Welcome!

Hi there.

Welcome to Philosophy 102, taught by Adam Norman.
This webpage is where you can download the readings and materials for each week.

This course will be very, very hard. Learning philosophy is a lot like learning another language: philosophers use words in very unusual ways, and they address problems you won’t be familiar with.

If you’re going to succeed, you’ll need to strategize:

  1. Do the readings each and every time.
  2. Do the readings again.
  3. Read some secondary sources if you still don’t get it.
    1. I like the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and
    2. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Let me be frank: most students don’t read enough. This course, more than almost any other, demands that you read a lot. And the readings are hard. They will be harder to understand than anything you’ve done before. No, seriously. I’ll help explain the readings, but please consider whether or not you like spending a lot of time with books before you sign up.

Also, let me get this out of the way: Philosophy is probably not what you think it is. Philosophy is not:

  1. Zen
  2. Nostradamus
  3. Astrology
  4. Mysticism
  5. Religion
  6. Self Help

Properly done, philosophy is not cool. If you’re signing up because you want to, you know, get all like philosophical, and write songs, and be Zen, and be attractive and profound and drink beer and think, you’re in the wrong place. Philosophers spend a lot of time in libraries researching really obscure crap that nobody in their right mind would care about. There will be no guitars, tea ceremonies, or motorcycles in this class.

Now, if that hasn’t put you off, let me tell you that there is (in my very biased opinion) nothing more wonderful and more rewarding than the study of philosophy. If you let it, philosophy will blow your mind.