4 LESSONS
Philosophy: questions, reasons and a good life
Move from clear questions to arguments, ethical choices and the grounds of knowledge.
Follow this series →UNDERSTAND PEOPLE AND IDEAS
Humanities and philosophy: ideas, history and shared life
Explore how we reason, judge, read literature and understand society. Work through Indian and wider philosophical ideas, historical evidence and everyday dilemmas.
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A guided place to begin
4 LESSONS
Humanities: history, literature and society
Read the past and a literary text, then connect social institutions with democratic life.
Follow this series →3 LESSONS
Knowledge, inference and scientific explanation
Develop an argument from its evidence, study classical Nyāya and test the assumptions behind scientific explanations.
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4 LESSONS
Self and change in Indian philosophy
Work through Sāṃkhya, Advaita, Buddhist conditionality and Jaina viewpoints, following each system’s reasons and distinctions.
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Art, interpretation and public values
Interpret literary form and rasa, then examine freedom, equality and democratic reasons through worked cases.
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Language, poetry and narrative
Examine how line breaks, voices and translation choices create meaning through original worked readings.
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Memory, records and social change
Connect remembered experience, everyday objects and institutional reform with careful historical explanations.
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Society, movement and shared resources
Start with institutions, then reason through urban change and cooperation using explicit models and evidence.
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Reading, writing and thoughtful dialogue
Read for meaning, revise a paragraph, take accurate notes and discuss a disagreement.
Follow this series →Explore every topic
Guides 1–24 of 28
Philosophy & reasoning
IntermediateAdvaita: inquiry and orders of reality
An appearance can guide our actions and still depend on something we have misunderstood.
Learning outcome: Explain self and Brahman, distinguish the orders of reality, and follow how superimposition and correction work in two everyday examples.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateArchives, objects and everyday history
An ordinary receipt or repaired container can reveal work, exchange and care that a political timeline leaves out.
Learning outcome: Trace archival context, separate an object’s observable features from possible uses, compare ledger entries fairly and write a bounded account of everyday life.
Read the guide →Reading, writing & dialogue
BeginnerAsk useful questions and disagree respectfully
A discussion can stay polite and still fail to answer the real question.
Learning outcome: Repair a leading question, write a fair restatement and give a reasoned objection with a practical next step.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
BeginnerAsking philosophical questions
When friends disagree about success, fairness or a good life, they may be using the same word for different ideas.
Learning outcome: Turn a broad disagreement into a precise question, distinguish different kinds of inquiry, and improve an answer through a counterexample.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
IntermediateBuddhist dependent origination and not-self
How does suffering arise without a permanent owner standing behind every experience? This lesson studies selected Pāli Nikāya discourses preserved in the Theravāda tradition.
Learning outcome: Explain conditioned arising, analyse the five aggregates, and use two examples without reducing a liberation teaching to a modern psychological trick.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateCaste, social reform and institutional change
Social reform changes more than individual opinions.
Learning outcome: Distinguish varna from jati, analyse how exclusion is reproduced, explain the specific object of Vaikom’s campaign, and assess institutional change without erasing either achievement or continuing barriers.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateCommon resources and cooperation
A shared water source can be useful to every user and vulnerable to each user taking too much.
Learning outcome: Classify resource problems, calculate two collective-action models, and explain how a proposed rule changes incentives while checking fairness and ecological limits.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateDemocracy, rights and public reason
Shared decisions require more than counting preferences.
Learning outcome: Distinguish majority choice from constitutional authority, explain why rights and remedies matter, and evaluate a shared proposal using public reasons.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
IntermediateEthics: duty, consequences and character
Ethical decisions ask what we ought to do and why.
Learning outcome: Apply three ethical lenses to a concrete choice, recognise their limits, and justify an action without reducing people to numbers or intentions.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateFreedom, equality and justice
A rule can treat everyone identically while leaving some people unable to use the opportunity it offers.
