the work of Isaac Newton as a provided a paradigm for what natural science should look like.

Kant finished his doctoral dissertation in 1755 and served as a private lecturer paid directly by the students. He was a popular lecturer and covered a broad curriculum, which included logic, mathematics, morals, physics, metaphysics, and physical geography.

As his reputation grew Kant turned down opportunities for appointment elsewhere, having his heart set on a professorship in Konigsberg. At the age of 45, Kant finally received an permanent appointment as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics.

He continued to lecture on the topics already mentioned, and during the 1770s added anthropology, education, natural theology, and natural law to his repertoire.

His “Inaugural Dissertation” for the new appointment was titled On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World. In this work, he distinguished between sensible and intelligible “worlds,” the first being known via sensory cognition of things as they appear (i.e., phenomena), the second via intellectual cognition of things as they are in themselves (i.e., noumena) (this distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal realm would prove to be important for his later theoretical work).

After the publication of the Inaugural Dissertation, Kant entered his “silent decade,” which produced no major publications but which famously ended in 1781 with the publication of his most significant work of all — the Critique of Pure Reason.

Having reflected on previous efforts in theoretical philosophy (including his own), Kant saw the need to pose a new question, which contained the “key” to metaphysics:

“I asked myself: What is the ground of the relation to the object of that in us which is called representation?”

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason appeared nine years after he first proposed the work.

It was followed by another major work about every two years until 1790.

These included the Prolegomena, the Metaphysics of Morals, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and the second and third of his major “critical” works, the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment.

The second and third Critiques, referenced above, respectively explained the possibility of moral judgment and examined the conditions for judgments of beauty and of natural purpose (teleology). These critiques continued Kant’s exploration of the function of reason itself, as a faculty that seeks unity between the understanding’s cognition of nature and natural laws, and its own grasp of the moral law and of the harmony, systematicity, beauty, and organization of nature.

Kant’s vision of reason as seeking unity between the natural and moral worlds remains of interest today, as philosophers reflect on the natural scientific picture of the world and seek to determine the relation between that picture and the moral, political, historical, legal, and aesthetic visions inherent in the social and cultural world of humankind.

In many ways, how to square our scientific and moral commitments remains one of the most difficult and interesting areas of philosophical research.

Kant was not a great writer in terms of style, but on the hundredth anniversary of his death a monument was erected to him containing a famous line from the concluding section of the Critique of Practical Reason.

It was the best sentence he ever wrote:

“Two things fill the mind with always fresh and growing wonder and veneration, the more often and the more continuously they are reflected upon: the starry heaven above me, and the moral law within me”

Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”

Kant described his own work as revolutionary, and drew an analogy between his “critical project” (meaning critique of reason) and the Copernican revolution in astronomy.

According to Kant, Copernicus was better able to account for the phenomena of astronomy by assuming that the motion attributed to the stars actually results from the motion of the observer as stationed on the earth.

Kant held that he could account for the human ability to know the basic properties of objects only on the assumption that the knower contributes certain features to those objects as known. In answer to his querstion above, he therefore held that the fundamental characteristics of objects as experienced — characteristics described by mathematics (especially geometry) and also by metaphysical concepts such as cause and substance — result from something that the knowing subject brings to such experience.

This idea, that we ourselves contribute or produce our own understanding of reality, but it’s not the case that “everything is subjective,” certainly was revolutionary.

Kant was not a pure Idealist.

He did not think it was all in our heads.

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Heidegger begins paragraph 59 with a restatement of his definition of conscience:

“Conscience is the call of care from the uncanniness of Being-in-the-world — the call which summons Dasein to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-guilty. And corresponding to this call, wanting-to-have-a-conscience has emerged as the way in which the appeal is understood”

BT, 335

We have seen that conscience is a call which returns us to our ourselves out of the they. We have also seen that authenticity involves wanting-to-have-a-conscience. In paragraphs 59 and 60, Heidegger will reach definite conclusions about what Dasein’s authenticity consists in.

Much of paragraph 59 is concerned with seeing how Heidegger’s existential interpretation of conscience squares with ordinary interpretations. Heidegger begins by asking whether this interpretation of conscience is compatible with the “ordinary” (Vulgär) one.

He …

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René Descartes was one of the greatest minds that ever lived.

His contributions to human thought extend far beyond philosophy into areas as diverse as optics, physics, and geometry (to name a few).

Descartes is also the most heavily criticized philosopher in the Western tradition.

Every great philosopher after Descartes makes it a point to criticize his conclusions as well as his methods either directly or indirectly. This fact should not be taken the wrong way, however. The perpetual criticism Descartes has faced is a testament to his greatness as a philosopher.

Descartes argued forcefully for bold conclusions and, even if he was wrong or made mistakes, the clarity and depth of his reasoning opened up new avenues of thought for later thinkers. It is ironic that the best philosophers are those who everyone takes to be “wrong”, since they are also the philosophers who built the ground that their opponents are standing on.

In this guide, I provide a general introduction to Descartes as one of the most consequential thinkers in the history of the world, and a more focused introduction and commentary on his most famous text, Meditations.

Descartes’ Life And Thought

Descartes was born in 1596 and died in 1650 at 54 years old.

In 1641, at the age of 45, Descartes published his famous Meditations on First Philosophy.

Meditations is one of the most ambitious and significant philosophical texts ever written. In the work, Descartes sought to help his readers understand the ultimate nature of reality and human knowledge, arguing not only that it is possible to prove our own existence on rational grounds (cogito ergo sum), but also the existence of God. (The term “first philosophy” in the title is one that we have seen before with Aristotle — it refers to metaphysics).

In order to properly understand the genius of Descartes and the nature of Meditations as a work, it is important to place him in the proper context of his life and thought.

Descartes did not begin as a philosopher and never restricted himself to a single intellectual or academic pursuit. He lived a rich and varied life and made groundbreaking contributions to many areas of human thought — always aiming as highly as possible.

He began as a mathematician and “natural philosopher”, which is how philosophers generally thought of themselves before the sharp and, in my judgment, artificial separation that exists between philosophy and natural science today (the first philosophers, the “Pre-Socratics” were also referred to as “natural philosophers”).

Descartes was incredibly successful in his intellectual endeavors and came to believe that he had discovered unique methods and insights that would allow him to displace the then dominant Aristotelian worldview and revolutionize philosophy and science. Like Aristotle, Descartes was a systematic philosopher who sought to extend results from one area of thought to all of nature and life.

In many ways, he succeeded in this pursuit even if many of his specific conclusions are no longer tenable.

Descartes was educated in a Jesuit school that introduced him to philosophy.

At the time, a particular interpretation of Aristotle formed the core of the European worldview and was taught widely across Europe. The particular flavor of Aristotle that Descartes was brought up on came from the work of Roman Catholic scholars in the middle ages who carefully studied Aristotle’s texts and synthesized them with Christian doctrine. The official Jesuit curriculum required that philosophical instruction follow Aristotle. The study of logic, physics, metaphysics, and morals drew upon Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle’s texts, or on independent treatises (including simplified textbooks) that covered the Aristotelian subject areas.

Over time, Descartes began to question Aristotelian philosophy largely as a byproduct of his rigorous training in mathematics. The clarity of mathematics made Descartes want to challenge and improve upon pre-existing philosophy. He decided that philosophy was badly in need of reform, and he had good reason to believe that he was the person for the job. For example, in 1619, Descartes solved various long-standing mathematical problems and laid the groundwork for “analytical geometry”.

In Descartes’ time, the pre-existing world order was undergoing a radical change.

The ancient sciences of astronomy and optics were changing rapidly. Johannes Kepler published works in mathematical optics in 1604 and 1611 that contradicted ancient theory by showing that the eye forms an image on the retina. The sixteenth-century astronomer Nicholas Copernicus opposed the previous geocentric astronomy by hypothesizing that the Earth moves around the Sun. This directly threatened Aristotelian physics, since a moving Earth would violate Aristotle’s physical principle that all earthly matter naturally strives to reach the center of the universe, making the Earth a unique central globe around which all other heavenly bodies revolve. Galileo Galilei, using the newly invented telescope, discovered moons around Jupiter in 1610, which challenged Earth’s uniqueness and also threw Aristotelian cosmology into question.

But Descartes was not just a nerd, he was also, like Socrates, a soldier.

While serving in the French army, Descartes met the Dutch natural philosopher Isaac Beeckman.

This event would change his life.

Beeckman was not only a natural philosopher and mathematician, but he spoke Latin like Descartes. The exchange of ideas that took place between these two men would eventually lead Descartes to developing one of his most significant metaphysical positions — the conclusion that all material things are composed of small round spheres.

This position, which is referred to as “Corpuscularianism”, “corpuscles” being the tiny atom-like bodies out of which all material objects are composed, would have significant effects not only on Descartes thought, but the Western scientific worldview.

On March 26, 1619, Descartes proclaimed to Beeckman that he now envisioned a “completely new science” for solving “all possible equations”.

The impulse to universal solutions would never leave Descartes and color all of his thinking. He would spend his entire life obsessed with method and go on to extend his methodological insights to metaphysics in Meditations and later works.

Despite his early achievements in mathematics, Descartes was uncertain where “fate” would lead him in life.

One winter, while on his way to rejoin the armed forces, Descartes was caught in a winter storm in Neuburg, Germany, which was a peaceful Catholic town north of Munich.

During this time, Descartes allowed himself to pause and set his life onto a new course.

