Søren Kierkegaard – Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity: A Free Online Course from the University of Copenhagen

in Online Courses, Philosophy | June 8th, 2021

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen and Jon Stew­art, PhD present Søren Kierkegaard – Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, Irony and the Cri­sis of Moder­ni­ty, a course explor­ing the work of Den­mark’s great philoso­pher. The course descrip­tion reads as fol­lows:

It is often claimed that rel­a­tivism, sub­jec­tivism and nihilism are typ­i­cal­ly mod­ern philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems that emerge with the break­down of tra­di­tion­al val­ues, cus­toms and ways of life. The result is the absence of mean­ing, the lapse of reli­gious faith, and feel­ing of alien­ation that is so wide­spread in moder­ni­ty.

The Dan­ish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) gave one of the most pen­e­trat­ing analy­ses of this com­plex phe­nom­e­non of moder­ni­ty. But some­what sur­pris­ing­ly he seeks insight into it not in any mod­ern thinker but rather in an ancient one, the Greek philoso­pher Socrates.

In this course cre­at­ed by for­mer asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Cen­tre, Jon Stew­art, we will explore how Kierkegaard deals with the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with rel­a­tivism, the lack of mean­ing and the under­min­ing of reli­gious faith that are typ­i­cal of mod­ern life. His pen­e­trat­ing analy­ses are still high­ly rel­e­vant today and have been seen as insight­ful for the lead­ing fig­ures of Exis­ten­tial­ism, Post-Struc­tural­ism and Post-Mod­ernism.

You can take Søren Kierkegaard for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Søren Kierkegaard has been added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

An Ani­mat­ed, Mon­ty Python-Style Intro­duc­tion to the Søren Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

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What Is Contemporary Art?: A Free Online Course from The Museum of Modern Art

in Art, Online Courses | June 3rd, 2021

What is con­tem­po­rary art? In this course from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, you’ll explore this ques­tion through more than 70 works of art made from 1980 to the present, with a focus on art of the last decade. You’ll hear direct­ly from artists, archi­tects, and design­ers from around the globe about their cre­ative process­es, mate­ri­als, and inspi­ra­tion.

3D print­ed glass and sculp­tures made of fiber. Dance per­formed in the fac­to­ry and the muse­um. Hack­ing into tele­vi­sion and video games. Por­traits made with paint or arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Inti­mate explo­rations of the body and col­lec­tive actions.

In this course, you’ll learn about art­works in both tra­di­tion­al and sur­pris­ing medi­ums, all drawn from the col­lec­tion of MoMA. Each week stu­dents will look at con­tem­po­rary art from a dif­fer­ent theme: Media from Tele­vi­sion to the Inter­net, Ter­ri­to­ries & Tran­sit, Mate­ri­als & Mak­ing, Agency, and Pow­er.

You can take What Is Con­tem­po­rary Art? for free by select­ing the audit option upon enroll­ment. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

What Is Con­tem­po­rary Art? will be added to our list of Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Design Thinking for the Greater Good: A Free Online Course from the University of Virginia

in Business, Design, Online Courses | June 1st, 2021

Design Think­ing for the Greater Good: Inno­va­tion in the Social Sec­tor shows how and why human-cen­tered design is a pow­er­ful tool. Offered by the Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, the course lets stu­dents “view design think­ing suc­cess sto­ries from around the world, in areas as diverse as gov­ern­ment, health care, and edu­ca­tion.” Through­out the course, stu­dents will “learn the tools, tech­niques and mind­set need­ed to use design think­ing to uncov­er new and cre­ative solu­tions in the social sec­tor.”

