Interactive Philosophy Simulations
Argue your way into great moments of philosophical history. Inhabit a character, talk with the people that you've read about, and discover philosophy as conversations in real (ok...simulated) places, between people with commitments, about things that matter the most.
The Socratic Experience
Go down to the Piraeus with Socrates and Glaucon. Argue whether justice is just the advantage of the stronger with Thrasymachus. Try to stand up to Socrates’s questioning, and discover why Meno called Socrates the torpedo fish. You are Kratinos, a young Athenian, the son of a merchant, with strong opinions and a skeptical soul.
The Existentialism Experience
You step off the train in the Gare de Lyon two days before Sartre’s lecture that starts the existentialist craze. Hear Sartre declare that existentialism is a humanism in a room so packed that people faint. You are Marguerite Langlois, 23, from Lyon, with a letter of introduction to study philosophy with Jean Hyppolite at the Sorbonne. Argue with de Beauvoir about freedom and collaboration. Drink a Pastis with Camus at the Café de Flore. Listen to Boris Vian play trumpet in the cellars of Saint-Germain. Watch friendships form and dissolve over answers to the question: what does your freedom demand of you?
The Ordinary Language Philosophy Experience
You are a young Californian on a Rhodes Scholarship, eager to see what Oxford philosophers are up to. Argue about illusions and other minds at one of J.L. Austin’s Saturday Morning sessions. Talk to Iris Murdoch, Phillipa Foot, and G.E.M. Anscombe about everything that the ordinary language philosophers are missing. Take the train to London and argue with A.J. Ayer about sense data or take a break from philosophy and go listen to some jazz in Soho.
The German Romanticism Experience
You arrive in Jena as a young theology student from Tübingen, drawn by Fichte's reputation, but Fichte has just been forced out of the University. What do you do now? Attend Schelling's lectures on Naturphilosophie. Argue about irony and art with Friedrich Schlegel and August Schlegel. Meet Caroline Schlegel, the center of the Jena social and intellectual world. Spar with the wünderkind Schelling. Stick around until Hegel shows up in 1801 with his fashionable "Titus" haircut (Napoleon's haircut), and maybe even until the world spirit, Napoleon himself, rides through on horseback in 1806.
Interlocutor tier & above
Become an InterlocutorThe Imaginary City
Glaucon picks up where Thrasymachus left off, and is about to argue that the myth of the Ring of Gyges tells us something about the nature of justice. Socrates begins to build his imaginary city. You are still Kratinos.
Should philosophy be written down?
You are Phaedrus, a young Athenian who loves fine speeches. You and Socrates are sitting under a plane tree by the Ilissus on a hot summer day. Socrates is going to argue that writing is like an orphan, and can’t defend itself. (Of course Plato did write down that argument, and many more.) What this short simulation explores is: maybe now writing can argue back?
Fellow tier & above
Become a FellowRecent updates
In development
Step behind Rawls’s veil of ignorance in 1971 America
Original Position 1971
Queen Christina and Descartes, with a focus on the Meditations
Stockholm 1647
Descartes and Princess Elisabeth
Egmond Binnen 1643
Weimar on the Pacific: Adorno, Horkheimer, Brecht, Mann, Schoenberg, Lang
Los Angeles 1943
Wittgenstein & the Moral Sciences Club
Cambridge 1934
Sous les Pavés, la Plage! Situationism, Althusser, Bourdieu...
Paris 1968