Politics and Philosophy BA

You will take the following core modules:

Political Analysis 1: An Introduction to Research and Scholarship

As the first part of three key modules taken throughout your degree, Political Analysis 1 will introduce you to the study of politics as an academic discipline.

You will discover different ways to research the dynamics of different political worlds and acquire the foundational knowledge and skills needed to build, test and evaluate rigorous accounts of political problems. 

Throughout the module, you will learn through a combination of lectures and seminars. You will also undertake independent study to delve deeper into the case studies of political scandal and failure discussed each week. 

20 credits

Writing Philosophy

Philosophical writing is a skill that you, the student, must hone early on in order to succeed in your degree. It is also a transferable skill that will serve you in your post-academic career. Philosophical writing combines the general virtues of clarity, organisation, focus and style found in other academic writing with particular philosophical virtues; namely, the ability to expose the implicit assumptions of analysed texts and to make explicit the logical structure of one's own and other people's arguments. A precondition of philosophical writing is a unique form of textual analysis that pays particular attention to its argumentative structure. In this module you will learn and practice philosophical writing. You will learn how to read in preparation for philosophical writing, learn how to plan an essay, learn how to rework your drafts and learn how to use feedback constructively.  Short writing exercises will help you hone specific writing skills. You will bring these skills together by writing a number of complete essays. The lectures in the course will be split between lectures on the art of writing and lectures on philosophical topics in the domain of fact and value. Essay topics will be based on the topical lectures and their associated readings.

20 credits

Plus at least one other core Philosophy module from this list:

Ethics and Society

This module introduces students to some core questions in ethics, political philosophy, and social philosophy. We ask questions such as: What is a good life for you? What is a morally good life? Does being virtuous matter? What kind of moral consideration do we owe to non-human animals and the environment? Turning to political philosophy, we consider how societies should be organised if they are to realise values such as freedom, equality, and community. How should we understand these values? And what role might the state play in promoting (or undermining) them? We also look at some questions in social philosophy. For example: What are social groups? And when and why are social norms oppressive?

20 credits

Mind and World

This module is an introduction to a range of topics in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. In the first half of the module we consider questions such as: How should we understand knowledge? What implications does cognitive and cultural diversity have for our understanding of knowledge? Should we privilege some points of view? Should we trust others? Can we wrong them if we don't? And what should we say about disagreement? In the second half of the module we ask questions such as: Is the mind a physical thing? Can a machine have a mind? Can you survive the destruction of your body? Do you have free will? And can a machine be responsible for its own actions?

20 credits

Reason and Argument

This module teaches basic philosophical concepts and skills to do with argument.  The first part of the course deals with arguments in ordinary language.  It teaches techniques for recognizing, interpreting, analyzing, and assessing arguments of various kinds.  It also teaches important concepts related to arguments, such as truth, validity, explanation, entailment, consistency, and necessity.  The second part of the course is a basic introduction to formal logic.  It teaches how to translate ordinary-language arguments into formal languages, which enables you to rigorously prove validity, consistency, and so on.

20 credits

Optional modules:

Planet Politics

From climate change to biodiversity loss, humans have fundamentally transformed the planet. Patterns of resource consumption have had catastrophic effects but are difficult to change: humankind has become dependent on the very activities that are causing these dramatic transformations.

Far from being automatic or inevitable, these transformations are deeply political. This module will help you make sense of planetary change by assessing different political causes and consequences whilst being introduced to different theories, ideas and critiques across disciplines about how we have got here and what we need to do to prevent further destruction. 

By examining the major environmental challenges of our age, Planet Politics will take you through some of the most pressing and contentious questions about how humans have affected our shared planetary ecosystems and how we should live and what we should do for life to prosper on Planet Earth.

20 credits

The World's Wicked Problems

The World's Wicked Problems serves as an introduction to International Relations as a discipline. 

Throughout this module you will engage in key international relations concepts and discussions, including migration, climate change, poverty and global inequalities, sexual violence and armed conflict.

As an introductory module, you have the opportunity to develop the tools needed to understand, analyse and reflect on in-depth theoretical and empirical international relations which shall continue to support you throughout your degree.

20 credits

Thinking Politically: Key Concepts

A concept is a general idea about something. We use concepts all the time to make sense of the world. For example, we use the concept of a 'table' to describe a piece of furniture with a flat top and some legs to keep it stable. We also use concepts to make sense of our experiences and not just to describe 'things'. For example, we talk about a painting being 'beautiful' or a tyrant being 'cruel'.  

In this course, you will be introduced to a range of core concepts that inform the study of politics and international relations in the twenty-first century: politics, authority, power, democracy, rights, justice, freedom, nations, the distinction between refugees and migrants, and populism.  

You will discover how these concepts shape our understanding of the political world around us, and learn how to engage in conceptual analysis (i.e. how to argue about how we should understand each of these concepts). By the end of the module, you will have learnt to problematise and evaluate events, information, and academic literature, enabling you to successfully and critically use key concepts in political debate.

20 credits

Introduction to Comparative Politics

Comparative politics is the systematic study and comparison of the diverse political systems in the world. 

Throughout the module you will examine the utility of the comparative approach to politics, focusing particularly on types of political regimes (democracies, dictatorships, and electoral authoritarian), and their implications for fascinating outcomes such as development (why some countries are more affluent than others), and conflict (why some countries are more prone to civil war than others). We will also discuss the role that colonialism plays in this interaction between regimes and consequences.

You will consider the key features of each regime type to be able to explain the nature of the comparative method, its strengths and weaknesses. You will also have the opportunity to learn useful skills which will help you design and come up with potential data to answer your research questions.

20 credits

Gender Politics

This module aims to interrogate the role of gender and sex in shaping world politics. To do this, it asks how notions of masculinity and femininity shape our institutions, how gender might influence the political problems we prioritise and whose voices are taken seriously in developing responses to these problems. 

Students will answer these questions through the study of the politicisation of sex, the relationship between gender and violence, how current practices of gender are shaped by colonialism and a range of other timely topics that shape the world today. 

