I’ve featured Crash Course videos before. The Green brothers (and collaborators such as Phil Plait) manage to take various subjects such as history, astronomy, politics, biology, and others many might find dry and boring, and make them interesting. Each episode is relatively short (usually under 15 minutes) but cover a lot in that time, edited to move along at a hyper and fun rate.
If you’ve read articles and posts on various philosophical topics, were mildly interested, but never felt it worth investing the time to read books on it, then their new series on philosophy might be just the thing:
The grouping of Ethics and Aesthetics together under “Value Theory” is interesting. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen that before, but it makes sense in many ways, although I can see people who think they should be approached completely differently disagreeing.
I’m sure the videos will be a repeat of stuff I’ve already read, but I plan to watch them anyway, as I’ve gotten new and valuable information from other basic sources such as Stephen West’s excellent podcast: Philosophize This.
SelfAwarePatterns 
Ethics and Aesthetics together under “Value Theory” – new to me too, but now I think of it, it seems a remarkable insight.
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Unless I’m very much mistaken, this is the field of Axiology. Philosophy is often broken down into metaphysics/ontology, epistemology and axiology. Haven’t seen the video yet so maybe this is covered there.
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I agree, although some people I know who are vitally concerned with moral philosophy would object to lumping it in the same category as whether a painting is pleasing. Lumping them together is an admission that they come from very similar places.
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I think they come from very similar places though, perhaps, the study of beauty is more systematic. 😉
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I have to admit to not being familiar with the philosophy of aesthetics. It’s more systematic than ethics?
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Actually, there’s some pretty interesting stuff out there on aesthetic systems. Schopenhauer comes immediately to mind.
That said, I was mostly taking an unfair and immature pot shot at ethics. 😉
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As Wittgenstein put it: “Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.” – Tractatus
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Thanks. One of these days I’m going to have to read the Tractatus. Although from what I’ve heard, Wittgenstein’s later work contradicted it. Still, from what I’ve heard of it, I’d find a great deal to agree with in it.
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There’s a book I’ve been meaning to read on how to reconcile Wittgenstein’s early and late works that looks really helpful – It’s called “Beyond the Tractatus Wars: The New Wittgenstein Debate”, a collection of essays on the different ways scholars have attempted to resolve (or not resolve) the classification of W.’s work into “early” and “late” periods. It looks like a great collection!
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Great! I’m looking forward to this. I enjoyed (on your recommendation) pretty much all of World History and various other Crash Course videos, and was really hoping for a Crash Course Philosophy to come about. Delighted that it finally has.
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Awesome! Glad you found them useful. I sometimes wonder if anyone pays attention to these recommendations.
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I’m really looking forward to this series. I’ve had a sort of love/hate relationship with philosophy ever since my aesthetics course in college.
Hank Green gave me a good start on chemistry, and even with topics that I think I know well, like astronomy, I still picked up a few things I didn’t know before. So I’m sure this is going to be good.
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Hank Green rocks! His explanation of the action potential in neurons was the best I’ve encountered outside of hard core neuroscience books.
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I’ll have to check that out! I don’t think I’ve seen that one.
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This is it, although you probably want to watch part 1 first. Also, be prepared to have to watch it multiple times.
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