Cantabria PAU History of Philosophy study plan
Cantabria PAU History of Philosophy · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 6 hours per week
Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas)
Map the four Ancient/Medieval authors onto the exam's weighting, writing a one-page comparison grid of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas by metaphysics, anthropology and ethics.
Reconstruct Plato's theory of Ideas and the allegory of the cave from memory, then check your reconstruction against your notes and mark every gap.
Define, in your own words and in Spanish, the technical vocabulary of Plato and Aristotle: idea/eidos, participation, hylomorphism, act and potency, four causes.
Draft a 200-word answer to the standard question on Plato's dualism and correct it against your grid.
Your checkpoint
A one-page comparison grid of the four authors plus a corrected 200-word answer on Platonic dualism.
Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas)
Explain Augustine's relation between faith and reason and his theory of illumination, and contrast it explicitly with Plato's reminiscence.
Summarise Aquinas's five ways and his distinction between essence and existence, and identify which Aristotelian premises each way depends on.
Write a full exam-style essay (roughly 400 words) on Aquinas's synthesis of Aristotle and Christian thought under timed conditions.
List five recurring exam traps in this domain (for example, confusing Augustinian illumination with Platonic anamnesis) and write the correct distinction for each.
Your checkpoint
One timed 400-word essay on Aquinas plus a five-item list of corrected misconceptions.
Modern Philosophy: Rationalism and Empiricism (Descartes, Hume, Kant)
Reconstruct Descartes's method of doubt, the cogito and the proof of God's existence, and state precisely which premise each step depends on.
Distinguish Cartesian substance dualism from the Aristotelian soul and write the contrast in three sentences.
Define the rationalist vocabulary: clear and distinct ideas, innate ideas, substance, attribute, mode.
Answer, without notes, why the Cartesian circle objection arises and how Descartes replies.
Your checkpoint
A written, notes-free explanation of the cogito and the Cartesian circle with an explicit statement of the objection and the reply.
Modern Philosophy: Rationalism and Empiricism (Descartes, Hume, Kant)
Explain Hume's fork, his analysis of causation and his critique of personal identity, and connect each to the empiricist premise it rests on.
Contrast Hume's empiricism with Descartes's rationalism on the origin of ideas in a two-column table with at least six rows.
Summarise Kant's Copernican revolution, the synthetic a priori and the categories, and state what problem in Hume each element answers.
Write a full timed essay (roughly 400 words) on how Kant responds to Hume's scepticism about causation.
Your checkpoint
A six-row rationalism/empiricism comparison table plus a timed 400-word essay on Kant and Hume.
Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (Marx, Nietzsche, and related currents)
Reconstruct Marx's concepts of alienation, historical materialism, ideology and surplus value, and trace each back to its Hegelian or Feuerbachian source.
Reconstruct Nietzsche's critique of morality, the will to power, the revaluation of values and eternal recurrence, and state what each concept is aimed against.
Contrast Marx and Nietzsche on the role of values in history in a written paragraph of at least 150 words.
Identify three points where nineteenth-century critiques of religion (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche) differ from one another.
Your checkpoint
A 150-word Marx/Nietzsche contrast plus a three-point table on critiques of religion.
Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Ortega y Gasset, Wittgenstein, and contemporary currents) & Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (Marx, Nietzsche, and related currents)
Explain Ortega y Gasset's perspectivism, the distinction between ideas and beliefs, and the concept of vital reason, using his own terminology in Spanish.
Explain Wittgenstein's early picture theory and the later meaning-as-use and language games, and state clearly what changed between the two periods.
Answer an exam-style question on Ortega's response to realism and idealism in a timed 300-word piece.
Review the Marx and Nietzsche material from week 5 and correct any concept you could not define from memory.
Your checkpoint
A timed 300-word Ortega answer plus a corrected concept list covering both Ortega and Wittgenstein.
Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Ortega y Gasset, Wittgenstein, and contemporary currents) & Philosophical Text Commentary and Conceptual Analysis
Survey the remaining contemporary currents the syllabus names (for example existentialism, the Frankfurt School, hermeneutics, post-structuralism) and write a two-sentence identification for each.
Practise text commentary on an unseen philosophical passage: identify thesis, structure, terminology and argument in a fixed four-step routine.
Apply the four-step commentary routine to three passages from different periods and compare your results for consistency.
Build a reusable glossary of 25 terms with one-line definitions in Spanish.
Your checkpoint
Three completed four-step commentaries on unseen passages plus a 25-term glossary.
Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas) & Modern Philosophy: Rationalism and Empiricism (Descartes, Hume, Kant) & Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (Marx, Nietzsche, and related currents) & Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Ortega y Gasset, Wittgenstein, and contemporary currents) & Philosophical Text Commentary and Conceptual Analysis
Sit two full mock exams under real time constraints, covering all five domains.
Mark each mock against the official weighting and identify your three weakest concepts.
Re-teach those three weak concepts in writing, then re-test yourself on them the following day.
Drill the comparison grid and glossary until you can reproduce both from memory.
Your checkpoint
Two marked mock exams with a written remediation note on the three weakest concepts.
Milestones
Week 2: You can explain, without notes, how Aquinas uses Aristotle's four causes and how Augustine's illumination differs from Platonic reminiscence.
Week 4: You can write a 400-word essay on the Kant/Hume problem of causation in under 45 minutes and score it against the exam's structure criteria.
Week 6: You can define Ortega's and Wittgenstein's key terms in Spanish from memory and place both authors correctly within their philosophical traditions.
Week 8: Both mock exams are complete, marked against the domain weightings, and your three weakest concepts have been re-taught and re-tested.