In his famous Discourse on the Method, Descartes writes that he found himself with no one to talk to, nothing to worry about, and nowhere to go. So what he did was shut himself up in a cozy stove-heated room for several days and dedicate his entire being to thinking about his life. Descartes reflections convinced him that he should seek a completely clear and systematic account of how ideas across the various sciences and connect together philosophically into a unified whole.

He wrote that the principles of other sciences “must all be derived from philosophy” (including natural philosophy), and resolved “to try and establish some certain principles” in that field.

Descartes decision was partly inspired by three dreams he reported himself experienced on the night of November 10, 1619.

His dreams were complex and involving images of whirling wind, a melon, acquaintances he passed by in the street without greeting, thunder, sparks, pain in the side, disappearing books, and the title of a poem by Ausonius, “What road in life shall I follow?”.

Descartes interpreted these dreams as commanding him to reform all of science, beginning with philosophy as the foundation. By his own account, it was nine years before he took himself to have discovered a new foundation for philosophy.

One of the key techniques Descartes used in service of this project was temporarily adopting a skeptical stance towards all pre-existing knowledge.

Philosophical skepticism was experiencing a great revival in France during Descartes’ lifetime and although Descartes would use these powerful ideas in service of his own aims, he himself was in no way a skeptic.

He treated many of his opinions as doubtful, as skeptics do, but his ultimate aim was more Socratic — to eradicate incorrect opinions by retaining only those that were certain. He writes:

“I was not imitating the skeptics, who doubt only for the sake of doubting, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole aim was towards certainty”.

Full-blown skeptics don’t simply have doubts about whether they know some particular item of knowledge.

They seek to use various arguments to place themselves in a state of sustained doubt, in which they suspend judgment about any theoretical knowledge going beyond mere appearances. Descartes used the skeptical technique of suspending judgment in order to bracket, for further investigation, areas of potential knowledge now lacking the clarity and evidence found in mathematics.

We will see him apply this technique again and again in Meditations.

In Discourse, Descartes reports that, upon leaving his warm room, for “the next nine years” (1619–28) he did nothing but “roam here and there in the world, trying to be a spectator more than an actor in all the comedies that play there”.

During this period, Descartes continued to work on mathematical and scientific problems, fought a duel and won (without slaying his opponent), and composed a treatise on fencing which is now lost.

During this time Descartes composed an unfinished manuscript titled Rules For The Direction Of The Mind, in which he made the important claim that all the sciences in general depend on certain “pure and simple natures,”which any investigator should seek first. This search for simple natures or simple ideas lay at the heart of his generalized method and epistemology (theory of knowledge). As we will see in a bit, Descartes’ arguments largely turn on belief that there are certain ideas which are clear and indubitable.

Descartes was a paradigmatically “reductive” philosopher (Roughyl: “Reductionism” is a general method/approach in philosophy according to which complex phenomena/entities are reduced to and/or explained by simpler phenomena/entities).

In Discourse on the Method, which was a later work inspired by his previous Rules, he distilled a much larger list into four rules for which he is now famous:

• The first: “never to accept anything as true if I did not have evident knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and so distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it”.

• The second: “to divide each of the difficulties I examined into as many parts as possible and as may be required in order to resolve them better”.

• The third: “to direct my thoughts in an orderly manner, by beginning with the simplest and most easily known objects in order to ascend little by little, step by step, to knowledge of the most complex, and by supposing some order even among objects that have no natural order of precedence”.

• And the fourth: “throughout to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so comprehensive, that I could be sure of leaving nothing out”.

Descartes’ Metaphysical Turn

After reflecting on his “fate”, Descartes decided to dedicate the rest of his relatively short life to intellectual pursuits.

He woudl go on to publish four major books on topics as various as geometry, optics, physics, the human body, emotions, and metaphysics. He would also leave a substantial amount of unpublished writings behind after his death.

Around 1628, Descartes thought took a metaphysical turn.

While staying in the Netherlands, he worked on nothing else for nine months straight.

In April 1630, he wrote to his friend Mersenne about the results of this work, claiming that he had discovered:

“how to demonstrate metaphysical truths in a manner which is more evident than the demonstrations of geometry”.

My former teacher Gary Hatfield notes that:

“For someone who previously regarded mathematics as providing the ultimate standard of certainty, this statement marks a significant change”.

In the same letter, Descartes also reports that his metaphysical investigations concerning God and the soul had led him to discover “the foundations of Physics”.

Around this time, Descartes thought would become highly rationalistic in the style of Plato, who held that fundamental truths can be known through pure intellectual activity. Unlike Plato, however, Descartes combined his abstract rationalism with a strong conception of God, arguing, for example, that mathematical truths are completely dependent on God, who freely created them (and could have willed them to be otherwise).

This is an incredible claim which I encourage you to pause on for a moment.

Is it possible that God could change the laws of mathematics such that the three angles of a triangle do not add up to 180 degrees?

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This guide is part of my Introduction To Philosophy Class offered through The Micro-University on Substack. In this guide, I provide an introduction to the metaphysics and ethics of Aristotle. If you are interested in learning more about the course, you can follow this link.

Aristotle is not only the greatest ancient philosopher but also, in my opinion, the greatest philosopher of all time.

It is possible to quibble about where exactly to “rank” Aristotle, but no one could reasonably doubt that he is amongst the top 5 most important philosophers in the history of the world.

I am pretty convinced that he is the greatest, although I am open to someone changing my mind.

Perhaps the only thing you could say against Aristotle is that he is a philosopher’s philosopher — utterly obsessed with technical detail, clarity, and rational argument. This means he can be boring if one is reading him without a good reason.

What’s undeniable is that he was the most prolific philosopher of all time.

I was taught at some point that we possess an estimated 25% of what Aristotle actually wrote. Had that corpus survived today, it would exceed 12,000 modern pages. Aristotle’s current Complete Works is around 3,500 pages in modern formatting. Cicero is reported to have said that Aristotle wrote an entire collection of his own philosophical dialogues which not only rivaled those of Plato, but were like a “rivers of flowing gold”, while Plato’s were “silver”.

Despite Aristotle’s incredible output, we are fortunate to have anything he wrote.

After Aristotle died, his writings were left to individuals who didn’t really value or understand them and locked away in a wooden chest in a cave.

Unfortunately, many of his works got wet and didn’t survive.

The works that did survive would go on to disappear and resurface at various points. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, much of Aristotle’s works were lost to the Latin West. Categories were one of two significant logical works that were available in the early Middle Ages.

Many of Aristotle’s works would go on to be rediscovered and propagated thanks to a handful of Muslim scholars in the 8th through 10th centuries whose efforts would eventually bring Aristotle back into the fold of “European” thought.

Aristotle was so well-regarded throughout history that medieval Muslim scholars called him “The First Teacher”, whereas St. Thomas Aquinas simply called him “The Philosopher”.

An entire guide could be written simply listing all of the original contributions Aristotle made to philosophy, and it would be quite long and complex.

In place of that, I would like to make two points:

• Aristotle wrote serious works on every subject matter imaginable: Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, Poetry, Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, Biology, etc.

• He is widely considered the father of Logic itself (meaning that he was the first human being to formalize Logical thought into a system).

In this guide, I aim to touch upon two very distinct themes (although everything in Aristotle is ultimately connected):

• Metaphysics

• Ethics

The reason that I chose to focus on Categories and Nicomachean Ethics is that these two works capture Aristotle’s essence as a philosopher and help beginner’s understand how he synthesized theoretical and practical philosophy into a unified theory of everything.

Our foray into Aristotelian metaphysics will help readers learn a bit about Plato’s famous Theory Of The Forms by seeing how Aristotle rejected and innovated on Plato’s account in Categories, while our study of Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics will help readers situate Aristotle in relation to Socratic and Platonic ethics.

If there is one thing that I would like readers to take away from this brief study of Aristotle, it would be a appreciation for the power of the human mind to apprehend fundamental truths about reality with very little to go on. Additionally, even though many of Aristotle’s ideas have been replaced or disproven, it is also true that many of them are what made their own replacement possible in the first place, and many others continue to endure (especially in his practical works).

Categories

The work titled Categories is one of the most significant texts Aristotle ever wrote and plays a key role in Aristotle’s philosophy.

It is one of the essential works of a collection of technical texts which have come to be called “The Organon”. The word organon is an English transliteration of the Ancient Greek Ὄργανον, which means “instrument”, “tool”, or “organ”. Under this heading, Aristotle’s editors have collected six works that deal with matters of logical analysis and dialectical argument. You can roughly think of these works as a kind of “handbook” for thinking.

In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon completely changed the world with the publication of his Novum Organum, directly challenging the then dominant Aristotelian worldview and setting the West onto a new path of modern science, epistemology, and metaphysics that still shapes our thinking today.

The Organon consists of the following six works:

• Categories (Latin: Categoriae): Aristotle’s classification system for being and famous discussion of “primary substance”.

• On Interpretation (Latin: De Interpretatione): Aristotle’s conception of propositions, judgement, and the relationships between affirmative, negative, universal, and particular propositions.

• Prior Analytics (Latin: Analytica Priora): Aristotle’s famous syllogistic method of logic and inductive inference.

• Posterior Analytics (Latin: Analytica Posteriora): Aristotle’s account of definition, demonstration, inductive reasoning, and scientific knowledge.

• Topics (Latin: Topica): Aristotle’s account of valid argument, and probable inference.

• On Sophistical Refutations (Latin: De Sophisticis Elenchis): Aristotle’s treatment of logical fallacies.

My focus in this guide will be on the short, but dense work titled Categories.

It is possible, within a few short pages, to get a sense of how Aristotle thought and also how his views differed from Plato’s.