You can take Design Think­ing for the Greater Good for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Design Think­ing for the Greater Good has been added to our list of Free Busi­ness Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent  

A Brief His­to­ry of IDEO: A Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside the Design Firm That Changed the Way We Think about Design

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

The Let­ter­form Archive Launch­es a New Online Archive of Graph­ic Design, Fea­tur­ing 9,000 Hi-Fi Images

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De-Mystifying Mindfulness: A Free Online Course by Leiden University

in Health, Neuroscience, Online Courses | May 27th, 2021

From Chris Goto-Jones–now Dean of Human­i­ties and Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Victoria–comes a free course which was named ‘one of the best online cours­es of all time’ in 2020. The course descrip­tion for De-Mys­ti­fy­ing Mind­ful­ness reads:

Inter­est in med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness, and con­tem­pla­tion has grown expo­nen­tial­ly in recent years. Rather than being seen as mys­ti­cal prac­tices from ancient Bud­dhism or eso­teric phi­los­o­phy, they are increas­ing­ly seen as tech­nolo­gies root­ed in evi­dence from psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science. Mind­ful­ness has become the basis for numer­ous ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions, both as a treat­ment in health­care and as a means of enhanc­ing well-being and hap­pi­ness. For mil­lions around the world, mind­ful­ness has become a life-style choice, enhanc­ing and enrich­ing every­day expe­ri­ence. Mind­ful­ness is big busi­ness.

But, what actu­al­ly is mind­ful­ness? Is it real­ly good for you? Can any­one learn it? How can you rec­og­nize char­la­tans? Would you want to live in a mind­ful soci­ety, and would it smell like san­dal­wood? What does it feel like to be mind­ful? Are you mind­ful already, and how would you know?

Evolv­ing from the pop­u­lar Hon­ours Acad­e­my course at Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty [in the Nether­lands], this inno­v­a­tive course com­bines con­ven­tion­al schol­ar­ly inquiry from mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines (rang­ing from psy­chol­o­gy, through phi­los­o­phy, to pol­i­tics) with expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing (includ­ing spe­cial­ly designed ‘med­i­ta­tion labs,’ in which you’ll get chance to prac­tice and ana­lyze mind­ful­ness on your­self). In the end, the course aims to pro­vide a respon­si­ble, com­pre­hen­sive, and inclu­sive edu­ca­tion about (and in) mind­ful­ness as a con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­non.

You can take De-Mys­ti­fy­ing Mind­ful­ness for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

De-Mys­ti­fy­ing Mind­ful­ness will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

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Creative Thinking: A Free Online Course from Imperial College London

in Creativity, Online Courses | May 25th, 2021

From Peter Childs (Head of the Dyson School of Design Engi­neer­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don) comes a free course that explores cre­ative think­ing tech­niques, and how to apply them to every­day prob­lems and glob­al chal­lenges. The course descrip­tion for Cre­ative Think­ing: Tech­niques and Tools for Suc­cess reads:

In today’s ever-grow­ing and chang­ing world, being able to think cre­ative­ly and inno­v­a­tive­ly are essen­tial skills. It can some­times be chal­leng­ing to step back and reflect in an envi­ron­ment which is fast paced or when you are required to assim­i­late large amounts of infor­ma­tion. Mak­ing sense of or com­mu­ni­cat­ing new ideas in an inno­v­a­tive and engag­ing way, approach­ing prob­lems from fresh angles, and pro­duc­ing nov­el solu­tions are all traits which are high­ly sought after by employ­ers.

The great­est inno­va­tors aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the peo­ple who have the most orig­i­nal idea. Often, they are peo­ple- or teams- that have har­nessed their cre­ativ­i­ty to devel­op a new per­spec­tive or more effec­tive way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing an idea. You can train your imag­i­na­tion to seize oppor­tu­ni­ties, break away from rou­tine and habit, and tap into your nat­ur­al cre­ativ­i­ty.

This course will equip you with a ‘tool-box’, intro­duc­ing you to a selec­tion of behav­iours and tech­niques that will aug­ment your innate cre­ativ­i­ty. Some of the tools are suit­ed to use on your own and oth­ers work well for a group, enabling you to lever­age the pow­er of sev­er­al minds.