The module will allow students to develop an understanding of different approaches to gender, be introduced to key concepts from feminism and queer theory, learn to apply these ideas practically to a set of case studies and debate what the future of gender is in world politics. 

20 credits

British Politics

You will be introduced to the key concepts and debates that have shaped British politics with an emphasis on history, institutions and culture.

Each lecture will focus on a specific element of British politics, with subsequent and linked seminars providing an opportunity to deepen this knowledge by looking at critical case studies or official reviews.

This module provides key employability skills and practice based knowledge through a focus on the theory and practice of political decision-making processes and the challenges of implementing policy.

20 credits

Introduction to Global Political Economy

Global political economy (GPE) is a field of study that investigates the interaction between political and economic forces in contemporary and historical capitalism. You will consider key mainstream and critical theories.

You will be introduced to major processes of trade, production and exploitation, sketching the power relations of the global economy by using examples of contemporary production in different industries. You will also consider how the political economy of race, class and gender have structured the global economy through histories of colonisation and decolonisation, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century.

20 credits

Introduction to Western Political Thought

During this module, you will be introduced to political theory as a distinctive way of thinking about politics. You will engage with some of the most influential and renowned thinkers from the history of Western political thought, critically analysing questions of power, justice and legitimacy.

Through the study of seminal texts, you will be challenged to evaluate historical responses to political questions and thereby start doing political theory for yourself. You will also develop a deeper understanding of various concepts that can be applied to your analyses of contemporary issues throughout the degree.

20 credits

Philosophy of Religion

Religious teachings and practices raise many philosophical questions. For example, how should we understand the nature of God for purposes of evaluating evidence for and against God's existence? Are there persuasive arguments for believing God does exist, or for believing God doesn't? Could the universe itself in some sense be divine? Is there any evidence for thinking that people can survive the death of their physical bodies? Does the pervasiveness of religious disagreement provide support for suspending judgment about religious claims in general? Does it make any sense to follow a religion without believing what it teaches? This module will interrogate philosophical work bearing on questions such as these.

10 credits

LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer] Studies

This module introduces students to study of genders and sexualities, and LGBTQ scholarship, both historical and contemporary. It examines genders and sexualities in society, culture, media, and their academic study, as well as contemporary issues of inequality affecting sexual minorities in different global contexts. The module is team taught by experts in different departments at the University of Sheffield, who will introduce students to a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives, such as philosophy, history, social sciences, psychology, evolutionary biology, education, cultural studies, and critical study of religion. The module is assessed by a coursework portfolio, where students answer a number of short questions on different topics in the syllabus. 

10 credits

History of Philosophical Ideas

The history of philosophy is made up of a series of debates between competing philosophical traditions and schools: for example, idealists argue with realists, rationalists with empiricists. And at different times, distinctive philosophical movements have dominated the discussion, such as pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and critical theory. This module will introduce you to some of these central movements and traditions in the history of philosophy from Plato onwards, and the key philosophical concepts and issues that they have brought in to western thought.

10 credits

Truth, Reality and Virtual Reality

This module examines the idea that there is an objective reality to which the things we say and believe are answerable, which makes some claims true and others false. The emphasis is not so much on the question of whether and how we know things, but on metaphysical questions concerning truth and reality. 'What is Truth?' is one of these questions. Different attempts to define truth - including the Correspondence Theory of truth and the Pragmatic Theory of truth will be examined. Another question the course will tackle is the question of whether relativism about reality can be successfully refuted. And the module will address arguments relating to virtual reality, including arguments to the conclusion that what we think of as the real world is in fact a simulation, and arguments that call into question the supposed difference between reality and virtual reality. There are political and moral questions that hinge on answers to our metaphysical questions. The aim of the module is to introduce theories, concepts and frameworks that will be helpful to attempts to grapple with the metaphysical questions and further questions that hinge on them.

10 credits

Death

This module is mainly about death itself . What is death? What happens to us when we die? Could there be an afterlife? Would it be a good thing if there were? What is it about death that we dislike so much, or that makes it bad? Is it rational, or even possible to fear death? What is the right attitude towards our own death? Do we have moral duties towards the dead? The course will clarify these questions and attempt to answer them. Readings will be taken from both historical and contemporary sources.

10 credits

Ethics in Antiquity: East and West

How should we live? What are the right values and principles by which we should guide our lives? What weight should we give to considerations of morality and justice? Are there fixed truths about these matters or are they just determined by choice or convention? Ethics is concerned with questions such as these. This course will engage with such questions by examining some important and influential texts from the ancient world, both Western and Eastern, including key writings by the Greek philosopher Plato and the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi.

10 credits

Plus a selection of modules available from other schools.

Core modules:

Political Analysis 2: How to do empirical research

An important skill for the study of  politics and international relations is the ability to effectively collect, analyse and evaluate reliable and robust evidence about real-world political phenomena. A good grounding in methods for collecting qualitative data can allow you to both make more sense of (and critically engage with) the research literature, and to carry out your own independent research, enabling you to address your own questions about the political world. Political Analysis 2 will introduce you to a range of quantitative and qualitative methods for studying political phenomena which will give you the skills you need.

In the course of the module, we will look at:The principles of effective research design in politics and IR - how to set up your research to answer your questions effectively and reliablySources of qualitative and quantitative data for politics and international relation researchMethod for collecting qualitative dataHow to code and analyse qualitative dataAnalysing trends and associations in political data;Using quantitative data and regression analysis to evaluate theories about real-world politics.

Building on the module taking in the first year, you will have the opportunity to learn how to apply the practical tools needed to collect and independently analyse data.

20 credits

Optional modules:

Tackling the World's Wicked Problems: theoretical tools and applications

The world is faced with many pressing problems, from military conflicts to climate change, terrorism, and humanitarian catastrophes. These problems often seem intractable.

In this module, you will be presented with a variety of theoretical perspectives and tools, such as Postcolonialism and Green Theory, that seek to address these various 'wicked problems'. The module offers an in-depth discussion of some of the most important International Relations theories and applies them to empirical cases.