One of the most significant conclusions of Aristotelian philosophy is given expression in Categories — the idea that reality is constituted out of a plurality of what are called primary substances.

Primary substances are beings like me and you, Fido, and General Sherman (not the man, but the giant tree!).

There is something appealing about the idea that singular human beings are the most unique and important kinds of things there are.

This is a classic case of anthropocentricmaxxing!

The Categories is one of the earliest works in the West on a sub-field of philosophy called “Ontology”.

We have already encountered Ontology before with Heraclitus and Parmenides, but Aristotle takes Ontology to an entirely new level of sophistication and sensitivity to language.

As far as we know, the Categories represents one of the earliest works of ontology written by Aristotle and may have been composed while he was studying at Plato’s Akadēmia (Ἀκαδημία).

Although Aristotle’s Ontology would change throughout his lifetime, his early works contain many ideas that either endured throughout his later thinking, or were reworked into new ideas. Many of these ideas continue to influence philosophy today when it comes to fundamental discussions about thought and being.

The fundamental nature of these works makes them difficult to understand or interpret, and serious scholars can spend years thinking through their deep implications for thought, language, and reality.

Overview

In the “Pre-Categories” (sections 1-3), Aristotle presents his famous four-fold division that is built out of two different forms of predication:

• “said-of” (legetai)

• “in” (en)

Aristotle’s distinctions help clarify the complexity of predication relations that are easily obscured by natural language.

This is no mere superficial quality of language for Aristotle, but a window through which we can apprehend the deep metaphysical structure of reality itself and the relationships between “things that are”.

For Aristotle, nature is a complex structure and our language should reflect that.

It is helpful to understand Aristotle’s distinction here as tracking one of the most important distinctions that is still used today in contemporary metaphysics, and which was used extensively in the Middle Ages by Christian philosophers:

The distinction between essential and accidental predication.

According to Christopher Shields, Aristotle’s primary intention was to:

“divide universals into those predicated essentially of primary substances and those not so predicated: substantial universals are predicated of substances alone, and always essentially, while nonsubstance universals may be predicated accidentally of substances but essentially of non-substances”

What is a universal? What is a substance? And what is predication?

“Universals” are a standard concept in Metaphysics that are used to pick out what particular things have in common (e.g., qualities). If you walk into a classroom and there are 25 different chairs, the universal Chair is the thing which unifies each individual chair via the quality or property of chairness or being a chair. While it’s natural to think that each chair in the classroom is a unique entity, universals allow for multiple instantiation (instances).

Since universals seem to violate the constraints that ordinary physical objects are bound by, they are typically treated as abstract entities, meaning that they are immaterial objects or entities (it’s worth mentioning that numbers provide an example of a particular entity that is abstract — it need not be the case that all and only universals are abstract, and all and only particulars are concrete, but this is the norm).

Not everyone believes universals are real entities.

Those who deny universals are typically called Nominalists.

Nominalists hold that there are only particular concrete entities and deny the reality of universals. The label “nominalism” comes from “name”. Nominalists hold that universals are just fancy labels or names, but not real entities themselves.

In seeking to “divide universals into those predicated essentially of primary substances and those not so predicated”, Aristotle was spinning out a unique metaphysical view according to which there are two types of universals — those that are connected to the essence of a primary substance and those that are not.

What is an essence? What is a primary substance?

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We always seem to need something further to add to the account, and conscience is the next thing Heidegger is selling.

The explanation is that his account of being-towards-death is formal or ontological, but it lacks a corresponding phenomenological confirmation at the “ontic” level.

In other words, where’s the evidence?

Heidegger wants to show that the way in which Dasein experiences what he calls conscience will provide the confirmation needed to move ahead.

Recall that his general aim in Division II is to provide an account of Dasein’s “authentic potentiality for being a whole”.

Simon Critchley, whose research this guide is based on, finds the discussion of conscience to be the “most exciting and challenging pages in Being and Time”.

The most challenging pages of Being and Time!?

This is going to be interesting.

The “Call” Of Cons…

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This guide is part of my Introduction To Philosophy Class offered through The Micro-University right here on Substack. I provide an introduction to Socrates through Plato’s famous depiction of his trial in Apology. If you are interested in learning more about the course, you can follow this link.

Introduction

The work by Plato titled “Apology” gets its name from the greek word apologia which means a defense speech in a legal proceeding. The word “apology” has also come to acquire the general meaning of an impassioned defense (e.g., “Christian apologetics”).

Apology is a philosophical masterpiece and unlike any text in the history of thought.

It is a moving depiction of a philosophical hero making his last stand against the judgment of the masses.

In my judgment, it captures the essence of what it means to be a philosopher and live a philosophical life (even if one doesn’t fully identify with some of Socrates’ ideas). I think it is fair to say that if someone gives Apology a careful read and does not enjoy it or find value in it, then philosophy is most likely not for them.

The dialogue depicts Socrates delivering a speech before a jury of his peers which consists of 501 male Athenians. Socrates was indicted, at the age of seventy, for breaking the law. The primary charge against him was called “impiety”, or offending the Olympian gods.

Socrates treats his defense as occasion for him to both explain and demonstrate the importance of philosophy for human beings, as well as his own devotion to the examined life.

The examined life for Socrates largely consisted of dialogos, or dialogue, about philosophical questions with others. It is for this reason that Plato wrote works in the genre of dialogue (although his later works become more like the modern philosophical treatise.

Socrates goes on to argue, in his own defense, that not only are the charges against him false, but that he is in fact more pious than his fellow Athenians insofar as his pursuit of philosophy was in service of Apollo (the god associated with the Oracle at Delphi).

He believed that the gods want, more than anything else, for us to be good and that goodness depends principally upon our ability to understand what’s worth caring about and how to act accordingly.

Socrates believed that philosophy, as practiced through dialogue, was what made this understanding and practice possible.

One of the great questions is whether Socrates was, in fact, guilty as charged. I encourage readers to think carefully about this question and its implications as they follow Socrates’ arguments.

Does Socrates really think that we should follow the gods on the basis of divine authority? Or does he set up human reason as the final arbiter of what is right and wrong? Does that violate the law?

Commentary

Unlike most philosophers throughout history, Plato was a great stylist. The list of philosophers that were able to use style and form to enhance their philosophical arguments and the clarity and power of their ideas is quite short and Plato is, arguably, at the top. Some other names might be Marcus Aurelius, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus, to name a few.

One incredible aspect of Plato’s style in particular is that it comes through even when translated into English.

The Apology is a perfect example.

While there are plenty of texts in the history of philosophy that reward careful reading and re-reading, Apology is one of those rare texts that is both charming and pleasurable no matter how many times one has read it. It is not just entertaining and moving, but also intellectually rich. This is not merely due to its overabundance of famous quotes and quips, but also the dramatic structure of the dialogue as a whole. Plato chooses to begin and conclude his famous depiction of Socrates with the idea that he is most known for — that he does not possess knowledge. At first, that he does not possess knowledge of other people’s feelings (”I do not know, men of Athens, how my accusers affected you”), and at the end that he does not possess knowledge about whether death is ultimately a good or bad thing for a human being.

“Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god”

“ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἤδη ὥρα ἀπιέναι, ἐμοὶ μὲν ἀποθανουμένῳ, ὑμῖν δὲ βιωσομένοις· ὁπότεροι δὲ ἡμῶν ἔρχονται ἐπὶ ἄμεινον πρᾶγμα, ἄδηλον παντὶ πλὴν ἢ τῷ θεῷ”

Apology, 42a

There is so much to say about the Apology.

If I’m being honest, it was really tough to write this guide. I found myself spending over two hours working on the first few sentences and realized that I must make some difficult choices about what to focus on. What I decided to do was read through it carefully on my own and pick out a handful of things that I personally find to be the most interesting or important. I did not try to represent the state of present scholarship on the text, or to provide an overarching framework through which a reader could tie everything together into a complete “reading” or “interpretation” of the significance of the dialogue as a whole.

Hopefully this approach can make the text come alive for you. Although it doesn’t need my help!

17b-

The opening paragraph begins with Socrates in mid-speech.

We should immediately realize that Apology is not meant to be an accurate historical record, like a courtroom transcript, but an interpretation constructed by Plato. Part of what makes the text so fascinating is the interplay between what actually happened, what we know about Greek culture, politics, and history, the thought and philosophy of Socrates, and Plato’s relationship to all of these things. This complex and multi-layered web makes reading and thinking about what’s happening on the page endlessly interesting.

We find Socrates opening his speech by drawing important contrasts and careful distinctions—one of the things philosophers are infamous for. The first distinction is between people and their feelings. Socrates begins by carefully distinguishing between how he was affected by the speech of his accusers and how others may have been affected. In other words, he is saying, “I can only speak for myself”. This establishes, in my judgment, a level of respect for his audience.

How was Socrates affected?

He claims that he was:

“almost carried away in spite of myself, so persuasively did they speak”.

The importance of this line is hard to see if one is unfamiliar with the lore of Socrates.

Socrates was famous for many things, but one thing he was especially famous for (and we have multiple sources that attest to this) was his self-control. For example, he was reported to be able to drink anyone under the table without himself getting too drunk. In Plato’s dialogue Symposium, Plato provides an account of when Socrates stood on watch for an entire evening in the freezing cold while barefoot (many people don’t realize that Socrates was a veteran). So when Socrates says that he was almost carried away by his accusers speech, he is actually making an incredible statement. In order for this to be possible, his accusers would have had to say something so profound or revelatory that even Socrates couldn’t resist being persuaded (persuasion is a key word here and is contrast with truth in the next sentence). But this immediately leads us into what is, perhaps, the most important lesson that Plato has to teach us about Socrates. The lesson is that Socrates was a deeply ironic figure. He may have been the greatest ironist in human history.

