Philosophy

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. This course aims to give an understanding of American intellectual history though its philosophy and literature. The American psyche was forged through republicanism, revolution, religion and the unique impact of the American wilderness. European ideas met the challenge of a new context and were reshaped by that context. We travel from the Colonial period,... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. Science is a ‘methodology’: a particular way of observing and explaining the world, of answering the one big question: “What must the world be like, in order that it produce the phenomena we observe?” This Language and Logic of Science course is part one of a four part Philosophy for Science series which elaborates the ‘language’ of Science – the meaning of... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. Over the last few decades no area of aesthetics has grown and expanded as rapidly as the philosophy of music, producing new insights into one of humanities most beloved art forms. In this second part of the course we will cover contemporary theories in psychology, cognitive science and music education. Philosophers in contemporary theory of music are... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. Science is a ‘methodology’: a particular way of observing and explaining the world, of answering the one big question: “What must the world be like, in order that it produce the phenomena we observe?” This course is part two of a four part Philosophy for Science series which applies the language and logic of Science to the task of distilling from our... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. This philosophy course provides participants with an understanding of the history of philosophy and the major contribution philosophy has made to areas of thought, such as political theory, ethics, aesthetics and the sciences. This introduction to philosophy course encourages the development of critical thinking and the use of informal logic techniques. In... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. Darwin, Marx, Freud, Mill, Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky. What a century! There are so many towering intellects to choose from it is difficult to decide who has had the most impact on the twentieth and twenty first century. Marx utterly transformed political theory and political reality; Darwin’s evolutionary theory has affected almost every area of science and... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. Some think we are witnessing the emergence of a crisis within, if not the death of, democracy itself. What are the philosophical bases of democracy? What are the major threats to it in the 21st century? What is the meaning and function of the emerging discourse of “post-truth”? And why does it matter? These questions are important ones and require cogent... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. Post-truth is the disregard for truth even when empirical evidence and good reasoning have shown some ‘fact’ to be unlikely; it is a mental attitude which makes evidence secondary in the formation of beliefs. In this course we will study the philosophy and psychology of truth, belief states, Relativism and Skepticism. Skepticism has suffered criticism because... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. The Occupy Wall Street movement is a powerful contemporary anarchist movement which has reinvigorated the theoretical debate about the merits of philosophical Anarchism. David Graeber, an organizer of the movement, and political philosopher has sparked a raging debate with philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek (described by the New Republic as the “most dangerous... [More]

Philosophy. Open to everyone. Learn about philosophy the smart way with Philosophy courses at CCE, The University of Sydney. What is the nature of compassion? Why is it important? Can it be taught (or learned)? We answer these questions with reference to the work of leading thinkers from western and Buddhist philosophical traditions including Kant and Nietzsche, Russell and Martha Nussbaum, and recent thought provoking neuroscientific research into compassion (and empathy). Aims We... [More]