David Egan Philosophy

An Introduction to Philosophy in Ten Dangerous Ideas

Self-Guided Course

A New Approach to Learning Philosophy

Philosophy is interested in the big questions: What is there? What can we know? How should we live? It can be difficult to know where to start with these questions.

This special self-guided course offers a new approach to learning philosophy. It invites you to engage with some of the most exciting and challenging arguments in the history of philosophy. 

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.

Course Outline

This course is built around ten arguments that have striking or unsettling consequences. Whether we accept them or not, we’ll have to think through them carefully. These arguments have been specifically chosen to showcase the wide range of styles and modes of reasoning in the history of philosophy.

Each unit of the course comes with a reading available in PDF format on the course website as well as a video lecture that helps you think through the reading. The course site also provides additional web resources connected to each reading.

For an additional fee, you can also book two one-on-one discussions with David, where you can talk through the course material together.

Read general course FAQs

Course Structure

Unit 1: Plato: Doing wrong is worse than being wronged
Unit 2: Zhuangzi: Relativizing rights and wrongs
Unit 3: The Milindapañha: There is no self
Unit 4: Ibn Tufayl: The discovery of God
Unit 5: David Hume: Causation isn’t real
Unit 6: Friedrich Nietzsche: Master morality and slave morality
Unit 7: Peter Singer: The drowning child
Unit 8: Amia Srinivasan: The right to sex
Unit 9: Myisha Cherry: The case for rage
Unit 10: Nick Bostrom: Are we living in a simulation?

Are you ready to start learning?

Book Now
All inclusive access to course readings, video lectures, and web resources. Full course access plus two hour-long one-on-one meetings with David.

$150

CAN

$350

CAN

View the first week’s video lecture for free now.

Preview the course by watching the first video lecture below

What past participants are saying

As somebody with zero prior knowledge of philosophy these ten short weeks has opened a world of thought and being for me. It was a complete package. Thank you Prof David for making this possible!
A course with you (David) is like a guided tour of intellectual treasures. It's some of the most enjoyable learning I have ever experienced.
David brings philosophy to life with humour, depth and great insight. I loved his class and will definitely take more!
Studying philosophy is not easy if you do not have the opportunity to study it in school or have a good teacher. It's even harder if you try to go at it alone. Given how rare it is to find well-structured, accessible and meaningful courses online, David's course is a lifesaver for anyone seeking to study philosophy with a qualified teacher who knows how to bring wisdom and fun into the classroom.

Contact Me

Any questions before you begin? Feel free to reach out!

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