In just three lines, Plato introduces a text and also captures essence of Socrates both as a person and as a philosopher (although in his case, these are the same thing).

Pure.

Genius.

In the following sentence (”And yet, hardly anything of what they said is true”), Socrates sets up a classic contrast between truth and persuasion.

This contrast is as old as philosophy itself.

It was clearly expressed by famous “pre-Socratic” philosophers such as Heraclitus and Parmenides. For example, in Parmenides famous poem, published over 100 ears before Socrates, he writes:

It is right that you learn all things—
both the unshaken heart of well-persuasive Truth
and the beliefs of mortals, in which there is no true trust.
But nevertheless you will learn these too—how it were
right that the things that seem
be reliably, being indeed, the whole of things.

The contrast here between truth and persuasion is also intertwined with the contrast between truth and feeling.

Again, within just three lines, we find ourselves having to think about the complex relationships between thought, feeling, speech, and truth.

Plato writes in a way that forces us to become philosophical.

Socrates makes it plain that there was something powerful about his accusers speech despite “hardly anything” of what they said being true. As we will see throughout the dialogue, the reason Socrates was affected was not the reason that the “men of Athens” who vote to sentence him to death were affected. Socrates was affected by what he took to be the falsehood and inconsistency of the accusations made against him. In short, the reason that Socrates was almost carried away was that he simply couldn’t believe his accusers could be so off the mark (whether they were actually so wildly off the mark, or Socrates is using this as a rhetorical strategy is an interesting question).

Although we could spend hours discussing just the first few lines, it’s best to move on at this point with the following takeaway: despite what he will say in the rest of this opening section, Socrates is an incredibly tricky figure who speech can be quite complex to interpret (even if the language is direct).

The opening section of the dialogue spans from 17a-18a.

The rest of the dialogue can be divided up, at a high-level, along these lines:1

• Statement of the Case: Two Sets of Accusers (18a-19a)

• Refutations

  • Refutation of Old Accusers (19a-20c)

  • Narration of Socrates’ Divine Mission (20c-24b)

  • Refutation of Present Accusers (24b-28b)

• Digression On Socrates’ Divine Mission

  • Reply to First Objection (28b-31c)

  • Reply to Second Objection (31c-34b)

• Conclusion of First Speech (34b-35d)

• Second Speech

  • Proposed Counter Penalty (35e-38b)

• Third Speech

  • To Jurors Who Voted To Condemn (38c-39d)

  • To Jurors Who Voted To Acquit (39e-42a)

Let’s jump to one of the most important (and puzzling) parts of the dialogue — Socrates’ account of how he became a philosopher.

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Warning: Parmenides’ philosophy and writing can be very challenging. In this guide, I have chosen to pitch his ideas at a level somewhere between advanced beginner and intermediate to give you a sense of the depth, difficulty, and importance of Parmenides thought and text. Part of the reason for this is that is to counter-balance a tendency that first-time readers have in which they dismiss his work as mere “word-play”. In my judgment, the problems raised by Parmenides’ poem are so significant and fundamental that they go far deeper than mere words, they allow us to think beyond language itself.

While Heraclitus was the first great philosopher, Parmenides was the second. In my judgment, he was also greatest of all philosophers in the Western tradition before Socrates (the group of philosophers called “The Pre-Socratics”). But with philosophical greatness comes great difficulty. In Parmenides’ case, the difficulty is primarily due to the way in which he forces us to consider the absolute limits of human thinking. Never before had a human being ventured so far beyond language and tradition in order to try and convey ultimate truth.

In the Greek/European tradition, there is simply philosophy before Parmenides and after Parmenides.

There are three primary reasons Parmenides was so significant:

• First and foremost, his writings are the earliest evidence we have of a strange and powerful use of human reasoning called deductive argument. Deductive argumentation would go on to provide the foundation not just for philosophy, but mathematical and logical reasoning.

• Second, Parmenides presents arguments for genuinely striking and original metaphysical and epistemological conclusions that continue to influence modern discussions of existence, possibility, nothingness, change, identity, thought, and language. While contemporary philosophers have developed a more sophisticated toolkit to analyze the questions and problems first raised by Parmenides, many of his ideas are still in the background of contemporary discussions.

• Third, Parmenides’ arguments were viewed as a profound and puzzling intellectual challenge that many of his immediate successors responded to directly. The result of the response, and the efforts to understand where Parmenides went wrong, led to major innovations by figures such as Empedocles, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, and future thinkers.

As far as we know, Parmenides was born around 515 BCE and lived until roughly 450 BCE in the Greek city of Elea in southern Italy.

Elea became known (among other things) for it’s intellectual culture of rigorous and abstract reasoning in support of paradoxical conclusions.

One of Parmenides followers, who was also from Elea, was the famous Zeno. Zeno who would go on to became remembered for his philosophical and logical paradoxes (some of which are still puzzling to modern logicians and philosophers).

The strong culture created by thinkers from Elea has led historians to refer to Parmenides and related figures as belonging to a philosophical school called, unsurprisingly, “the Eleatic school”. The thinkers from the Eleatic school were widely known and respected. For example, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote an entire work dedicated to Parmenides in which he set up a fictional conversation between Parmenides and a young Socrates.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Parmenides composed only a single work which was a metaphysical and cosmological poem in the traditional verse of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

The poem, which consists of only hundred and sixty surviving “fragments”, was originally longer than what we have today. While it’s always unfortunate to have lost ancient works, the good news is that fragment B8, which I will focus on in this article, is the longest surviving fragment in Pre-Socratic philosophy spanning sixty-two verses.

The fact that any portion of his poem survives is an absolute miracle (as is the case with most ancient texts). In Parmenides case, the survival of his poem is largely due to the fact that later ancient authors, beginning with Plato, for one reason or another felt the need to quote some portion of it in the course of their own writings. For example, Simplicius wrote down a lengthy transcription of the poem in a book on Aristotle simply to make sure it wasn’t lost.

Parmenides is famous for his systematic use of a rigorous deductive arguments to arrive at strange and counter-intuitive conclusions about thought and reality. After Parmenides, this style of argument and reasoning would become one of the most powerful and widely used philosophical methods. Philosophers today continue to use Parmenides’ style of argument on a regular basis.

The reason that deductive argument is so powerful and characteristic of philosophy is that it allows an individual thinker to reach justified conclusions without relying solely upon empirical evidence or justification. The aim of a deductive argument is to reach a meaningful conclusion through pure thinking (an important point of clarification here: this doesn’t mean you can’t talk at all about things you experience or observe, it just means that the justification comes from the logical reasoning rather than from the observational evidence).

An argument is commonly understood as a set of claims aimed at supporting a conclusion.

You can learn about what an argument is and is-not by watching the video below:

A deductive argument is a special kind of argument according to which the truth of the claims necessarily guarantees the truth of the conclusion. For example, if I said that John is taller than Jim, and Jim is taller than Joe, then you could, by way of deductive reasoning, conclude that it must be the case that Jim is taller than Joe (assuming the earlier statements are true).

That’s how deductive argument works and this form of reasoning is believed by many philosophers to be airtight.

Parmenides relied upon deductive reasoning in service of trying to answer three gigantic philosophical questions:

• What conditions must something satisfy to exist?

• Is reality what our senses tell us it is?

• What is the relationship between thought and reality?

In pursuing the answer to these questions, Parmenides would touch upon the following major themes: being, coming-to-be, perishing, language, change, motion, time, and space.

Parmenides discussion of these themes has earned him the label of “the inventor of metaphysics”. I like to call him the “grandfather” of metaphysics since he was a little bit off his rocker.

Metaphysics is one of the main branches of philosophy.

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This article is a introductory philosophical guide to Heraclitus of Ephesus.

Heraclitus was one of the most important philosophers in history, even though few people know about him outside of the academy. As you will see throughout this course, many of his ideas would go on to have a considerable influence on the golden age of Greek philosophy (5th & 4th century BCE) and beyond.

Overview

As far as we know, Heraclitus was born in 540 BCE to an aristocratic family in the famous city of Ephesus and lived for around sixty years.

Despite being in line for a kingship, Heraclitus gave up the political life in order to dedicate his life to philosophy. As far as we know, he was an individualist and outsider. He has been nicknamed “the weeping philosopher” because many have read him as being a pessimist (although this is debatable). It is true that he was often arrogant, judgmental, and opposed to common thinking.

Heraclitus is reported to have written a single great book titled On Nature.

While most of his book has been lost to history, we do possess the beginning of the work as well as several hundred fragments. Although Heraclitus wasn’t the first philosopher, in many ways he is the first philosopher that we can study with confidence. Despite the fact that many of his writings were destroyed, and we know very little about his life, he would go on to exert a considerable influence on the development of Western ideas.

Nearly every great philosopher has written about Heraclitus at some point. The list includes figures such as: Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Heidegger. His works have even been blamed as providing the source of Christian heretical thinking!

Heraclitus believed himself to have made a discovery of great importance — what he took to be the key to understanding everything.

He believed that this discovery was captured by a single term or concept — Logos.

The word Logos (λόγος) is, arguably, the most important word in the history of philosophy other than sophia (σοφία), which means “wisdom”.

What does Logos mean?

Heraclitus’ big idea was that the meaning of Logos is that all of reality is unified and explained by a single rational principle which held that all things are one.

