
The course takes two basic principles as its guidelines:
1. Philosophy is an activity. It’s not simply something you learn about but something you do. This course doesn’t just teach you what other people thought. It gives you the guidance to think through their ideas yourself.
2. Philosophy is made up of arguments. What makes a philosopher great isn’t the conclusions they reach but the method by which they argue for those conclusions. This course focuses on ten arguments whose conclusions are so surprising that we’re forced to scrutinize the arguments that support them.