Philosophy 101 for visual learners?

March 10, 2023 9:31 AM

I would love to find a collection of graphs that explain the fundamentals of major philosophical ideas, particularly modern ones. Does such a thing exist? I'm thinking about things like this (ideal, for its comparative nature, focus on modern ideas, and distillation to the most basic elements) or this (less ideal, but serviceable). I know a lot will be elided in this format, and that's ideal so that I don't get overwhelmed. In a perfect world, there is one book that exists that is mostly graphs.
posted by sugarbomb to Religion & Philosophy (3 answers total)

Best answer: It's not exactly 101- level, but there's a beautiful hand-drawn poster by Joel Friedman that shows the all the major philosophical positions in the Foundations of Mathematics and Logic debates that were established between 1847 and 1947. Flickr view of it here. Discussion of the poster's origins on DailyNous (the philosophy profession's leading news website) here, with follow-up news that there was a plan to publish it more widely. Bonus content in the DailyNous article: Friedman's hand-drawn diagram of how the propositions of Spinoza’s Ethics are related (which is a bit more recondite even than the FoM chart!).

More generally, there was a tumblr called Philosophy In Figures which occasionally had good stuff. This chart of the realism / anti-realism debates in philosophy of science is something that my undergrads have found stimulating (I think this is because the diagram looks pretty complex, and it makes them feel like they know a lot of clever stuff). Many of them are not very explanatory, and I suspect they're individual images from lecture slides that have been abstracted from a degree course (and which now appear on lots of people's slides!).
posted by Joeruckus at 9:59 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Many years ago I read a book that told some kind of history of philosophy through comics. I think it wasn't The Cartoon History of Philosophy, but I can't figure out what else it might have been. It could conceivably have been part of the Cartoon History of the Universe series.

There is also a new graphic novel adaptation of Sophie's World, the non-graphic version of which I read when I was a kid and made a big impression on me. I haven't read the adaptation though. And there is Logicomix, which is about the project to provide logical foundations for math -- extremely important in 20th century philosophy. I don't remember how much the pictures depict the ideas themselves, rather than the lives of the people involved, but it might be worth a look in.
posted by grobstein at 10:26 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As to your specific query in regards to graphs I do not have any suggestions unfortunately.

However as a predominantly visual learner myself, I have found the 'Introducing..' Philosophy graphic guides to be beneficial. Also there are some interesting animated videos (RSA Animate) covering lectures on a wide range of topics on the Royal Society for Arts channel. I know this is not precisely what you are searching for but thought potentially of interest.
posted by numberstation at 3:14 PM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]