You address how various theories propose to practically solve the most pressing problems in world politics. You will also gain experience in approaching problems from a diversity of perspectives in order to better understand how problems arise and come to exist in global politics.

20 credits

Migration and World Politics

Migration has been receiving more attention in international politics. This module analyses migration using a world politics lens. It will provide students with the concepts and theories - as well as the historical, contextual and critical skills - needed to understand international migration from different perspectives. It will discuss migration and problematise migration concepts and categories such as forced migration (asylum and internal people displacement), statelessness and citizenship, border control/security, labour migration, migration diplomacy, family migration and environmental migration. It will also approach case studies including the Migration and Asylum Policy of the European Union, migration politics in Latin America and the USA-Mexico border among others.

20 credits

Political Theory in Practice

You will explore key debates in political theory and their implications for current political practice. 

You will have the opportunity to engage in: debates surrounding justice and what these mean for welfare and taxation policies; disputes over the meaning of democracy and their implications for how we choose our leaders; discussions about different ideas of freedom of speech, and what 'hate speech' is; and to explore controversies around multiculturalism, in particular its impact upon women. 

Overall, this module will help you become well-equipped to identify and evaluate the competing values that lie behind so many of our current political controversies.

20 credits

Europe in Crisis

The European Union (EU) is a unique and highly developed instance of transnational governance and a major actor in world politics. It remains, despite Brexit, an important political and economic ally and partner to the United Kingdom. 

Your lectures will discuss the history and institutions of the EU and explore a range of contemporary debates and issues. Seminars will offer an opportunity for you to review and explore these topics in greater detail.

The module will provide a working knowledge of European integration, EU policy making, and of various recent political and economic crises.  At the same time you will, via various seminar activities, group work and assessments, have the opportunity to develop a range of relevant transferable skills.

20 credits

Contemporary Security Challenges

Throughout the module you will examine a series of key contemporary challenges to international security.

You will engage in debates about the changing nature of security, analyse some of the causes of conflict and the development of new security threats, and understand the key ways in which states and non-state actors shape and respond to these threats.

You will explore a range of approaches to gain a theoretically-informed but policy-relevant understanding of security-related issues in the twenty-first century.

20 credits

The Political Economy of Global Capitalism

In this module you will explore the political dynamics that underpin the organisation of capitalism.

You will study major issues within the global economy, ranging from the contested rise of neoliberal globalisation to the gendered and racialised patterns of work, production, inequality, and (financial) crises. You will investigate the history and contemporary operation of capitalism as a mode of production, and examine how capitalist social relations affect individuals, communities, states and the environment.  

The module will provide detailed knowledge of the political economy of capitalism and expose you to the tools to critically analyse it. You will become more familiar with cross-disciplinary methods as the module draws on a wide range of scholarship drawn from (International) Political Economy, Sociology, Geography and History. Finally, through a critical media analysis assessment, you will  analyse current real-life developments with the help of theories and concepts.

20 credits

Africa in the World

Africa has long been treated as a marginal part of the world, both historically and in relation to contemporary global politics. Throughout this module you will challenge this misconception by exploring the crucial role that Africa plays in the current world order and the way it has historically evolved.

You will be introduced to the political, economic, socio-cultural, and military of Africa's international relations, familiarising yourself with the key actors, institutions and processes involved. You will assess how the slave trade and colonialism have shaped the modern world order, the global reverberations of African independence movements and pan-Africanism, and how continuing unequal relations are expressed in the politics of debt and military intervention. You will also analyse Africa's relations to emerging global powers.

By the end of the module you will have used a range of theoretical and conceptual tools from the field of international relations, drawing to a considerable extent on the work of African thinkers.

20 credits

The Making of The Modern Middle East

You will examine the key political, economic and social dynamics that have shaped and have been shaped by the politics in the contemporary Middle East. Drawing on insights not only from politics but also from history, sociology, anthropology, and political economy, you will explore historical developments and political themes in the region.

The module content will encourage the development of the skills and knowhow to use the 'politics from below' perspective, listen for multiple discourses and silences, and contextualise these voices and silences historically, politically, economically and geographically in wider regional and global power structures.

By the end of the module, you will have used the conceptual and analytical skills needed to de-exceptionalise your understanding of politics in the Middle East.

20 credits

Oppression and Resistance

Intense and ongoing debates over oppression shape contemporary politics. The key to these debates are disagreements over what constitutes oppression, how it functions, and how it can be resisted.

During this module, you will explore the strategies and legacy of movements that resisted specific forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, homophobia, class-based oppression and violence against non-human animals. To do this you will learn about movements like the Haitian Revolution, Black Lives Matter, Pride, #MeToo, and the 504 Disability Rights Sit-in.

You will be introduced to the historical, theoretical and empirical tools to understand and analyse modern oppression and resistance.

20 credits

The Left: Past, Present and Future

From its origins in the French Revolution, the movement of 'The Left' has struggled to balance equality, liberty and solidarity. Implementing these values has given rise to many different strands of leftist thought, leading to debates between radicals and proponents of meliorism. 

This module will provide you with the historical, theoretical and empirical tools to understand 'The Left' as a continuing project. You will explore topics such as defining 'The Left', its origins and development, its relation to political economy, and the current state of the Left in the UK and around the world.

20 credits

Ethics: From Theory to Practice

Ethical values shape our world and the lives we lead - from how we relate to our friends and community, to our social and political attitudes, to the aspirations and goals that guide our life choices. But ethics is also challenging. When our values clash, or we face unfamiliar problems, or we reflect on the objectionable values of people in the past, it becomes unclear what to do. Ethical theories attempt to help us solve these problems by giving a precise, unified and systematic account of moral values, ideals and duties.

This module introduces students to a range of contemporary and historical ethical theories. We discuss six broad approaches to ethical theorising, each centred on a core unifying value: altruism, relationships, freedom, agreements, rights and excellence. In doing so we will encounter theories such as Utilitarianism, Contractualism and Feminist Care Ethics, and the ideas of philosophers including JS Mill, Harriet Taylor, Simone de Beauvoir, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, Mary Wollestonecraft, Aristotle and Freidrich Nietzsche.

