Learn philosophy
This page is a staged plan for learning philosophy from scratch, built for someone who has never taken a philosophy class. It moves in a fixed order: first the vocabulary a text assumes you already know, then the traditions that group thinkers together, then the individual philosophers and the books they wrote, and finally the primary texts themselves. Each stage builds on the last, so working through them in order makes the primary texts in the final stage far easier to read than starting with them cold. Every concept, tradition, and philosopher here links to real sources, mostly the Stanford and Internet Encyclopedias of Philosophy, so you can check any claim and read further.
Stage 1. Learn the vocabulary
Finish this stage able to define about fifteen core philosophical terms in your own words and explain, in two sentences, why each one matters.
Work through the concepts one at a time. Read the definition here, then read one cited source linked to that concept. Close both and write a two-sentence explanation of the concept from memory. If you cannot do it without looking back, reread the source and try again.
Stage 2. Map the schools
Finish this stage able to name each tradition's period, its core claims, and which thinkers belong to it.
Read each tradition's summary and core claims, then read at least one cited source. Traditions argue with each other more than they stand alone, so notice the pairs: nihilism as the crisis existentialism responds to, empiricism against rationalism, utilitarianism against deontology.
Stage 3. Meet the thinkers
Finish this stage with a working map of thirteen philosophers: their dates, their central arguments, and which of their books to read first.
Read each philosopher's overview and note the recommended starting work. Read at least one cited source per philosopher before moving on to their primary texts in the next stage.
Stage 4. Go to the sources
Finish this stage having read one complete primary text, not a summary of one.
Start with whichever philosopher interested you most in the earlier stages. Five texts, Plato's Republic, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and Epictetus' Enchiridion, are already in this app's Archive tab with their full text. For anything else, Project Gutenberg holds most public-domain philosophy in full, for free.