While I will explain Logos, as well as Heraclitus’ theory, in a bit more detail below, we can take the definition above as a starting point from which we can proceed to move deeper into Heraclitus’ philosophy.

Illusion & Reality

Heraclitus had much in common with early Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy famous for the concept of “māyā”. According to this tradition, māyā is the powerful force that creates the universal cosmic illusion that the world of appearances represents true reality. Māyā has the connotation of constant change and is contrasted in Advaita Vedanta with ultimate and unchanging reality — what they call “Brahman” or the Absolute.

In a similar vein, Heraclitus believed that despite being surrounded by the Logos, most people live their lives as if they are asleep and dreaming, fundamentally unable to see or understand true reality.

“One ought not to act and speak like people asleep”

Heraclitus, B73 (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 43)

Heraclitus believed that we can escape from this illusory condition by learning how to wake up our minds (the theme of liberation from illusion and suffering was very common in the ancient world). At the same time, he also believed, much like Socrates, that human beings are fundamentally limited in what they can know when compared to the divine. Part of being human is to occupy a normal state of ignorance and misunderstanding. Although it’s unclear whether he believed that we are in principle unable to attain true wisdom or understanding, Heraclitus still believed that we could make progress towards this goal, and that it is the proper goal for a human being to aim at. In this sense, Heraclitus was a strong advocate for “the examined life” over 100 years before Socrates famously declared that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being” (Plato, Apology, 38a5-6).

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I just wanted to take a moment and personally thank you for choosing to entrust me as your philosophical guide. I genuinely believe that philosophy has nearly unlimited transformative power, so I do not take this role lightly. It has become my life’s work to become the best philosophical guide that I can possibly be. I am very much looking forward to learning from and with each and every one of you.

Before I introduce the course more formally, I just want to set a few expectations about what it means to study philosophy through The Micro-University. For the past few months, this space has become somewhere that mature and thoughtful adults can not only learn complex philosophy, but be their full selves. It is a space where we can seriously discuss controversial, as well as have some fun. If you are looking to show off how knowledgeable you are, promote a dogmatic agenda, or disrespect others, I will happily remove you and offer a prompt refu…

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The full answer to these question is incredibly complex and requires going beyond Being and Time, but it is helpful to reflect here on some important aspects of the answer at the beginning of our journey into Division Two.

According to Heidegger himself, the shift is from one subject to another, and from one type of analysis to another. It is a shift from the “preparatory” analysis of Division One, to a “more ontological” analysis in Division Two. Translated into plain English, Heidegger thinks that he is now ready to “get deep” after preparing us in Division One.

This “depth” brings us to the most exciting and puzzling areas of Heidegger’s thought — beyond the familiar world of “average everydayness” into an investigation of fundamental ontology and the nature of Being itself.

The shift from Division One to Division Two is also an expected shift from an analy…

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Over the next 12+ months, I’m sharing everything I have learned from dedicating 6 years of my life to completing a PhD in Philosophy, and 3 years additional years to teaching philosophy at various elite universities.

Why?

Because there are millions of curious, intelligent, and open-minded individuals who are dying to learn and discuss big ideas with others, but have very few places to go outside of traditional universities, disappointing “book clubs”, and annoying discussion boards.

I love introducing 18-22 year olds to philosophy for a living, but it drives me insane that a real philosophy education is pretty much inaccessible to anyone who is older than this, can’t afford to go to university, or both. There is no reason that people who want to learn, discuss ideas, and transform their lives cannot easily access the education they need to do this.

Eventually, I got tired of this and decided to do something crazy here on Substack.

I started my own philosophy school.

It’s called The Micro-University, and for the past few months I have been spending several hours a week leading a group of mature, thoughtful, motivated, and curious adults through some of the most exciting ideas a human being could possibly think about.

This past week, our group has finished reading and discussing Division One of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time.

For those who aren’t aware, Being and Time is one of the hardest (and most interesting) philosophy books ever written. Most philosophy majors never make it through the book. But for the past 15 weeks, our group has met for two hours every Sunday and carefully worked through 300 pages of the text.

The room has been buzzing lately.

At this point, I can confidently say that we have not only read the book, but actually understand it enough to apply the big ideas to everyone’s unique interests through free-flowing discussion.

I was so overjoyed that our group was able to reach this milestone together, that I decided to give everyone who went on this journey with me a yearly paid subscription to The Micro-University so that they could continue learning with me for free (congrats to ).

I probably should also mention that this same group also read Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil cover to cover while working through the Heidegger.

Amazing.

I initially thought it was crazy to teach a book like this to a random group of strangers on the internet. In the university, most people would have scoffed at the very idea.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This experience has completely changed my life and the way I view the future of online humanities education.

It has shown me that traditional educational institutions have failed to serve adults after they stop paying for their degrees. It has shown me that there is a burning desire for a real humanities education which is being massively underserved. It has shown me that it’s possible to deliver an Ivy-League philosophy education through the internet and reach more thousands of more people than I can in my 25 student, gate-kept university classes.

It has made me commit the next few years of my life to developing The Micro-University into a complete philosophy program where someone can begin their philosophy journey at 35, 50, or 70+ years-old, and receive the equivalent of a B.A. in philosophy for a fraction of the cost.

I love the idea of starting to learn philosophy at 40, or 80.

It only takes 2-3 years to completely transform your mind.

I am awestruck by the potential impact that’s possible thanks to platforms like Substack. I randomly posted this note the other day, which has more than confirmed the burning desire online for serious intellectual spaces.

So if this sort of thing sounds appealing, and you want to enjoy a real philosophy education, follow a well-crafted plan, and learn with a group of mature minds, then consider reading the section below.

Your 12-Month Learning Plan

There are three major issues with learning online.

First, there is the passive consumption of thousands of hours of content without any sharp direction or feedback. Learning requires some direction and structure in order for real progress to occur. Otherwise, people consume endless amounts of “edutainment” content without going anywhere.

Second, although the internet has made information more accessible than at any point in human history, everything is scattered. This is intentional. All major platforms send their users on a wild goose chat to figure out how to organize the information that’s available to them so that they spend more time using the platform. Real learning requires guidance about where to go next, in order to develop a coherent narrative that progresses from idea to idea.

Third, and most important, is that most people have no intellectual community. This is problem goes way deeper than philosophy. This is a real human problem. People don’t just lack intellectual community, but community itself. What’s the point of learning if you have no one to talk to who cares about things that are actually interesting?

For these reasons, I have decided that the next evolution of The Micro-University is to offer a complete educational experience where subscribers can go through an entire series of courses that deliver the equivalent of a year in the philosophy major at university.

The idea is that after spending a year on the internet in our community, you will not just have a bunch of quotes from Marcus Aurelius, but the confidence that you have learned philosophy the right way, with expert guidance and a group of people to support you. The confidence that you don’t have major gaps in your knowledge, or misunderstand the basics. The confidence that you can progress from introductory courses to intermediate and advanced topics.

Here is the plan to help you do that.

Over the next 12 months, I will be offering five 8-week beginner courses that mirror the progression of a real philosophy degree:

• PHIL 1: Introduction to Philosophy

• PHIL 2: Introduction to Thinking

• PHIL 3: Introduction To Greek Philosophy

• PHIL 4: Introduction To Modern Philosophy

• PHIL 5: Introduction To Contemporary Philosophy

PHIL 1: Introduction To Philosophy

PHIL 2: Introduction To Thinking

PHIL 3: Introduction To Greek Philosophy

PHIL 4: Introduction To Modern Philosophy

PHIL 5: Introduction To Contemporary Philosophy

These courses will serve as the foundation of The Micro-University for years to come.

A few notes about this plan.

First off, the Introduction To Philosophy course, PHIL 1, is set to begin on July 25. You can read more about that at the bottom of this article if you are interested in joining.

It begins with a captivating general introduction to the field as a whole that motivates learners to continue deeper into the world of philosophy. After this, the focus is on developing the fundamental skills of independent thinking in PHIL 2. This includes logic, argument, and critical thinking. These skills that sharpen one’s mind for more advanced study and transform a learner’s sensitivity to language, logic, and bad arguments. This is absolutely critical, since few people online teach the actual skills of philosophy online.

The next three courses consist of detailed surveys of the major historical periods:

• Greek Philosophy (8th century BCE - 1 AD): Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Cynicism, Plato, Aristotle, The Old Stoa, Epicurus, etc.

• Modern Philosophy (1600 AD - 1920 AD): Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx

• Contemporary (1920 AD - Present Day): Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Fanon, De Beauvoir, Sartre, Foucault, Quine, Rawls

Each of these courses will cover the major historical figures and movements so that learners are walk away feeling “at home” in the tradition of Western philosophy and can confidently pick up almost any philosophy book and understand what’s going on. That was always one of my major goals in studying philosophy. I wanted to eventually be able to pick up any book, no matter how hard, and understand it on my own.

I should point out that the choice to take a historical approach to learning philosophy is significant and comes with trade-offs. In truth, any approach requires making significant trade-offs. It’s just a matter of which trade-offs you want.

If you teach the philosophical questions and issues directly without a proper historical understanding, students often feel like they are missing something or don’t understand key terms and background context. The benefit, though, is that you can jump right into a question without having to learn much about where it came from or how people have tried to answer it. But if you go too deep into history, it can detract from the liveliness of the questions themselves and focus too much on the figures and schools of thought.

Personally, I have always found that having a good background context helps me understand the philosophical issues better and I have a historical mind, which is why I am choosing this approach here. I have also always found it fascinating to trace the develop of the history of ideas so that I can identify the hidden patterns that drive human history and shape our worldview. The historical approach is good for those who want to grow a deep understanding over a longer time-scale. Additionally, since I have a strong passion for history it will simply lead to better teaching. It’s natural for me.