Students will learn how to articulate the key concepts and theories in philosophical ethics, and to evaluate, compare and criticise different approaches to ethical theorising. They will also learn to employ philosophical concepts to uncover and analyse the ethical values and presuppositions made in contemporary moral and social debates.

20 credits

Formal Logic

The course will start by introducing some elementary concepts from set theory; along the way, we will consider some fundamental and philosophically interesting results and forms of argumentation. It will then examine the use of 'trees' as a method for proving the validity of arguments formalised in propositional and first-order logic. It will also show how we may prove a range of fundamental results about the use of trees within those logics, using certain ways of assigning meanings to the sentences of the languages which those logics employ.

20 credits

Philosophy of the Arts

This module introduces students to a broad range of issues in the philosophy of art. The first half asks 'What is art?'. It examines three approaches: expression theories, institutional accounts, and the cluster account. This is followed by two critiques focusing on the lack of women in the canon and problems surrounding 'primitive' art. The evolutionary approach to art is discussed , and two borderline cases: craft and pornography. The second half examines four issues: cultural appropriation of art, pictorial representation, aesthetic experience and the everyday, and the nature of artistic creativity.

20 credits

History of Political Philosophy

We are citizens in a democratic capitalist society, we vote and choose our representatives and our government, our representatives make laws that we must then follow. We do not only obey the laws only for fear of being punished; we believe that our system of government is just, and that it is just for us to obey the laws. We believe that - by and large - we live in a just society. Do we? What justifies our system of government? Are there alternative possible relations, alternative forms of citizenship; alternative forms of government, alternative ways of organising a society? Is ours the only just one?
We will look at the history of political philosophy and explore various systems of citizenship, government and economic arrangements. Our main aim will be to understand how these different systems justify or legitimise the existence of government and its authority to make and enforce laws. We will also look at the more general notion of 'justice' that accompanies and grounds these systems of government.
Two side concerns will be:-
1. The relation between a philosopher's view of ethics and her political philosophy.
2. The relation between a philosopher's view of human nature and her political philosophy.

20 credits

Religion and the Good Life

What, if anything, does religion have to do with a well-lived life? For example, does living well require obeying God's commands? Does it require atheism? Are the possibilities for a good life enhanced or only diminished if there is a God, or if Karma is true? Does living well take distinctive virtues like faith, mindfulness, or humility as these have been understood within religious traditions? In this module, we will examine recent philosophical work on questions like these while engaging with a variety of religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam, and Judaism.

20 credits

Theory of Knowledge

The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to philosophical issues surrounding the knowledge. We will be concerned with the nature and extent of knowledge. How must a believer be related to the world in order to know that something is the case? Can knowledge be analysed in terms of more basic notions? Must our beliefs be structured in a certain way if they are to be knowledge? In considering these questions we will look at various sceptical arguments that suggest that the extent of knowledge is much less than we suppose. And we will look at the various faculties of knowledge: perception, memory, introspection, and testimony.

20 credits

Reference and Truth

This module is an introductory course in the Philosophy of Language. The overall focus of the course will be on the notion of meaning. The first part of the course will attempt to shed light on the notion of meaning by investigating different accounts of the meanings of some types of linguistic expressions, in particular names (for instance 'Nelson Mandela') and definite descriptions (for instance 'the inventor of the zip', 'the first minister of Scotland'). We will then look at an influential approach to understanding what it is for words to have meaning and for people to mean things by their words, one due to Paul Grice. And we will examine the role and understanding of conventions and how someone can say something and yet communicate something very different from its conventional meaning. We will also explore the phenomena of 'implicature' where people can communicate more (or something different from) what they literally say.

20 credits

Philosophy of Science

It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance that science has in our everyday life. Here is a brief list of things that would not exist without modern science: computers, phones, internet, cars, airplanes, pharmaceutical drugs, electric guitars. Imagine your life without these things. It looks very different doesn't it? Science, however, is not important only in virtue of its practical applications. in fact, many would agree that the the primary value of science is that of being the best available source of knowledge about the world. Indeed, it seems fair to say that we made more discoveries after the 17th century scientific revolution [e.g. the laws of planetary motion, the principles underlying biological evolution, the laws governing quantum phenomena, the structure of DNA, the cellular architecture of the brain] than in all the previous millenia. This raises important philosophical questions.

First, what is science? What are the criteria that demarcate science from non-science? For example, what is the difference between science and religion? Second, how does science work? What are the methods and eplanatory strategies that make it so successful? Is there such a thing as the scientific method, and what counts as a scientific explanation? Third, is science objective? That is, is science a form of rational and unbiased inquiry, or does it reflect ethical, political, and social factors? Finally, is science the fundamental source of knowledge about the world? Does science tell us how things really are? These are some of the questions that we will tackle in this course.

20 credits

Bioethics

Bioethics arose in response to the moral challenges thrown up by technological advances of the twentieth century. As we move through the 21st century, new moral problems are emerging, even as old one still concern us.

How should we allocate resource for medical care and research? Are there limits to what can be done to our bodies, or does consent permit everything? In a pandemic, how should we balance concerns for liberty and protecting the vulnerable? Should we try to 'enhance' human beings, or should we be happy with the way we are?

This module will introduce a range of practical bioethical problems, as well as some methods for approaching them. Our emphasis will be on doing philosophy practically, with a view to the implications of philosophical argument in the real world of healthcare, research and bioscience.

20 credits

Feminism

Feminists have famously claimed that the personal is political. This module takes up various topics with that methodological idea in mind: the family, cultural critique, language. We examine feminist methodologies - how these topics might be addressed by a feminism that is inclusive of all women - and also turn attention to social structures within which personal choices are made - capitalism, and climate crisis .

20 credits

Metaphysics

This course is an introduction to metaphysics. It will focus on two general themes: whether we are material things, and the nature of time. Readings will be drawn mainly from recent and contemporary sources.

