Introduction to the History of Philosophy

Course content

This course purports to introduce students to the views of the most important figures in the history of western philosophy. It starts with the ancient period including basically the most important ideas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. After a short overview of the medieval philosophy, the course continues with the modern period. This period includes continental rationalists, such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz on the one hand, and British empiricists like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume on the other. It ends with expounding the most basic views of Kant who is supposed to have synthesized rationalism and empiricism. The last part of the course is devoted to the contemporary period including figures from the continental Europe such as Husserl and Heidegger as well as those belonging to the analytic school such as Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine.