Halkyon Academy
What is Philosophy?
Online Course
What is the method of philosophy? Does philosophy even have a method? If philosophy is without a method, how is it different from mere opinion, rhetorical subterfuge and intuitive mysticism? How do we come to know about knowing?
In this course we will think with several philosophers about the method of philosophy. We will explore how philosophizing is implicit in our daily life. We will glimpse how the history of philosophy forms a specific thread of self-developing, and increasingly explicit, ideas. How philosophical conceptions differ from mathematical, natural scientific and social conceptions. How the concepts used in philosophy fundamentally overlap with each other and come to shape a scale of forms.
The basic text for the course will be An Essay on Philosophical Method, by the British philosopher, historian, and archeologist R. G. Collingwood. This will be supplemented with excerpts from the works of Hegel, Aristotle, Anselm, Hume and Kant.