The world might not be what you think. The world has never referred just to the space between heaven and earth, our planet, or the portion of it that we can see and touch. The world is a concept that describes the sphere in which everything exists. The problem is it might not exist itself.

In this course, Professor Markus Gabriel takes a tour de force of metaphysics, ontology and epistemology, from ancient myths, to the pre-Socratics, to Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein to explore ideas of existence, reality and being- why they fail, and what it means.

In this course, you will learn:

• Why unicorns might have ‘being’ even if they do not exist.
• How ideas about reality in ancient myth have continued through our language.
• How ancient philosophers first tackled the problems of being and existence.
• A history of ideas about the world- from ‘the totality of objects’ to ‘the domain of all domains’.
• Why we need to belive in a ‘monistic’ reality.
• How Ontological Pluralism and Ontological Realism might be combined to create a new theory.
• Why we should reject metaphysics and embrace the non-existence of the world.

A selection of further readings has been suggested by Professor Gabriel as part of this course.