20 credits

Philosophy of Mind

This module provides a survey of philosophical theories of the mind, looking at such questions as: How is consciousness possible? Why is it that vibrations in the air around us produce conscious experiences of particular auditory experiences in our minds? Why is it that electromagnetic waves hitting our retinas produce particular visual experiences in our minds? What makes our thoughts represent things in the world? What is it about your thought that cats have whiskers that makes it about cats and whiskers? What is it about your thought that there are stars in the universe too far away for any human to have perceived them that makes it about such stars? What is the relation between thoughts and conscious experiences and brain states? We'll look at a variety of answers to these and related questions and examine some of the most important and influential theories that contemporary philosophers have to offer.

20 credits

Political Philosophy Today

This module will investigate a broad range of contemporary topics and issues in political philosophy. Example topics include the political rights of animals and children, how we should allocate scarce health resources, whether we should ban private education, and the limits of free speech in the workplace. By studying these topics and others, students will gain a broad knowledge of the state of contemporary political philosophy, develop their ability to critically assess and discuss real-world issues, and improve their understanding of how theoretical topics in political philosophy can be applied in practical ways.

20 credits

Philosophy of Education

What is education? And what is it for? These are the questions at the heart of this course. To begin to try to answer them, students will engage in: (1) a theoretical exploration of the central philosophical problems related to education and schooling; and (2) a practical task focusing on learning how philosophy can be taught effectively to secondary school pupils. The theoretical exploration will be taught in a similar way to other philosophy modules (through a weekly lecture and seminar) and a mid-term coursework essay will assess this component (counting for 50% of the module grade).

The practical element will be taught through workshops, engagement with reflective practice, observations at a secondary school, and actual experience of running seminars with secondary school pupils at the University during a three-day conference at the end of the course. The practical part of the course will be assessed by a teaching portfolio (which counts for 50% of the module grade) composed of lesson plans and a reflection. Teaching is a special kind of challenge, but students on the course are not expected to have any previous experience in teaching or in planning lessons. Help and support will be provided throughout the module to make the delivery of lessons to secondary school pupils a realistic goal for all motivated students.

20 credits

Environmental Justice

This module will introduce students to contemporary philosophical discussions of environmental justice at the global level. Topics to be covered may include: The nature of global environmental injustices; responsibility for global environmental problems; the relationship between global environmental challenges and other historical and contemporary injustices; fair international sharing of the costs of environmental action; the justifiability of environmental activism; the rights of indigenous peoples; fairness in global environmental decision-making; and the politics of ‘geoengineering’ the planet.

20 credits

Plus a selection of modules available from other schools.

Choose ONE of the following core modules:

Political Analysis 3: Independent Research Through a Dissertation

For this module, you will conduct a supervised research dissertation on an agreed topic with guidance and support from a dissertation supervisor, drawing on the culmination of knowledge and skills you have gained throughout your degree.

You will meet with your module tutor and peers in five two-hour interactive lecture-workshops to prepare you to submit a formal 1,000 word research proposal, undertake individual research and produce a 8,000 word dissertation.

You will also undertake four individual supervision sessions with your dissertation supervisor where you will plan out your research process, set objectives, and you can discuss your progress and receive feedback.

40 credits

Research Project 1

You will choose to research and explore a topic studied during a semester one module at a deeper level. With an academic supervisor for support, you will conduct and write a 5,000 word research project.

The research project will support the development of your academic scholarship and your critical thinking skills by immersing you in the research process. You will practice identifying credible sources, evaluating information objectively, and drawing and articulating meaningful insights from your findings.

20 credits

Optional modules:

Parliamentary Studies

You will analyse how parliaments and legislatures operate through theoretically-informed but policy relevant teaching. You will address key topics in order to understand why cultures, traditions and informal relationships matter as much (if not more) than formal procedures.

The House of Commons and the House of Lords will provide the main institutional focus for this module, but you will be encouraged to adopt a comparative approach where possible to situate your analysis within an appreciation of the changing role of parliament within evolving frameworks of multi-level governance. 

This module is skills-based with practitioners travelling from Parliament to co-deliver seminars and discuss career options and professional pathways.

20 credits

Party Politics: Competition, Strategies and Campaigns

'Party Politics' offers an in-depth examination of various issues related with parties, looking at their characteristics as well as their interactions. The module is motivated by a series of fundamental questions about parties and party systems. How and why do political parties emerge? What characterises different party families? How do parties run campaigns, and how effective are they? How do parties compete during elections, and what determines the kind of coalitions we get in government? Why do some political systems have few parties, while others many? Why do some parties appeal to voters by promising particular programs, whereas others use clientelist methods to mobilise electoral support? The module is empirical in nature, trying to evaluate theories related to party politics through the use of evidence. You will be encouraged to think critically about the approaches used and apply real-world cases to the topics under investigation. A key aspect of the module is the use of the comparative method as a way to think analytically and make inferences. You do not need to have any prior knowledge of empirical methods to take the course.

20 credits

Peacekeeping, State-building and International Intervention

International interventions are ubiquitous in today's global politics. Designed to protect civilians, to deliver humanitarian aid, to ensure peace or to rebuild states, international interventions take a variety of forms and are led by international organisations, states and non-governmental organisations. In this module, you will investigate the ways these interventions function, the limitations and problems they face, and how they have changed in recent years.

Drawing on a number of different approaches (such as feminist approaches to peace, the turn to the local, or decolonial approaches) and empirical examples, you will explore the key practices of international intervention (peacebuilding, statebuilding and development).

As an advanced International Relations module, you will use key skills needed to critically analyse the successes and failures of international interventions. You will also gain experience in developing solutions and alternative approaches to improve the outcomes of these interventions.

20 credits

Gender Politics in the Arab World

The topic is women and gender in the Middle East is a prevalent theme in popular culture. The image of Arab women or LGBTQI community members as the victims of Arab men are only two of many images to which most people have become accustomed through the media.

