Who is this course for?
Welcome to Fikr Education's Course on Comprehensive Philosophy.
I have made this course for people who have no prior experience of reading philosophy or who want simple and functional explanations and summaries of all the major philosophical concepts and famous philosophers. The curriculum is for students taking competitive exams as this curriculum will touch all the basics and go into details only where necessary instead of only deep diving into the viral interesting concepts. The goal is to provide a comprehensive education instead of just collecting interesting factoids. However, if you are not a student and you do not have the time to study philosophers from official sources such as degree programs; this is going to be a great stepping-stone.
My goal is to tell you about all the major philosophers and all the major positions in philosophy. Then you have the context and the confidence to do some of your own philosophy. You may come to the same conclusion as one of our subjects, you may create a hybrid philosophy, or you may even create something new. Everything is possible and welcome.
There is plenty of handholding, examples, and my own thoughts and assumptions added to the mix to make the content more palatable and useful. The plan is to introduce the historical context of a philosopher. I will tell you about the world that philosopher grew up in and what made them tick. Then what problems they wanted to solve, and what they tried to say. Finally, I will tell you whether their philosophy makes any sense or not.
I will prioritize telling you their conclusions, not how they got there. Hence, there will be some points in this course where I will say Descartes believes statement X and do not ask me why and how. This will only happen a few times, and I will make the executive decision to preserve my sanity and make sure this course is not a million words long. However, most of the time, there will be explanations on why Kant said Y and why Spinoza said Z.
Last disclaimer, this course will contain my own interpretations and assumptions about the philosophers. When I say Spinoza was depressed and lonely, I do not know for sure but his conclusions make a lot more sense if he was depressed. So, not all of this is going to be Gospel. There are going to be facts and then there are going to be my thoughts about them. I hope my approach will help you make up your own thoughts about them.
The Course Plan
Now let us look at the plan about what are we going to study, whom we are going to study, and in what order. I have designed the course to be mostly chronological but not always.
Phase 1 - The Introduction
The first portion introduces philosophy itself to provide you with the context about what to expect when we look at what philosophers philosophize about. For example, we will look at metaphysics where we talk about what exists. Our focus is going to be on building up our vocabulary such as metaphysics, epistemology, and teleology. We will also be overviewing the major positions philosophers have taken over the course of history such as idealism, realism, rationalism, empiricism, and more.
Phase 2 - The Greek Philosophers
The start of our journey begins with the birth of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This will introduce you to the terms Socratic Method, Deductive Method, Substance, Essence, Causation, and more. We will also be looking at and comparing the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and their impacts on the modern world.
Phase 3 - Muslim Philosophers
After Aristotle, we will make over a 1000 years jump to Muslim Philosophical thought. We will look at the early Muslim Philosophers of Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Al-Ghazali, and Ibn Rushd. We will see how they mixed Islam with Greek philosophy to create the Muslim Philosophical Thought. There will also be a touch of their political philosophy as well. Overall, we will explore metaphysics, epistemology, and specifically causation and with just a hint of induction. We will also go over the differences in metaphysics and epistemology of the four Islamic schools of thought as well as see Mutazilites, Asharites, Atharites, and the school of Kalam in general.
Phase 4 - The Birth of Modern Philosophy
After the classic Muslim philosophers, the Islamic Golden Age and the Dark Ages both ended, and we make a 500-year jump to the eruption of modern philosophy with Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Here, you will see many of the concepts revamped. Idealism turns into Subjective Idealism, Realism into Representative Realism, Plato's dualism turns to Descartes' dualism, Sufi Pantheism turns to Spinoza's pantheism, and finally, Hume's Skepticism puts a pin in everything.
Phase 5 - German Idealism
After Hume's Skepticism comes German Idealism with Kant, Hegel, and Marx. We will look at Kant's Transcendental Idealism, which was a paradigm shift. Then we will look at Hegel's Absolute Idealism, which is another monumental discovery in the way we should look at the world as a whole. Finally, Marx's ideas on Historical Materialism led to the awakening of the Worker class against the ruling class. We cannot neglect the influence of these three major figures.
Finally, we are going to look at Nietzsche and his Will to Power in this section.
