PHILOSOPHY SECOND YEAR MODULES

PY2001 – KANT

PY

15 credits – Autumn term

Mandatory for single-honours BA Philosophy

Module Description – The module will examine one of the key works of the 18th century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, namely his Critique of Pure Reason. The core themes of the course will be Kant’s attempts to provide a foundation for many of our common sense and scientific beliefs about the world in the face of sceptical challenges, as well as Kant’s analyses of the ways in which our thinking often generates illusions even when it is operating as it should. We will explore how both of these themes emerge from Kant’s argument that many aspects of our world that we take to be real characteristics of things outside of us are in fact products of the way we organise and make sense of experience. Both of these themes have been massively influential on both continental and Anglo-American philosophy since Kant, and the questions we raise on this course, as well as the ways Kant attempts to answer them, will recur in most of the main Philosophy modules studied from the second year onwards.

Module Leader – Dr G. Anthony Bruno

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment –Textual analysis (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2000 words) – 70%;

PY2002 – MIND AND WORLD

PY

15 credits – Autumn term

Mandatory for single-honours BA Philosophy

Module Description – This module examines some of the major metaphysical and epistemological problems that arise when attempting to understand how mind and language figure in human interactions with and in the world. It centres on attempts to conceptualise, solve, or avoid mind-body related problems in the analytic tradition and aims to contrast these with phenomenological and existential investigations of cognate phenomena.

Module Leader – Dr Neil Gascoigne

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2000 words) – 70%

PY2003 – THE CRITIQUE OF IDEALISM

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – Kant’s critical turn aims to restrict the use of pure reason to possible experience. While this avoids the dogmatic enthusiasm of rationalism and the skeptical consequences of empiricism, it imposes a distinction between the appearances we know in experience and the thing in itself lying beyond experience. It thereby inspires post-Kantian idealism to prove reason’s absolute capacity for explanation, a capacity unrestricted by an unknowable thing in itself and unthreatened by mechanistic systems like Spinoza’s. Fichte and Hegel thus defend reason’s absolute freedom as a way of perfecting Kant’s critical turn. The critique of post-Kantian idealism that emerges in the work of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Marx raises important questions. What sort of insight into reason can we have? Can reason fully explain its own possibility? Can an account of reason be wholly objective? Can reason overcome all presuppositions? Is absolute knowledge sufficient to change the world? After an introduction to the idealist systems of Fichte and Hegel, we will trace the critique of idealism through these questions and evaluate the positive accounts offered by post-idealist critics.

Module Leader – Dr G. Anthony Bruno

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay 1 (1000 words) – 50%; Essay 2 (2000 words) – 50%

PY2004 – VARIETIES OF SCEPTICISM: HOPE, DESIRE AND TRAGEDY

PY

15 credits – Autumn term

Module Description – What is knowledge? Is it possible for us to acquire it? If so, how do we do so? This module approaches these questions by looking at the history of attempts to show that we perhaps don’t in fact have knowledge – the history of scepticism. Starting with the Ancient Greek concern with knowledge of how to live the Good Life, the first sceptics aimed to show that the search for such knowledge actually stood in the way of the very path to happiness it promised. The Ancient sceptical arguments were rediscovered in the Sixteenth Century and along with the emergence of modern science led to both a new conception of knowledge and of sceptical doubt to accompany it. This module traces the fate of the Cartesian concern with certainty through the sceptical naturalism of Hume and Kant’s attempt to rescue the idea of metaphysics through to the contemporary revival of interest in scepticism.

Module Leader – Dr Neil Gascoigne

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Moodle tasks (x 3) – 25%; Essay (2000 words) – 75%

PY2005 – PHILOSOPHY AND THE ARTS

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – The module will expose students to current philosophical debates in aesthetics, including questions about the nature and value of art; the roles of intention, imagination and interpretation; and the emotional and ethical responses they provoke. Although theoretically informed, each weekly presentation will be grounded in a discussion of one or more artistic or cultural objects, be it a play, poem, musical composition, film, or one of the myriad other forms of creative expression.

Module Leader – Dr David Preston

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay (3000 words) – 100%

PY2XXX – PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – This module on the philosophy of language will examine views on the nature of meaning, reference, truth, and their relationships. Other topics may include relationships between language and logic, language and knowledge, language and reality, language and acts performed through its use, and ethical issues arising from language use.

Module Leader – Dr Rebecca Roache

Module Delivery – Weekly Lectures and Seminars

Assessment –

PY2202 – EMPIRICISM AND RATIONALISM

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Mandatory for single-honours BA Philosophy

Module Description – This module will explore the central developments in modern philosophy occurring between the foundation of modern empiricism and rationalism by Locke and Descartes in the 17th century, and the emergence of Kant’s philosophical system in the late 18th century. The module will look at three of the key figures from the two traditions, exploring the key theories they expound, and the arguments used to support these theories. The figures covered will depend on the research specialisms of the module convenor, but a typical syllabus would involve reading works by Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume. Looking at these philosophers over a number of weeks will allow students to develop their close reading skills, and to see how the arguments put forward by these philosophers work together to produce a systematic metaphysical worldview.

Module Leader – Professor Daniel Whistler

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Project – (1800 words) – 50%; Exam (1200 words) – 50%

PY2XXX – TWENTIETH CENTURY FRENCH PHILOSOPHY

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – The aim of this module is to introduce students to the central ethical, metaphysical, phenomenological concerns of the 20th century French philosophical tradition. We will look at a major work by three central figures in the tradition, focusing on the way these thinkers enter into dialogue with each other. Indicative philosophers to be covered on the module would be Bergson, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze or Derrida. The module aims to develop students’ knowledge and appreciation of the importance and continuing relevance of the tradition, and some of the key movements within it, such as the existentialist, post-structuralist, and postmodernist movements. It also aims to develop students’ abilities to interpret philosophical texts, and critically evaluate philosophical arguments.