There is widespread ignorance concerning the lives, struggles and achievements of Arab women and LGBTQI identifying and non-identifying persons living in the Arab world. Often Arab is understood as also meaning Muslim, with Arab and Muslim incorrectly being used interchangeably. During this module, you will examine the focus on Arab-Muslim women and identify what this tells us about current politics and power relations. You will investigate how images of Arab/Muslim women are used to justify certain policies and maintain certain discourses and truths about both Arab/Muslim women and Western women. 

This module will also give you the opportunity to learn feminist self-reflective research techniques to look inwards and examine yourself as a researcher. Through a self-reflective journal you will learn how to use your own experiences to speak back to the readings and gain a deeper understanding of the readings that is not just based on critical analysis but also your own embodied knowledge. 

Through theoretical, historical, self-reflective and political study, you may gain a deeper understanding of how to assess power relations and be able to analyse how gender functions in different knowledge/power structures and discourses.

20 credits

Global Politics of Forced Migration

Armed conflicts, persecutions, and disasters cause people to be forcibly displaced, both nationally and internationally. By the end of 2022, there were 100 million forcibly displaced people according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Forced displacement, particularly asylum, has also received more attention from the media and decision-makers. This module will open discussion on the politics involved in these forced displacement situations.

You will be provided with a comprehensive view of global forced displacement topics, including asylum, refugee children, gender, family reunification, externalisation strategies, environmental displacement, and internally displaced people. With this knowledge, you will investigate and debate key questions, such as: who is a refugee, what are the implications of classifications on forcibly displaced people, what are the power constraints of international organisations working on forced displacement, and which actors and structures constitute the global governance regime of forced displacement? 

By studying the asylum systems in Europe, Africa, and Latin America in a comparative way, you will be exposed to the important tools needed to understand the global forced displacement regime.

20 credits

Conflict, Violence and Security in Africa

Why does Africa appear to be prone to conflict? You will seek to answer this much-debated question through a systematic study of conflict, violence and security, focussing on sub-Saharan Africa. 

You will have the opportunity to conduct in-depth case studies on topics such as the anti-colonial wars in Kenya and Zimbabwe, military coups in Burkina Faso and Mali, child soldiers in northern Uganda, conflicts in Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Nigeria. In addition, you will examine broader security challenges that impact the lives of ordinary Africans as well as look at the international response of conflict, violence, and insecurity on the continent. 

By the end of the module you will have had the opportunity to gained a thorough understanding of the complex and distinct dynamics of violence conflict in Africa.

20 credits

Public Policy and Democratic Politics

Recent years have seen a tide of pressures impact on policy makers. Fuelling distrust and disaffection with public policy making, populist politicians have blamed civil servants for alleged corruption. Political leaders have also pushed for fundamental changes in how states operate. From the bottom up, social movements have put pressure on policy makers to revolutionise racial and gender equality, and respond to climate catastrophe. Technological innovations confront policy makers with a new and alienating future. 

You will examine the challenges policy makers face at multiple levels and ask the question: how can they make radical change happen? 

By the end of the module, you will have been exposed to more nuanced understanding of the pressures policy makers face and how they manage them, with the aim of successfully implementing radical shifts in how we respond to the most pressing policy issues of our time.

20 credits

Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence

You will examine what circumstances political violence is deemed legitimate or illegitimate, approaching your investigation as an empirical question of power and politics. 

You will have the opportunity to explore a range of related topics, such as the distinction between civilians and combatants, the use of violence in war vs peace time, terrorism, torture, domestic and family violence, and police brutality. 

The key areas you will address are: when is violence treated as legitimate in the world; who gets to determine this; and how and when do the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate violence change?

20 credits

Narcopolitics

Drugs are big businesses and politically salient, yet their production, trade, distribution and regulation are understudies in politics. Narcotics are rooted in complex webs of public, private and criminal power, with diverse consequences for growth, development, security and health.

You will explore this evolving panorama through tracing the political evolution of therapeutic/psychotropic substances (from the opium wars to prohibition), analysing the 'War of Drugs', investigating the attendant creation of mafia violence, and following the emergence of 'narco-states'. 

Towards the end of the module, you will assess contemporary experiments in legalisation and decriminalisation, the development of licit recreation narcotics industries, and the implications for the global prohibitionist architecture.

20 credits

The Ethics of Political Leadership

This course examines the ethics of political leadership. To do so, it focuses on broad and timeless questions, such as 'What is the relationship between politics and morality?' as well as more focused questions, including 'May politicians bend moral constraints in the name of political necessity?' and 'Is it always wrong for leaders to lie?'

To answer these questions, you will analyse and evaluate normative arguments on the significance and function of political leaders in contemporary politics. You will also examine competing theories of leadership in their historical and intellectual context. This module will encourage you to take a theoretical approach, using examples of political leaders to highlight strengths and weaknesses of competing theories of leadership, and to emphasise their ideological assumptions and implications.

20 credits

Party, State and Society in China

This module examines changing state-society relations in the People's Republic of China from the Mao Zedong era to the present day.

You will get to explore this topic through a number of themes, such as resistance, 'civil society', gender, online expression, censorship and self-censorship, repression, responsiveness, and inequality.

Throughout the module, you will engage with important recent debates about China's political development. You will also practice your critical thinking, discussion, and essay-writing skills.

20 credits

Global Culture Wars

Cancel culture, identity politics, the war on woke… How should we make sense of the so-called 'culture wars' that are transforming politics?

Throughout this module, you will examine this topic from a global and historical perspective, investigating the contemporary politics of culture wars that are found worldwide, and the tensions that have existed in one form or another since the dawn of modernity. Topics you will study include the rise of the global right, the transnational backlash against LGBT+ rights, and how social media has shaped contemporary politics. 

As a group, we will take a step back from the commotion, scandal and outrage to trace the historical lineages of culture wars across global politics.