Learning outcome: Compare competing principles, separate equal resources from real opportunities, and defend a proposal while acknowledging what evidence or moral reasoning could challenge it.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateIndian aesthetics: rasa and responding to art
Why can a sad performance be absorbing rather than simply unpleasant? Rasa theory examines the transformation of represented emotions into aesthetic experience.
Learning outcome: Analyse how a scene is composed, support a rasa interpretation with details, and explain why aesthetic experience differs from an ordinary emotional reaction.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
IntermediateJaina many-sidedness and disciplined viewpoints
Can something persist while also changing? Can two speakers disagree because each leaves an important qualification unstated? Jaina philosophy develops a rich account of these questions.
Learning outcome: Distinguish aspects from opinions, analyse qualified assertions, and use disagreement to improve precision without excusing factual error.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
IntermediateKnowledge, belief and evidence
You can believe a bus leaves at nine, correctly guess that it leaves at nine, or know its departure time from a reliable current timetable.
Learning outcome: Distinguish truth, belief and justification; compare perception, inference and testimony; and explain why appropriate confidence may change with new evidence.
Read the guide →Reading, writing & dialogue
IntermediateListen, take useful notes and summarise faithfully
A message can become shorter and still become less useful if it loses a date, a condition or a speaker’s uncertainty.
Learning outcome: Make a usable set of notes, repair a distorted summary and distinguish a confirmed arrangement from a proposal or missing detail.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
BeginnerLogic, arguments and fallacies
An argument is more than a disagreement.
Learning outcome: Map an argument, test a conditional claim, distinguish deduction from induction, and repair common errors without attacking the speaker.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateMigration, urbanisation and social evidence
A growing city contains more than a story of people arriving from villages.
Learning outcome: Distinguish migration measures, calculate net movement and an urban share, explain multiple sources of urban growth, and identify what a survey can and cannot establish.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateNarrative voice and unreliable narration
A story can tell us what happened while quietly revealing that its teller misunderstands what happened.
Learning outcome: Analyse who tells, who knows and who judges; identify different forms of speech representation; and defend a precise claim about unreliability.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
AdvancedNyāya: means of knowledge and testing inference
How can a reason carry us beyond what we immediately see? Classical Nyāya offers an exacting account of knowledge, inference and discussion.
Learning outcome: Identify the parts of an inference, reconstruct a five-member demonstration, and locate the precise point where an attractive argument fails.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateOral history: memory and ethical interviewing
A bus route, a workshop or a changing neighbourhood can have a history missing from formal reports.
Learning outcome: Design an ethical interview, distinguish different kinds of remembered claims, and edit a short extract without changing its meaning or permission conditions.
Read the guide →Philosophy & reasoning
AdvancedPhilosophy of science: models, explanation and testing
A model can predict accurately without telling us every cause, and a failed prediction does not identify its own source of failure.
Learning outcome: Identify what a model represents, reconstruct the logic of a test, and explain when revising an assumption is informative rather than an excuse to avoid evidence.
Read the guide →Reading, writing & dialogue
BeginnerRead for meaning: main idea, evidence and inference
A notice can contain a true detail without supporting the conclusion someone draws from it.
Learning outcome: Write a defensible main-idea sentence and explain why an inference is supported, contradicted or still uncertain.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
BeginnerReading literature and interpretation
Literature creates experience through language, form and perspective.
Learning outcome: Distinguish author, narrator and character; explain the effects of imagery and structure; and compare interpretations using textual evidence.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
IntermediateReading poetry: sound, image and form
A poem can make an ordinary kettle or a timetable newly noticeable.
Learning outcome: Explain imagery, repetition, rhythm and line breaks through two original poems, and defend a reading using specific textual details.
Read the guide →History, literature & society
BeginnerSociety, culture and institutions
People make choices within relationships, expectations and unequal opportunities.
Learning outcome: Explain how a rule, a social expectation and access to resources interact, and distinguish individual choice from the conditions shaping it.
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