Week 1 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 1 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 81–96 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–20 min total)

• What is Philosophy? — 1000-Word Philosophy
• Socrates: The Examined Life — Philosophy Nerd Lady
• Why Was Socrates Executed - A Brief Summary of The Trial and Death of Socrates: Greek Philosophy — The Life Academy

① What philosophy is, and how its branches divide

Chapter 1, Section “Map the six branches of philosophy” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The six branches” · Remember: philosophy examines fundamental questions by careful argument, and this course sorts those questions into six branches.

• What is Philosophy?: Crash Course Philosophy #1 — CrashCourse — a quick, lively tour of what philosophy asks that science alone does not; it groups the field as metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory (with ethics and aesthetics inside value theory) and calls logic the philosopher's toolbox, so as you watch, map each of its groups onto the chapter's six branches. Use it while working through the Week-1 module overview. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
• What is Philosophy? — 1000-Word Philosophy — a short essay on what sets philosophy apart from other fields and why its main method is building and testing arguments; its branches section uses four groups (logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory), so note where the chapter's political philosophy and aesthetics would sit in its scheme. (reading, 6–8 min)

② Socrates, his trial, and whose words you are reading

Chapter 1, Section “Meet Socrates through his trial” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Socrates and his trial” · Remember: Socrates wrote nothing that survives, so you read him through Plato, and a translated line uses its translator's English.

• Socrates: The Examined Life — Philosophy Nerd Lady — a short talk that opens a series on the good life with Socrates' famous line about the unexamined life, explains why he rejected wealth, power, and pleasure as the answer and tied a good life to wisdom and virtue, and ends by asking whether you agree. It quotes the line without naming a translator, so as you watch, supply the course's credit: Socrates speaks it in Plato's Apology, in Jowett's English. Treat its summary of Socrates' views, such as the claim that virtue is knowledge, as one telling of how Plato presents him. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
• Why Was Socrates Executed - A Brief Summary of The Trial and Death of Socrates: Greek Philosophy — The Life Academy — a short history of the city around the trial and of why Socrates refused to escape; it argues for one political reading of the charges, so treat its claims about hidden motives as one interpretation, and notice that it closes by laying out several readings without choosing among them. (video, 8 min) (captions: creator)
• Plato - The Apology of Socrates, Explained in Less Than 10 Minutes - @PhilAndSophia — Phil&Sophia Books That Shaped the World — a walk through the defense speech itself, from the charges to Socrates' picture of himself as a gadfly that keeps the city awake; it says Plato wrote the speech down, so as you watch, keep the chapter's habit of crediting Plato as the author and Socrates as the speaker. (video, 10 min) (captions: automatic)
• Socrates, section 2.1: Three primary sources — online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reference entry) — a reference entry's account of the three ancient writers who portray Socrates, and of why Plato's dialogues usually carry the most weight while still being Plato's own work; read section 2.1 only and skip the rest of the entry. (reading, 10–15 min)
• Apology, by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett — Project Gutenberg — the whole defense speech in Jowett's English, free to read online; search it for the word unexamined to find Q1, then say who the speaker, the author, and the translator are. (reading, 10–15 min)

③ Testing a definition, the Socratic way

Chapter 1, Section “Test a definition with a counterexample” · Session 2, Segment 5, “The Socratic method” · Remember: ask for a definition, test it with a counterexample, revise it, and test the revision again.

• The Socratic Method - Philosophy - Socrates - Debate - Dialectic — PhilosophyMT - Philosophy More Thought — a four-minute narrated explainer that breaks the method into three steps (a person offers a definition or an opinion, Socrates points out where it fails, and the two try a better one) and stresses that even when a dialogue ends without settling its question, you learn what a thing is not. Its closing remarks on eternal, unchanging truths preview Plato's theory of Forms, which Week 3 credits to Plato. It also says Socrates spoke the line about the unexamined life when he was offered a chance to escape from prison; Chapter 1 places Q1 in the Apology, his defense speech at the trial, so treat that detail as a slip to catch. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
• Socratic Method — teachphilosophy — a longer lesson that runs the method in three steps (a definition, exceptions posed as questions, a better definition) on a triangle and on a definition of justice, then gives practice cases; pause before each answer it gives and find your own counterexample first. (video, 13 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Socrates, section 3.a: The Elenchus, Socrates the Refuter — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — a reference article's short section on Socrates' cross-examination, in which he tests a definition or a position by questioning; read this section only, and skip the scholars' debate about its purpose unless you want more depth. (reading, 5–8 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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