20 credits

Understanding Elections

Elections are key moments in democratic politics. They influence the formation of governments and provide a means for citizens to express their political preferences and their judgements on the competence of those who govern them. In doing so, they offer important insights into public opinion, participation, and political behaviour. Elections are also complex events, influenced by political debates, ideas, and campaigns, by different rules under which particular electoral systems operate, and by large social forces beyond the control of governments. Understanding elections requires insights into many aspects of modern political life. 

During this module, you will investigate elections from a range of different perspectives, answering questions about what influences voter decisions and how these have changed, the effect of party political campaigns on election outcomes, and the impact of the 'rules of the game' governing the electoral system on the outcome of elections. 

Examining elections in the UK and around the world, you will draw on the latest evidence and research to understand academic debates on electoral politics and to develop your ideas and analyses of elections.

20 credits

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that the world should, in some sense, be understood as a single moral or political entity.

This module will encourage you to engage with cosmopolitanism from the perspective of normative political theory. You will be introduced to the historical origins of cosmopolitanism, from the Cynics in Ancient Greece to Immanuel Kant, before moving on to discuss the contemporary wave of cosmopolitanism theorising that began in the latter part of the twentieth century.

There are two core strands to the contemporary wave: claims about the global scope of justice, and claims about the need for global democracy. Both have come under considerable criticism as scholars ask: Is justice really global in scope, or is it an idea that belongs within the state or nation? Do we really need a global democracy? Does cosmopolitanism imply a world state? Is the whole idea of cosmopolitanism imperialistic? These are just some of the questions that you will be discussing and investigating during your seminars and lectures.

20 credits

Pandemics and Panics: Health, Security and Global Politics

In today's globalized world, infectious diseases and other health issues have increasingly come to be seen as security threats - a shift that has challenged traditional notions of what 'Security Studies' is all about. This module seeks to provide an understanding of the contemporary politics of health and security, identifying the health issues which have been seen as security threats and the major policy responses to them. The module locates health and disease within the key approaches to Security Studies (including state-centric and human security approaches), and requires students to critically engage with the politics and ethics of securitizing health.

20 credits

Practical Politics: How to Make Policy and Influence People

What is public policy? Who makes it? How? When is policy making successful, and why is it sometimes not?   

From health to education, from environment to crime, from central government to local councils, from  NGOs to big tech, this course will teach you how policy is made and how you can influence it. It includes regular guest talks by politicians, civil servants, campaigners and think tankers, and independent tasks reflecting the things policy makers actually do. 

This module will give you not just a practical understanding of how policy making is done, but a direct sense of what it would be like to work in the policy field.

20 credits

Terrorism, Violence and the State

In order to understand the nature and motivations of contemporary terrorism, it is necessary to understand the nature of the modern state and other, non-violent forms of protest such as civil disobedience. 

The module will examine the nature of modern political violence, covering non-violent resistance; violent resistance and terrorism; motivations, tactics, strategies and goals of terrorists; state responses to terrorism; the role of gender and the relationship with media.

By studying these topics, you may advance your understanding of the nature and legitimacy of forms of protest against the modern state.

20 credits

Political Psychology: The Personal Side of Politics

In this module, you will discuss the major theories and research paradigms in the exciting subfield of Political Psychology. At its core, Political Psychology is an attempt to use what we know about human psychology to understand the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups within political systems. 

Rather than reviewing what happens in politics, or how it happens, you will ask why events happen by studying the psychology of politics at the micro level (e.g. the personality of politicians), the meso level (e.g. the ideological and moral foundations of political parties), and the macro level (e.g. motivated reasoning, racism and prejudice, mass political behaviour and the influence of the media).

This module will encourage you to think in new ways about the psychological diversity of individuals, groups, and communities, and the ways in which this shapes their engagement in politics. In the process, you may become open-minded to new interdisciplinary approaches in the study of politics and social relations, and practice resilience as you seek to master unfamiliar concepts and scientific methods.

20 credits

Animals, Ethics and Politics

Throughout this module, you will explore the key debates surrounding what we owe to animals politically. You will discuss the main debates in animal ethics and ask how they affect political practices, norms, institutions and policies. 

Particular attention will be paid to the tensions between animal welfare and other political values and goods, enabling you to explore controversial policy debates such as animal experimentation, animal agriculture, conservation and the use of animals for entertainment.

Overall, you will investigate and debate the implications of taking animals seriously for current political practice.

20 credits

Brexit and Beyond

The United Kingdom (UK) has left the European Union (EU), but the EU's impact on its politics and economy has been profound and will endure long after Brexit.

Throughout this module, you will investigate complex issues such as the UK's historical relations with the EU and the Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation of British politics, policy and economy.

By the end of the module, you will have critically analysed: the pre-history of membership and accession, the EU's impact on the UK and the UK's impact on the EU, and the process and impact of Brexit. At the same time, seminar activities, group work and assessments will support your development of important transferable skills.

20 credits

Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict

Conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) was once overlooked and ignored by policymakers. Now eliminating CRSV and sex and gender based violence features on the policy agendas of numerous international organisations, especially the United Nations. 

Throughout the module, you will undertake three key tasks: an examination of what sexual violence is, why it occurs and why it is so widespread; an assessment of the international efforts to prosecute and prevent sexual violence in armed conflict, and explore the various long-term consequences of sexual violence in armed conflict for individuals, communities, and processes of reconciliation.

You will have the opportunity to discuss what can be done to prevent CRSV (and its numerous violent consequences), explore what it is like to conduct research into CRSV, and undertake case study analysis including designing recommendations for a policy audience.

20 credits

Britain in a New Age of Crisis

During this module, you will study some of the key moments in British political, economic and social history since the year 2000.

You will explore particular incidents over this time, such as the Iraq War, the Global Financial Crisis, austerity, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. You will also study recurring themes in British political history, such as the centralisation of political power, globalisation, quality, and the political economy of growth.

You do not need to have studied British politics before if you wish to take this module. Studying this module can enhance your analytical and communication skills, as the delivery of the course is centred around the development of groupwork.

