Over 450 Videos in the Philosophy Core Concept Series

Since the beginning of the semester, I have been quite simply swamped with work!  In addition to teaching 5 different courses at 4 different academic institutions, I had my usual duties as editor of Stoicism Today - including Stoicon 2018 and Stoic Week - as well as a heavy load of speaking, meetings with clients, and consulting work.  I did manage to get some video production in there as well.

One type of video I've been routinely creating are "Philosophy Core Concepts".  These are short (10-25 minute) discussions of key ideas, arguments, or distinctions made by major philosophical thinkers.  They span the gamut from ancient philosophy down to 20th century thinkers (check out the list below).  I've produced quite a few of these.  Today, I took a look at the playlist, to see how many I'd done so far.

Over 450!  That's the number of the ones I've publicly released (my Patreon supporters get an early look at these videos before the general public does).  In fact, we hit number 451 today with the latest release, discussing the Epicurean distinction between mental and bodily pleasures.  So I thought I'd step back a bit, reflect, and write a few things about that video series (which I think will likely pass 500 videos early next year!)

What's In The Collection So Far?

I've tried to cover a wide range of key thinkers spanning the history of philosophy. Some areas are indeed fairly well represented.  Here's the figures whose key ideas I have created videos on at this point:

Ancient Philosophy:  

• Plato
• Aristotle
• Epicurus
• Cicero
• Epictetus

Medieval Philosophy:  

• Augustine of Hippo
• Anselm of Canterbury
• Thomas Aquinas

Early Modern Philosophy:

• Rene Descartes
• Blaise Pascal
• Jeremy Bentham
• Immanuel Kant

19th Century Philosophy

• G.W.F. Hegel
• Soren Kierkegaard
• John Stuart Mill
• Friedrich Nietzsche

20th Century Philosophy

• Martin Heidegger
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Albert Camus
• W.D. Ross
• Alasdair MacIntyre
• Virginia Held
• Rosemarie Tong

There are considerably more videos on some of these thinkers than on others.  And I'd say there's much more on matters of ethics than there are on any other main area of philosophy (e.g. epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, political theory).  But one can get a decent start in learning philosophy with what's currently available in the playlist.

What I'm Hoping To Add To the Series

I plan to keep creating new videos in this series for at least the next five years, probably somewhere between 100-150 new videos annually.  They're very useful to me for my own online and in-person classes (I use them as a supplement for the latter), so a good portion of that production stems from what I think my students could most use.

These videos are also intended to be resources for students and lifelong learners worldwide.  And there are quite a few glaring gaps in coverage, particularly when you consider what thinkers and texts often get assigned or recommended to students.

In some cases, what's needed are just more videos on a particular thinker and text - on Jean-Paul Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" for instance, or Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue.  In other cases, the series could definitely use videos on a thinker already represented in the series, but on a different work - Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, or Anselm's Proslogion are clearly in need of that.

There are, however, a lot of thinkers who haven't even been covered at all, and I'd really like to start filling in those gaps.  In fact, I'm going to make closing a few of those gaps a major priority for the coming year.  So, which figures am I planning (or perhaps more realistically, hoping) to add videos about in the coming year?

Ancient Philosophy:

• Parmenides
• Lucretius
• Seneca

Medieval Philosophy:

• Boethius
• Peter Abelard

Early Modern Philosophy:

• Thomas Hobbes
• Benedict Spinoza
• John Locke
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• David Hume
• Jean-Jaques Rousseau
• Mary Wollstonecraft

19th Century Philosophy

• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Karl Marx
• Max Stirner

20th Century Philosophy:

• Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Max Scheler
• Simone de Beauvoir
• Hannah Arendt

I'm sure that some readers will have other suggestions about which philosophers they'd like to see me tackling first.  It is worth pointing out that I do accept commissions to create new video content on particular thinkers, texts, and topics.  If you're interested in that, feel free to contact me directly.

A Few Closing Reflections

I get a lot of comments and emails from people who get some use, enjoyment, or benefit out of these core concept videos.  One of the most common remarks - going for my channel as a whole, as well as for the Core Concept series in particular - is how extensive and even comprehensive the coverage is.  And I don't doubt that considered from the outside, that could seem to be the case to many people.

I do take those comments as the complement they clearly seem intended to be.  But from where I sit, matters appear very differently.  I look at those 450+ videos on these 23 thinkers so far as much more like little lines in a very sparse spectrographic analysis.  As much as I have succeeded in covering, there's far more that I haven't even touched upon!

So my goal is to expand the coverage of key thinkers and texts as much as possible - within the limits of my competence, of course - to fill in at least the most glaring of the omissions.  If you'd like to help support the work I do, and have planned - or if you'd like to show your appreciation by buying me a cup of coffee once a month - consider becoming a Patreon supporter.  To any of my present or past Patreon backers, let me say once again a word of thanks for helping me create these educational resources!