Alright, that’s the plan. My promise to you is that if you study philosophy with me, you will become a more confident independent thinker who is knowledgeable about the history of ideas, but also develops the flexible thinking skills to tackle novel problems.

If you want to jump on board this train, it’s about to depart soon.

The first course, PHIL 1: Introduction To Philosophy, is set to begin on July 25th and 30 people have already joined the waitlist. You can read more about the course by clicking the article linked below, or join now by upgrading to a paid subscription if you already know that you are ready.

In just a few weeks, we will be reading the very earliest written texts in the history of Western philosophy — Pre-Socratic fragments from Heraclitus and Parmenides. I can’t wait to see you in there.

Join The Micro-University

FAQ

Q1: How Do I Join?

You can join by upgrading to a paid subscription to The Micro-University. This gives you complete access to all current and past courses, a thriving private community, helpful learning resources, and direct messaging with me whenever you need help. You can also cancel anytime.

Q2: Can I still join if I miss the first course?

Yes! You can join at any point, since all previous classes will be recorded and made available to you through The Micro-University. Since these are 8-Week courses, it is also not difficult to catch up. Additionally, although these courses build on each other, they are also designed to make sense on their own, you just will have a richer experience by following the narrative as it develops.

Q3: How much time per week?

You should expect to dedicate around 1-1.5 hrs throughout the week to doing the reading, and then 1.5-2 hrs for the live meetings. You are not required to do anything, but if you want to have the best experience, that is what I recommend. If you want to learn at your own pace, the recordings will be available as well.

Q4: Am I required to do anything if I join?

Your level of participation is completely up to you. Joining gives you access to the content and spaces, but how much or how little you choose to engage with it is your choice. This is not military training.

Q5: Are there any pre-requisites?

You will need to be fluent in English and also be a human being. That’s all. Actually, one more thing — don’t be an a**hole.

Q6: Are The Readings Provided?

Yes. Everything will be provided through a private Google Drive folder. I will also give you recommended resources for further learning.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me directly.

Thanks for reading.

-Paul

We saw last week that the initial project of analyzing Dasein came to an end with the concept of care.

But Heidegger did not want Being and Time to be merely an “anthropology”. In fact, in his later work he criticizes Being and Time with being too anthropocentric.

It was always meant to serve his ultimate mission — what he calls “fundamental ontology”.

Paragraphs 43 and 44 are where Heidegger begins to connect his analysis of Dasein to the project of fundamental ontology.

In a way, he is showing off. Heidegger is showing off how, as a result of his analysis of Dasein and careful avoidance of the traditional approaches to philosophy, he can not only reject the theories and problematics of all the major Western philosophers before him, but show that many of their problems and questions don’t even make sense and are therefore not problems at all.

In just a few pages, Heidegger tries to show that the most longstanding problems in philosophy, such as the problem of how we can know f…

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Completed Courses

Master the basics of Western philosophy in 8-weeks with a group of mature and thoughtful participants and an Ivy-League instructor.

By completing this course, you can expect to become more comfortable talking about complex philosophical ideas with others, and better at being able to think more deeply on your own. You will also be exposed to philosophical questions and problems that most people go their entire lives without ever being aware of. If there is one philosophy seminar to take, it would be Introduction To Philosophy above all others.

The pedagogical backing of this course is that philosophy should be studied and taught in a way that transforms one’s soul, activating it’s highest intellectual potential, and making an impact on lived experience. This is not knowledge or knowledge’s sake, or pure theory.

This is philosophy that can be immediately integrated with your life.

Every semester, I teach Introduction To Philosophy to a room of 75 undergraduates who pay $9,000+ per course. This seminar is the exact same content they will be learning, but for 1% of the cost. Read that again.

This course is ideal for wisdom lovers seeking a rigorous introduction to philosophy, but without needing to lock themselves in to months of meetings and hundreds of hours of reading. The goal here is high-impact with optional depth. If you want to go deep, there will be plenty of opportunities to do that as well. Also, you can cancel anytime if its not for you. Nothing is required and everything will be recorded.

I will post video lectures and weekly guides to cover the basics, and then we will go deep in our weekly calls.

We start with Parmenides, who stunned the ancient world by arguing that change itself is an illusion and that reality is far stranger than it appears. Next is Plato, who asked whether the world you see is real or merely a shadow of something deeper. Aristotle, Plato’s most famous student, brought philosophy back down to earth to ask what it actually means to live well and flourish.

From there we cross into modernity with Descartes, who tore everything down to a single unshakable certainty—I think, therefore I am—and rebuilt knowledge from the ground up. Kant revealed that the mind isn’t a passive mirror of the world but actively shapes everything we experience. Nietzsche took a hammer to our most cherished beliefs and famously declared that God is dead and challenged posterity to create their own values in a universe that hands us none. Finally, Heidegger confronts what he takes to be the most fundamental question of all — what does it mean to be?

Course Details

• When: 8 Weeks (July 25- September 12)

• Where: Online

• (Session 1) Saturday mornings 12pm (EST/EDT); (Session 2) Wednesday mornings 7AM (EST/EDT)

• How To Join: When you upgrade to a paid subscription you receive complete access to The Micro-University which includes this course + all previous courses, a private community chat, and additional learning resources.

  Upgrade To Paid

8 Week Syllabus

In this course, you will read: Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and De Beauvoir.

Eight monumental thinkers in the Western tradition.

Here is the complete schedule:

• Week 1 — Parmenides: Is Change an Illusion? Reading: The fragments of On Nature (the surviving lines of the poem, especially “The Way of Truth”).

  • Focus: Being vs. becoming, the claim that “what is” cannot change, and the birth of metaphysics as rigorous argument.

• Week 2 — Plato: The World Behind the World Reading: Republic, Book VII (the Allegory of the Cave); selections from Book VI (the Divided Line).

  • Focus: Appearance vs. reality, the Forms, and what it means to be “freed” into knowledge.

• Week 3 — Aristotle: How to Live Well Reading: Nicomachean Ethics, Books I and II.

  • Focus: Eudaimonia (flourishing), virtue as a mean, and habit as the path to character.

• Week 4 — Descartes: Tearing It All Down Reading: Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations I and II.

  • Focus: Radical doubt, the cogito (”I think, therefore I am”), and rebuilding knowledge from certainty.

• Week 5 — Kant: The Mind That Shapes the World Reading: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (selections); Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Section I.

  • Focus: How the mind structures experience, and the categorical imperative as the foundation of morality.

• Week 6— Nietzsche: Creating Your Own Values Reading: The Gay Science §§108–125 (including “The Madman”); Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue.

  • Focus: The death of God, nihilism, and the task of creating meaning for yourself.

• Week 7 — Heidegger: What Does It Mean to Be? Reading: Being and Time, Introduction (§§1–8) and the sections on Being-toward-death (§§46–53).

  • Focus: The question of Being, authenticity, and how mortality gives life its weight.

• Week 8 — Simone De Beauvoir: How To Live Authentically Reading: The Ethics of Ambiguity

  • Focus: Authentic vs. inauthentic responses to the problem of free choice

Private Community

When you enroll in The Micro-University, you will be pleased to know that you are entering an already thriving community of serious intellectuals who are willing to not just show up every week, but to have actually read the material.

For the past several months, we have been working through some of the most challenging texts in the history of philosophy — Heidegger’s Being and Time and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil.

All of that work has built a real intellectual community that is here to stay.

We would love for you to be a part of it.

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The aim of this week’s guide is to start to tie together the various strands of thinking Heidegger has been spinning out through Being and Time. We will have the complete picture before us very soon.

Chapter VI is the last chapter of Division One, so we should expect some kind of resolution.

The first point to remember is that as being-in-the-world, Dasein is a unity, a whole. We cannot “split the phenomenon” as Heidegger has put it. We cannot separate subject from object, or mind from world.

The primary question in Chapter VI is this:

How is the whole of being-in-the-world to be disclosed?

A secondary question is:

How is it to be defined?

Heidegger’s answer to the first question is found primarily in paragraph 40 of Chapter VI on anxiety (Angst). Heidegger’s answer to the second question is care (Sorge).

In the second half of Chapter VI, Heidegger presents what are essentially to “mini-essays” — self-standing investigations on reality and truth. We will get to that next time. For now…

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They try to do it alone.

They don’t know where to start or what to read.

They are constantly doubting whether they understand what they’ve learned, or are completely making a mess of it.

If you want to learn the basics of philosophy quickly and develop the ability to confidently articulate big ideas, think for yourself, and stop doing everything alone, then the simplest way to do that is to take a proper introduction to philosophy course with other people and actually do the work from start to finish.

Although you can learn pretty much anything on your own thanks to the internet, there are three problems with this:

1. The information is scattered and packaged into edutainment videos — not a real curriculum that delivers a complete narrative experience.

2. There are no feedback mechanisms to help you see whether you are getting it.

3. Learning without a community is way less fun and can be very lonely (people tell me this all of the time).

Autodidacticism is awesome, but it’s not for everyone. I think part of the reason its so popular is that there aren’t many places where people can go for real community learning. I am also tired of seeing people spend thousands of hours consuming content that isn’t really helping them develop as philosophers or independent thinkers. In that same time, you could read and understand real philosophy books and skip the shortcuts that are actually slowing you down.

