Philosophy for Beginners

This podcast serves as an okay introduction to philosophy, but it becomes rather bland fairly fast. A lot of what the professor speaks on begins with profound questions and quickly winds its way into sophist territory. That is, she’s good at presenting words in a manner than sounds much more complex than they really are and often only jumbles up a conversation about already confusing topics. Made me think, but I’ve gotten more from this podcast from taking the topics and discussing them with others than I do from their own discussion of topics.

Perfect introduction to philosophy’ *If you have questions the professor will respond to you on twitter* If you think you might be into philosophy give it a whirl. If you think philosophy is for pretentious nerds (you’re mostly correct) but you should also give this a whirl. It’s delightful, thought provoking, and she’s British what’s not to love?! That said, if you’re looking to use this more as a class go ahead and watch her video recordings of these same lectures (on oxfords website and youtube) take notes, and make a list of terms, cause other wise oof. Marianne goes fast, this was never meant to be a podcast to teach philosophy it is an old lecture recording Oxford was cool enough to publish.

I appreciate the professor’s knowledge and enthusiasm. I also appreciate the fact that she’s trying to make the course interesting and not pedantic. However, in the process she jumps around from idea to idea so much that it’s difficult to take away a coherent lesson in philosophy. The professor encourages the students to engage from an intuitive perspective, but since they have no training in philosophy, their comments are usually misguided and of no consequence for the listener. This is surely a fun course in person, but it does not work as a podcast. The worst thing about the lectures is that I CAN’T HEAR THE STUDENTS, SO THE PROFESSOR’S TALK BECOMES FRAGMENTED AND LOSES MEANING SINCE YOU ONLY HEAR HALF THE CONVERSATION. A discussion section does not work as a podcast. Since you can’t give all participants a professional microphone, only lectures make good podcasts.

Because the lecturer doesn’t repeat the audience questions a great deal of the lecture is missed. Also she doesn’t describe what is being pointed to or drawn by her on the board. Probably stimulating in person but these technical issues impact the quality.