What is real?

How can we know what is real? How might we live authentically? These are the three fundamental questions about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. John Macready guides you through these questions by reading three pairs of philosophers and texts.

Part I: Metaphysics

Plato's Sophist and Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy.

Part II: Epistemology

Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.

Part III: Ethics

Nietzsche's ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ and Arendt's ‘Labor, Work, and Action’.

Each chapter introduces you to basic philosophical problems, concepts, and methods of philosophical inquiry. You’ll learn how to read and understand these key texts so that you can answer these three questions for yourself.