To fix that, I decided to create my own Introduction To Philosophy course that is the exact same material I will be teaching to a group of Ivy-League students over the summer. It drives me crazy that this content is inaccessible to the average adult learner who is honestly more interested in the material than my students. Instead, it is locked behind the walls of the ivory tower, jacked up in price, and only made available to 18-21 year olds. My hope is that by bringing a real Introduction To Philosophy course to Substack, it can make a significant impact on people’s lives and help them actually learn rather than consume interesting information.

The main problem with internet education is that it is all input and very little output. It doesn’t matter if high-quality information goes into the system of your mind, it matters what you do with it. Most “courses” are just a series of videos. Input, input, input. But the key question is, “what do I do with this information?”. That is the gap I am trying to fill. To not only make philosophy accessible to you, but to help guide you in figuring out how to integrate it with your life so that it can actually make a difference.

Taking introduction to philosophy completely changed my life as a college freshman. It was the most incredible intellectual experience I have ever had. I remember sitting in the front of a large lecture hall at Rutgers University, absolutely awestruck by the words that were coming out of my professor’s mouth. I had never heard anyone speak like this man before. I wanted to understand what he was saying so badly. I have been trying to understand it for 15+ years since then, and it has been the greatest source of joy in my life. Also, we already have an awesome community here on Substack at The Micro-University. We have been having a blast meeting every week for months to discuss existentialism, and I would love for you to meet everyone.

If this sounds like something you would benefit from, the rest of this email contains everything you need to know about the course. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

Introduction To Philosophy

Course Description

Despite countless attempts, philosophy will never be reduced to a single definition or method. It is part of the essence of philosophy that it perpetually eludes us and pulls us into areas of thought that are fascinating, wondrous, uncertain, and free. In that way, philosophy is like love. It is infinite, never complete, and utterly compelling. This makes it incredibly difficult to introduce philosophy to beginners, since you are introducing them to an experience, attitude, or way of living more than anything else. Philosophy is not a regular academic discipline or body of knowledge. There are no established facts or theories. The methods are all up for debate. At the same time, philosophy is not arbitrary or merely subjective. Philosophy is the serious attempt to make sense of life’s most important and most difficult questions. It is the restless and exhilarating pursuit of wonder, curiosity, and meaning. In a sentence, it is the pursuit of ultimate truth. Like many of life’s most unique experiences, it is simply something that you can’t fully understand unless you get your hands dirty and experience it for yourself. Understanding philosophy, then, requires a kind of conversion or transformative experience.

In this course, I have taken a traditional approach to introducing philosophy for two reasons. First, it is what worked for me. When I read these thinkers, I was completely blown away and have not stopped thinking about them since. Even though there are many different ways to initiate newcomers to the world of philosophy, I figured it’s best to stick to what I know can work. But, it’s important to note that these thinkers will not resonate with everyone in the same way. For some, they will never resonate. For others, they will not resonate at this point in your life. I have often found myself finding renewed interest in thinkers who I previously dismissed. Your interests and assumptions will change as your life changes. Philosophy will become much easier and enjoyable once you recognize the value of radically changing your mind when presented with good reasons for doing so. That doesn’t make you a hypocrite, but wise. The second reason is that many people interested in philosophy are often held back in their progress by having an incomplete grasp on the tradition that they are either trying to learn, or to resist. Either way, if you hate it or love it, knowing the tradition at a general level is absolutely essential to avoid feeling stuck, perpetual self-doubt, and imposter syndrome as you progress deeper into the world of ideas. Even a basic familiarity with the giants of the field can help orient you regardless of what your interests are. For example, many people are interested in 20th and 21st century feminist philosophy. But if you go read the classics of feminist philosophy, you might get tripped up on their references to thinkers like Plato and Aristotle if you haven’t learned the basics of Greek philosophy. So if you really want to understand where certain foundational figures are coming from, it can often be very beneficial to have a sense of what they read and reacted to. To that end, this course provides a kind of “greatest hits” of philosophers in the Greek/European tradition.

It’s important to flag that even though this course is titled “Introduction To Philosophy”, it would be more accurate to title it “An Introduction To Philosophy”, since what it really is is an introduction to Western philosophy, or philosophy in the tradition that began in Greece and spread to Western Europe. There are many other traditions of philosophy that have been neglected or misrepresented for all sorts of stupid reasons. The world of philosophy is vast. My life’s purpose is to understand as much of it as I can and help others do the same. But the way that I can best do that is by introducing you to philosophy through the thinkers I have studied the most and know well before branching out into new areas (something I am constantly working on). So, in this course, you can expect to receive a general exposure to the giants of this particular tradition which has shaped the English speaking world more than any other.

In this course, you will read incredibly important and challenging texts from some of history’s most brilliant minds. I will provide video lectures that help orient you in this world of ideas and put you in a position to read the texts more intelligently on your own. I do not want to explain the texts for you, however. The goal is to create an environment and a framework in which you can train the muscles of philosophy yourself, and avoid basic misunderstandings or annoyances that make studying philosophy alone difficult. There will also be optional activities and exercises to check your comprehension and depth of understanding. Finally, during our live sessions, we have the opportunity to really dig into the details together and also engage in intellectual free play by entertaining unique questions and exploring the connections between our mutual bodies of knowledge and life experience. Some of the big questions we will explore in this course are:

What is knowledge? How should you live your life? What does it mean to be a good human being? What is the ultimate nature of reality? What does it mean to exist?

Prerequisites

Being a human being. Life experience. The English language. No prior philosophy or schooling required.

Course Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Understand what distinguishes philosophy from other disciplines.

2. Explain major philosophical concepts, theories, and thinkers including ancient and modern, and compare their answers.

3. Interpret and critically evaluate philosophical texts attending to both their arguments and their practical implications for human life.

4. Situate philosophical views within their historical and cultural contexts, explaining how different conceptions of philosophy emerge in response to specific existential and social conditions.

5. Demonstrate philosophical self-reflection through writing, using philosophy as a tool for self-examination, clarification of values, and adopting a practical orientation toward life.

6. Discuss complex philosophical ideas with other people and engage in real dialogue.
   

Course Expectations

You will be expected to maintain a consistent reading habit and come to the live sessions prepared to engage in intellectually challenging and personally transformative activities.

This is not for someone looking to consume information for the sake of intellectual pleasure alone — there are plenty of Youtube videos optimized for that. If you give this course your full effort you are likely to remember it for the rest of their lives as one of the most impactful and transformative intellectual experiences you have ever had.

Course Schedule

How To Join

If you were interested in participating in this experience, the first step is to fill out the interest form by following this link.

I will get back to you once you fill that out.

Thanks for reading. I hope to see you soon.

-Paul

Ivy-League instruction, guided learning, and a genuine community.

It’s all here.

The Problem With Universities

Universities have become educational buffets.

Their expenses are out of control — which means their students end up paying $50,000+.

They offer everything to everyone in order to lure in aimless youths— meaning that students eventually end up paying for things they don’t actually want or use.

They don’t specialize in doing one thing excellently — meaning that the educational quality fluctuates from class to class.

Many universities have forgotten that their main purpose and priority should be education, not research.

I am convinced that it is now possible for individuals to receive a similar or in some cases better education online and for less than 1% of the cost of a traditional degree.

How is this possible?

It is possible because platforms like Substack have helped highly qualified content creators and writers identify the exact needs and interests of their audience and design courses that are specifically tailored to give them what they want.

What’s more is that these courses can be offered without needing to build any buildings, pay for utilities, security guards, or administrative staff.

This means that they cost virtually nothing when compared to their university counterparts.

Critics will argue that the in-person element and community aspect of universities is irreplaceable.

Maybe.

But is it worth an extra $5,000 per course? Or $25,000 per year?

Entire companies are run through Zoom and Google Meet.

I created The Micro-University to serve as a platform that allows me to teach the exact same or better content that I teach at elite universities, but without the absurd paywall and gatekeeping practices of the modern university.

My goal is to offer a lean and high-quality education experience that cuts out all of the middleman and unnecessary costs and deliver real learning directly to the student.

If that is something you are intersted in, you can learn more about it below.

Modern technology has made it possible for a single individual to reach thousands of students around the world interested in studying philosophy and deliver a high-quality education without incurring massive costs (buildings, employee benefits, marketing, etc.).

Over the past few years, I have secretly been training myself to be in a position to do this by developing a broad knowledge of philosophy across multiple sub-fields in order to see the macro-patterns.

I became a philosophical generalist.

By forcing myself to teach new subjects every semester, I had to develop a special ability to learn new things through relying on pattern recognition and frameworks that allowed me to contextualize new information based on what I previously studied.

Here is a list of complete courses I have taught since starting my PhD:

Intro To Philosophy, Existentialism, Philosophy As The Art Of Living, Aesthetics, Ancient Greek Philosophy, Philosophy: East and West, Intro To Ethics, Social Contract, Bioethics, Justice, Law, and Morality, Ethics and Society, Scientific Reasoning, Philosophy of Law, Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Space and Time.

I have never forgotten the struggle it took to get to this point.

The struggle to read, the struggle to write, and the struggle to understand and enjoy philosophy.

I am creating this school to help people in the same way I remember that I needed help.

To get rid of the stupid roadblocks and questions that people are too afraid to ask, but that actually prevent them from progressing.

I want to explain everything that holds people back.

The title of the book. That random French word that makes you anxious. Whatever little thing it is that is “getting in the way”.

I also want to teach philosophy in a way that avoids turning it into a passive consumption machine.

Everything will be framed and presents as being direct towards using or integrating what you learn with your own life.

The general frame behind the whole university is philosophy for living (a return to the ancient philosophical schools of Athens).