Phase 6 – The Inductive Method
By the 18th century, science was already well in motion. Philosophies of Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill strongly supported science by justifying the Inductive Method as a valid approach after rejecting Aristotle’s Deductive method. This section is going to be small, but important, as inductive method is the basis of most of the modern philosophical thought.
Lastly, this section is going to look at Bergson’s intuitionism as a response to Kant and Inductive Method as well.
Phase 7 - The Politics
By trying to go in chronological order as well as keeping similar ideas together, we missed some philosophers. We will loop back to see Machiavelli's impact where his political thought brought to light the secrets of political machinations.
Then comes the Social Contract Theory and its three variations between Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Their differences charted the evolution of political thought from absolutism of Hobbes, the liberty focused Locke, and the romantic Rousseau who wanted to return to the pre-industrial times.
Phase 8 - Existentialism
The modern world looks at the value of a human completely different from say 500 or 2000 years ago. Existentialism is the concept that asks us to reconsider how we value human life. We will look at Sartre, Heidegger, and making our own meaning in this modern world. An idea that is similar to Nietzsche's but presented in the context that we exist first and then we define our essence instead of finding it.
Phase 8 - Pragmatism
At this point in philosophy, we come to a problem that there is a bunch of answers to the same question and we cannot figure out what is the right answer. We need to discuss what exactly it means for something to be true or right. Pragmatism is this exact discussion, which concludes that truth has to be useful first and other things second. We are going to discuss James, Dewey, Pierce, and Rorty but not in that much detail and nuance, a cursory glance for the sake of time. At this time, we will also be ready for A.J. Ayer's Difference Principle.
Phase 9 - Postmodernism
In this section, we are going to discuss some ideas that we now socially hold to be true. However, where did these ideas come from? We will look at Foucault's reworking of the idea "Knowledge is Power". We will also look at Derrida's Deconstructionism and ideas that there is no one meaning, everything has layers upon layers and they will just not stop. Then we will summarize Fukuyama's End of History, Karl Popper's Fallibilistic method and maybe a touch of Kierkegaard as well.
Phase 10 - Revitalized Muslim Philosophical Thought
Having reached the modern world, we will loop back to see how is Muslim Philosophical thought doing with the revivalists Shah Waliullah, Sir Syed, Iqbal, and Ali Shariati. We will look at how they all figured out similar solutions to the problem that caused the end of the Islamic Golden Age. We will also take a cursory glance at people like Jamal Uddin Afghani, Rashid Rida, and the concept of Salafism.
Phase 11 - Ethics
So far, we have discussed all the major philosophers and, where applicable, their ethical philosophies. Now it is time to review them and have a dedicated look at Ethical philosophy. We are going to ask the big and still unanswered questions of how we should behave. We will look at how religion interacts with morality. We will ask ourselves if should we follow rules, be more concerned with consequences, or should we be selfish. We will review Aristotle's Virtue Ethics, which asks us to ascribe to a balance of character traits. We will look at Kant's Deontological Ethics where he will ask us to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. We will then look at Bentham and Mill who are specifically going to ask us to look at the consequences.
Phase 12 - Revisiting major debates in philosophy
In this section, we are going to be paying individual attention to some of the major debates. I have not decided all of the debates, but we are going to be discussing the problem of freewill, the problem of evil, the mind body problem, nominal vs realism, idealism vs materialism, problem of personal identity, and presentism vs eternalism.
I will add more items in this section and revisit these sections as new ideas come to mind.
Phase 13 - Philosophy and the Modern World
People struggle with the gap between the theoretical world of philosophy and the practical reality that unfolds around us. The question arises, "Is Philosophy even useful?” Well yes, but to know that we have to look at the impact Philosophy has had on the modern world. We will look at how different areas of our society are directly the result of different philosophers. Philosophy shapes the world around us for better or for worse and once you see the examples, you will begin to understand the importance it has in shaping the world.
For Students
For students specifically, after going through the lectures, there are thousands of MCQs prepared for you to test your understanding of concepts as well as help you memorize which quote belongs to who, who wrote which book, and so on. Welcome to Fikr Education's Course on Comprehensive Philosophy.