You can take Cre­ative Think­ing: Tech­niques and Tools for Suc­cess for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Cre­ative Think­ing will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

David Lynch Explains How Sim­ple Dai­ly Habits Enhance His Cre­ativ­i­ty

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Ancient Philosophy: Free Online Course from the University of Pennsylvania

in Online Courses, Philosophy | May 23rd, 2021

This two part course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia (Part 1 here — Part 2 here) “traces the ori­gins of phi­los­o­phy in the West­ern tra­di­tion in the thinkers of Ancient Greece,” begin­ning with “the Pre­so­crat­ic nat­ur­al philoso­phers who were active in Ionia in the 6th cen­tu­ry BCE and are also cred­it­ed with being the first sci­en­tists.” The course descrip­tion con­tin­ues:

Thales, Anax­i­man­der, and Anax­imines made bold pro­pos­als about the ulti­mate con­stituents of real­i­ty, while Her­a­cli­tus insist­ed that there is an under­ly­ing order to the chang­ing world. Par­menides of Elea for­mu­lat­ed a pow­er­ful objec­tion to all these pro­pos­als, while lat­er Greek the­o­rists (such as Anaxago­ras and the atom­ist Dem­ocri­tus) attempt­ed to answer that objec­tion. In fifth-cen­tu­ry Athens, Socrates insist­ed on the impor­tance of the fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal question—“How shall I live?”—and his pupil, Pla­to, and Plato’s pupil, Aris­to­tle, devel­oped elab­o­rate philo­soph­i­cal sys­tems to explain the nature of real­i­ty, knowl­edge, and human hap­pi­ness. After the death of Aris­to­tle, in the Hel­lenis­tic peri­od, Epi­cure­ans and Sto­ics devel­oped and trans­formed that ear­li­er tra­di­tion.

Part I cov­ers Pla­to and his pre­de­ces­sors. Part II cov­ers Aris­to­tle and his suc­ces­sors. Both cours­es are taught by pro­fes­sor Susan Sauvé Mey­er.

You can take these cours­es for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the cours­es for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Both cours­es will be added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Free Course That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Ancient Greece to Mod­ern

Free Clas­sics Cours­es

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 370 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

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Introduction to Philosophy: A Free Online Course from the University of Edinburgh

in Online Courses, Philosophy | May 17th, 2021

Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, the online course Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy intro­duces stu­dents to “some of the main areas of research in con­tem­po­rary phi­los­o­phy. In each mod­ule, a dif­fer­ent philoso­pher will talk [stu­dents] through some of the most impor­tant ques­tions and issues in their area of exper­tise.” The course begins by ask­ing “what phi­los­o­phy is – what are its char­ac­ter­is­tic aims and meth­ods, and how does it dif­fer from oth­er sub­jects?” Then the online course (offered on the Cours­era plat­form) pro­vides an overview of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent areas of phi­los­o­phy, includ­ing: Epis­te­mol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence, Phi­los­o­phy of Mind, Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, Moral Phi­los­o­phy, and Meta­physics.

You can take Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy for free by select­ing the audit option when you enroll. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy will be added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Free Course That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Teach­es You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

Michael Sandel’s Free Course on Jus­tice, the Most Pop­u­lar Course at Har­vard, Is Now Online

 

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Startup School: Take YCombinator’s Free Online Course for Current & Aspiring Entrepreneurs

in Business, Online Courses | May 16th, 2021

If you’re work­ing on a start­up, take note. YCombi­na­tor–a well-known Sil­i­con Val­ley accelerator–has cre­at­ed Start­up School, a free online pro­gram for entre­pre­neurs. The school has a track for cur­rent start­up founders, and anoth­er one for aspiring/eventual founders. In each case, the school strives to offer the best lessons and advice on how to start a start­up, while build­ing “a com­mu­ni­ty of entre­pre­neurs who can encour­age, teach and sup­port one anoth­er.” Start­up School is com­plete­ly free. You just need a device with access to the inter­net. View the cur­ricu­lum here. (Top­ics include every­thing from “How to Get Start Up Ideas” and “How to Pitch a Start­up,” to “How to Find the Right Co-Founder” and “How to Split Equi­ty.”) And sign up here.

This course will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Start a Start-Up: A Free Online Course from Y Com­bi­na­tor Taught at Stan­ford

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.