That will add a unique twist to all of my courses.

Even the most abstract.

Everyone needs a good teacher, someone they can struggle with and grow with. I may or may not be able to be that for you. Honestly, a lot of that depends on the right fit and personalities coming together. But I am going to try. And I am not going to charge you tens of thousands of dollars to roll the dice for each class.

If you want to give it a shot, I would love to have you on board.

Information and knowledge have become commodities.

The future of humanity will reward perspective and creativity.

The aims and incentives are mass education are not your own, they are social, political, and economic.

The system wasn’t made for you!

No one is willing to go slow enough.

To do it the right way.

To take intellectual risks, to feel the tension of personal growth, and to transform.

We have replaced spiritual transformation with information consumption.

Mainstream education has been captured by the pursuit of wealth which forces it to become a new form of job training in order to justify it’s absurd costs.

When education becomes economic training, intellectual and spiritual development become secondary.

Some course and concepts are better suited for a self-paced experience, whereas other more advanced courses require a hands-on interactive learning experience akin to a college seminar.

My idea is to eventually have an entire curriculum in place where students can learn everything they would learn at a university if they were to study philosophy. At the beginning of the curriculum would be introductory self-paced courses. As students progress they would “unlock” advanced seminars. Over the course of a year or two, you will have received the equivalent of a B.A. in philosophy.

How To Access The Micro-University

You can gain complete access to The Micro-University by upgrading to a paid subscription to The Micro-Philosopher Substack.

Upgrade To Paid

Membership to The Micro-University will give you access to the following:

• Weekly live classes

• Class recordings (including a complete course on Nietzsche and Heidegger)

• Exclusive learning resources (handouts, guides, book recommendations)

• Private course chat (ask questions, learn together, join a community)

Current Live Courses

Introduction To Philosophy: July 25-Sept. 12

This 8-Week introduction to philosophy is the exact same content that I will be teaching to my Ivy-League students over the summer, but offered to you for a 1% of the cost.

This course is ideal for students seeking a rigorous introduction to philosophy in a short period of time without needing to commitment thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours to understanding these great ideas.

For 8 weeks, we will dive deep into the greatest philosophical minds of the Western tradition and work through their texts together.

I will post video lectures to cover the basics, and then we will go deep in our weekly calls.

We start with Parmenides, who stunned the ancient world by arguing that change itself is an illusion and that reality is far stranger than it appears. Next is Plato, who asked whether the world you see is real or merely a shadow of something deeper. Aristotle, Plato’s most famous student, brought philosophy back down to earth to ask what it actually means to live well and flourish. Marcus Aurelius turns philosophy inward, showing how a Roman emperor used Stoic discipline to stay grounded amid power, grief, and the certainty of death.

From there we cross into modernity with Descartes, who tore everything down to a single unshakable certainty—I think, therefore I am—and rebuilt knowledge from the ground up. Kant revealed that the mind isn’t a passive mirror of the world but actively shapes everything we experience. Nietzsche took a hammer to our most cherished beliefs and famously declared that God is dead and challenged posterity to create your own values in a universe that hands you none. Finally, Heidegger confronts what he takes to be the most fundamental question of all — what does it mean to be?

Course Details

• When: 8 Weeks (July 27- September 12), Saturday mornings 12pm (EDT/EST)

• Where: Online

• How To Join: You can join the waitlist here to reserve your spot before July 27.

8 Week Syllabus

In this course, you will read: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

Eight monumental thinkers in the Western tradition.

Here is the complete schedule:

• Week 1 — Parmenides: Is Change an Illusion? Reading: The fragments of On Nature (the surviving lines of the poem, especially “The Way of Truth”).

  • Focus: Being vs. becoming, the claim that “what is” cannot change, and the birth of metaphysics as rigorous argument.

• Week 2 — Plato: The World Behind the World Reading: Republic, Book VII (the Allegory of the Cave); selections from Book VI (the Divided Line).

  • Focus: Appearance vs. reality, the Forms, and what it means to be “freed” into knowledge.

• Week 3 — Aristotle: How to Live Well Reading: Nicomachean Ethics, Books I and II.

  • Focus: Eudaimonia (flourishing), virtue as a mean, and habit as the path to character.

• Week 4 — Marcus Aurelius: Philosophy as Practice Reading: Meditations, Books II, IV, and V (selections).

  • Focus: Stoic discipline, control vs. acceptance, mortality, and living according to nature.

• Week 5 — Descartes: Tearing It All Down Reading: Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations I and II.

  • Focus: Radical doubt, the cogito (”I think, therefore I am”), and rebuilding knowledge from certainty.

• Week 6 — Kant: The Mind That Shapes the World Reading: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (selections); Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Section I.

  • Focus: How the mind structures experience, and the categorical imperative as the foundation of morality.

• Week 7 — Nietzsche: Creating Your Own Values Reading: The Gay Science §§108–125 (including “The Madman”); Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue.

  • Focus: The death of God, nihilism, and the task of creating meaning for yourself.

• Week 8 — Heidegger: What Does It Mean to Be? Reading: Being and Time, Introduction (§§1–8) and the sections on Being-toward-death (§§46–53).

  • Focus: The question of Being, authenticity, and how mortality gives life its weight.

Private Community

When you enroll in The Micro-University, you will be pleased to know that you are entering an already thriving community of serious intellectuals who are willing to not just show up every week, but to have actually read the material.

For the past several months, we have been working through some of the most challenging texts in the history of philosophy — Heidegger’s Being and Time and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil.

All of that work has built a real intellectual community that is here to stay.

We would love for you to be a part of it.

Past Courses

Heidegger’s Being And Time

The most important philosophical work of the 20th century is also one of the most difficult — Being and Time.

(You can access the course syllabus here)

Being and Time is a work perfectly suited for modern life.

It helps us think about our relationship to existence itself, the technological world, anxiety, death, authenticity and, most importantly, other people.

The internet craves depth, genuine thinking, and intellectual community. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer places someone interested in these things can go (not even most universities). This course is somewhere you can to go to challenge yourself intellectually, learn real philosophy (straight to the source), learn how to read philosophy in a hands-on way, discuss the text with others, and learn together.

I want this course to address those very real spiritual and intellectual needs and help beginners actually finish one of the truly great works in the history of philosophy.

Who Is This Course For?

I want to be clear that this course is for beginners.

This is not a space for someone to show off how much philosophy they have read and make others feel behind.

At the same time, this is also not a space for people who want to sit back and have me explain everything to them so that they don’t have to do any real thinking for themselves.

This is an intensive and interactive learning experience — not a series of lectures or videos.

We will be going through Being and Time together, line-by-line.

We will be interacting with each other. Asking questions. Sharing interpretations. Making exciting intellectual connections. Forming an intellectual mastermind.

This course is for anyone looking for one of the greatest intellectual challenges of their life — something that they will remember forever.

There is so much philosophy online today that tries to make things so incredibly simple and easy that people are left yearning for the real deal.

This is the real deal.

You are not going to understand everything. In fact, I am not going to understand everything.

But we are going to make serious progress together.

(You can access the course syllabus here)

The course will end when we finish section 66 of Being and Time (roughly 380 pages).

This could take a while because we are going to go at the pace necessary to actually understand and learn the material, not simplify and skip over it. Even if you don’t make it to the end, each lesson will be valuable on its own because you will be practicing and improving your philosophical reading, thinking, and discussion skills in a very real way with me as your guide.

(You can access the course syllabus here).

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude To A Philosophy Of The Future”

This course is an in-depth, chapter by chapter reading of Nietzsche’s groundbreaking book.

Nietzsche writes that:

“This book is in every essential a critique of modernity; modern sciences, modern arts, even modern politics are not excluded. Besides this, it is an indication of an opposing type, which is as un-modern as possible, a noble, yes-saying type”

Future Courses

The Micro-University will be structured around two tiers of courses.

The first-tier are self-paced courses that are introductory and will cover the basic curriculum of a philosophy bachelor’s degree.

The second-tier are small seminar-style courses that are more advanced and focused on specific books, philosophers, or niche topics.

Introductory Courses

PHIL 1: Introduction To Philosophy

PHIL 2: Introduction To Thinking

PHIL 3: Introduction To Greek Philosophy

PHIL 4: Introduction To Modern Philosophy

PHIL 5: Introduction To Contemporary Philosophy

Advanced Courses

• Heidegger’s Being and Time (Currently Live) ✅

• Marx and Marxism ⏩️

• Philosophy of Economics (expected December 2026) ⏩️

• Philosophy of Technology (expected December 2026) ⏩️

• Nietzsche (Completed; Recordings Available) ✅

• Hegel ⏩️

• Adam Smith ⏩️

• Late Wittgenstein ⏩️

• Kierkegaard ⏩️

• Dostoevsky ⏩️

• Nihilism and the “Death of God” ⏩️

• The Philosophy of Pain ⏩️

• The Philosophy of Pleasure ⏩️

• Meta-philosophy ⏩️

In studying and teaching Heidegger, I have found that there are different ways to explain what he’s on about. Some of these click for certain readers, and others don’t. I hope that this one clicks for everyone.

According to Critchley, Chapter V of Division One provides a “conceptual infrastructure or undergirding to everything” in Being and Time. It is a long chapter, with a lot of moving parts.

The goal is to prepare us for the definition of the being of Dasein as “care” in chapter VI. The definition of Dasein as care is the primary aim of Division One.

The good news? Critchley says that “everything — even in Heidegger and even in Being and Time — can be said clearly. Anyone who says otherwise is bullshitting you”.

The …

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