Module Leader – Dr Henry Somers-Hall

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment –

PY2206 – HEGEL

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – German idealism sets itself the task of satisfying three main aims: systematizing Kant’s philosophy by finding necessary premises for its conclusions; providing a rigorous demonstration of the laws of thought; and ensuring that satisfying these aims satisfies the third aim of proving that reason is not the product of a purposeless, mechanistic world, but is itself an absolutely free purposive activity. This module investigates Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as an attempt to satisfy these aims. We will explore Hegel’s distinctive and influential criticisms of Kant, his development of dialectic as a method of deriving the laws of thought, and his argument that reason is absolutely free. We will pay special attention to his successive, unfolding theses for the essentially self-conscious character of consciousness, the essentially recognitive character of self- consciousness, and the essentially ethical character of recognition.

Module Leader – Dr G. Anthony Bruno

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay 1 (1500 words) – 50%; Essay 2 (1500 words) – 50%

PY2214 – PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL ETHICS

PY

15 credits – Autumn term

Module Description – Over the past decade or so, we have started to conduct our lives increasingly online: we socialise online, we apply for jobs online, we read the news online, and so on. In doing so we apply some of our familiar concepts to our online lives: we worry about privacy, bullying, what counts as a being a good citizen online. In this module we’ll look at the extent to which our familiar norms and ways of interacting with each other transfer to our online lives, and how we should respond when these familiar ideas fail to apply to our online life.

Module Leader – Dr David Preston

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay 1 (1500 words) – 50%; Essay 2 (1500 words) – 50%

PY2215 – PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY

PY

15 credits – Autumn term

Module Description – In this module we’ll consider attempts to study the mind scientifically. In doing so, we’ll look at issues like the extent to which humans are rational, the extent to which non-human animals can be said to think, how much of our knowledge is innate (and how we can tell), and how and in what way scientific method can be applied to understanding the mind.

Module Leader – Dr Rebecca Roache

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay 1 (1500 words) – 50%; Essay 2 (1500 words) – 50%

PY2220 – EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS

PY

15 credits – Autumn term

Module Description – The aim of the module will be to explore the ethical approaches developed during the 20th century in France and Germany. We will look at how between the 1920s and 1940s the combination of the new method of phenomenology and an attempt to work through the implications of the death of God led to a flourishing of new ethical thought. The module aims to develop students’ knowledge and appreciation of the importance and continuing relevance of the tradition. It also aims to develop students’ abilities to interpret philosophical texts, and critically evaluate philosophical arguments. The content of the module will depend on the current research interests of the module convenor, but typical figures covered on the module would include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Scheler, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Module Leader – Dr Henry Somers Hall

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2000 words) – 70%

PY2223 – PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description –

Module Leader – Prof Daniel Whistler

Module Delivery – Weekly Lectures and Seminars

Assessment – Essay (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2000 words) – 70%

PY2655 – THE GOOD LIFE IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

PY

30 credits – Autumn and Spring terms

Module Description – In this module we shall focus on the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. We shall not only examine a whole series of Stoic ideas but also attempt to put them into practice ourselves, to see if they really do contribute to a good life. The module will invite you to think like a Stoic, at least for a while, not in order to indoctrinate you, but, on contrary, to enable you to assess directly whether Stoicism really can offer useful lessons about how to live well. (If you are not prepared to go on this journey, then this module is not for you!) This is a 30-credit module running for 20 weeks over both terms. In the first term we shall explore the foundational ideas of Stoic ethics, such as self-preservation, living in accord with Nature, virtue, and the emotions. Then we shall look at some central themes in the work of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 50-130 AD), such as control, freedom, and social roles. In the second term we shall devote all our time to reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD). The Meditations is consistently one of the best-selling philosophy books. It is highly accessible yet deceptively simple. We shall explore its key themes by placing them within the wider context of Stoic philosophy, always with an eye on what practical lessons we can learn for how to live well today.

Module Leader – Dr John Sellars

Module Delivery – Weekly Lectures and Seminars

Assessment – Formative essay (3000 words) – 0%; Summative essay (1600 words) – 40%; Open-book exam (2400 words) – 60%

PY2900 – RACE, GENDER AND QUEER PHILOSOPHY

PY

15 credits – Spring term

Mandatory for single-honours BA Philosophy

Module Description – This module aims to introduce students to a number of key fields in value-theory: critical race/racial formation theory, feminist theory, trans/gender studies, and queer-crip theory. These discourses have had a lot to say about and within philosophy and sociology, providing much needed scrutiny and a rich understanding of the complexities of social reality. This module serves as an introduction to some of the many ways in which theorising about race, gender, sexuality, and disability have attempted to combat forms of oppression in domains as diverse as politics, ethics, language, and how we acquire knowledge. The module will cover topics such as how we might understand what race, gender, sexuality, and disability are and what they do, from philosophical and sociological perspectives, by examining key texts from the literature in philosophy and sociology. Throughout, the module will reflect on what these critiques might mean for our studies of reality today.

Module Leader – Dr Suki Finn

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay 1 (1800 words) – 50%; Essay 2 (1800 words) – 50%

PR-CODED MODULES

Second year single-honours and joint honours Philosophy students are also permitted to take 30 credits of the following PR-coded modules:

• PR2490 – Contemporary Political Theory (30 credits) - view here

• PR2560 – Modern Political Thought (30 credits) - view here