20 credits

War, Peace and Justice

During this module, you will critically examine the politics of liberal war,  a term used to describe the various military activities of the liberal powers since the end of the Cold War, from military interventions in Kosovo to the invasions occupations, counter insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the training and arming of Ukraine's military. Liberal war is grounded in ethical claims and logics that emphasise war as a humanitarian measure to liberate the oppressed and to achieve or preserve ideals of the international liberal order, such as democracy and freedom. War pursued by the liberal powers is therefore seen to be a mechanism of liberal peace and justice.  

You will study the role of liberal war within global racial hierarchies and the ongoing condition of coloniality, the relationship between liberal war and gender, different conceptualizations and ways of understanding the violences of liberal war, the relationships between liberal war and liberal economy, and the politics of death in liberal war. You will also examine the presents and the futures of liberal war, considering events such as the fall of Kabul and the war in Ukraine. 

By the end of the module, you will have critically assessed liberal war's logics and ethical claims and the practices that go along with them.

20 credits

Corporations in Global Politics: Possibilities, Tensions, and Ambiguities

Corporations are ubiquitous, affecting everything from mundane individual consumption choices, to the investment decisions of both weak and powerful states. Importantly, their authority extends beyond the economic sphere and into the political, as they shape and execute policies and outcomes for some of the world's pressing problems.

Drawing upon international relations, political economy, and global governance literatures, you will analyse the corporation theoretically and empirically by drawing upon a diverse range of case studies from environmental sustainability and development, to war-making and peacekeeping. 

You will have the opportunity to explore the multifaceted political roles of corporations, learning to critically reflect on their implications.

20 credits

Work Place Learning

This module involves a work placement of 35-70 hours with a local organisation (voluntary or commercial sector). You will experience firsthand the practical challenges and problems facing the organisation. You will learn about the organisation's overall aims, and the various methods and strategies employed to accomplish those aims. You will draw on the concepts and theoretical frameworks studied in your other philosophy modules to identify a philosophical issue relevant to the organisation's work or goals, and to write a piece or pieces of coursework addressing that issue; or you will be able to use the skills and knowledge you have gained in your other philosophy modules to analyse a problem of philosophical interest faced by the organisation or encountered in the course of your employment. You will have two meetings together with other students in the module to discuss your work placement and formulate ideas for your written coursework. You will have a further individual meeting with the module convener or an appropriate supervisor from the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities to discuss the progression of the coursework.

At the end of the module, you should have:

    the ability to apply ideas from your other philosophy modules in rigorously assessing the challenges facing organisations like the one you worked for, and interrogating potential solutions to them

    insight into the practical application of theoretical issues in philosophy

    practical experience that will make you a strong candidate for jobs in the sector you worked in.

20 credits

Bodies and Souls

Descartes is famous for his view that all mental activity takes place in an immaterial substance, so that what we call a human being is really two things: a thinking soul and an unthinking body. Aristotle thought that every living thing, whether conscious or not, was a compound of matter and form, and he called this form a 'soul'. This view, 'hylomorphism', dominated European philosophy throughout the middle ages. Both views are currently the subject of renewed interest. This module will examine them from a contemporary perspective.

20 credits

Pain, Pleasure, and Emotions

Affective states like pain, pleasure, and emotions have a profound bearing on the meaning and quality of our lives. Chronic pain can be completely disabling, while insensitivity to pain can be fatal. Analogously, a life without pleasure looks like a life of boredom, but excessive pleasure seeking can disrupt decision-making. In this module, we will explore recent advances in the study of the affective mind, by considering theoretical work in the philosophy of mind as well as empirical research in affective cognitive science. These are some of the problems that we will explore: Why does pain feel bad? What is the relation between pleasure and happiness? Are emotions cognitive states? Are moral judgments based on emotions? Can we know what other people are feeling?

20 credits

Dissertation Project 1

A variety of topics including an independent choice will be set  For each topic, a short list of key readings is provided. Having chosen a topic, students are expected to master the readings, and then supplement them with at least two other pieces of relevant literature having used the available library and web resources to research. They then, having agreed a title with a supervisor assigned to them for the module, write an extended essay that identifies the central issue (or issues) under discussion, relates the various responses to that issue found in the literature, evaluates those contributions, and goes some way to identifying a satisfactory resolution of the issue.

20 credits

Ethics and Belief

We know things as individuals, but we also know things collectively. And what we know individually can depend on our relation to other knowers and collective knowledge. These relations are not merely epistemic, they are also practical and ethical. Knowledge can, for instance, be based on trust, while a failure to recognize someone as a knower can be a matter of injustice. Knowledge thereby has a social character and an ethical dimension. This course will introduce a broad range of topics in epistemology that explore this social and ethical turn.

20 credits

Ancient Chinese Philosophy

This course will introduce students to ancient Chinese Philosophy through a study of some of it classical texts.

20 credits

Global Justice

What are the demands of justice at the global level? On this module we will examine this question from the perspective of analytic Anglo-American political philosophy. We will start by looking at some debates about the nature of global justice, such as whether justice demands the eradication of global inequalities. We will then turn to various questions of justice that arise at the global level, potentially including: how jurisdiction over territory might be justified; whether states have a right to exclude would-be immigrants; whether reparations are owed for past international injustices such as colonialism; and how to identify responsibilities for combatting global injustice.

20 credits

Free Will & Religion

This module focuses on philosophical questions about the relationship between free will and theistic religions. It has often been claimed that adherents of these religions have significant motivations to affirm an incompatibilist conception of free will according to which free will is incompatible with determinism. Incompatibilist conceptions of free will, it has been argued, have benefits for the theist such as enabling them to better account for the existence of moral evil, natural evil, divine hiddenness, and traditional conceptions of hell. Yet, on the other hand, it has been argued that there is a significant tension between theistic religions and incompatibilist conceptions of free will. For example, there are tempting arguments that an incompatibilist conception of free will makes trouble for affirming traditional views about God's omniscience, freedom, and providence. We will engage in a critical examination of these and related arguments.

20 credits

Feminist and Queer Studies in Religion, Global Perspectives

This module applies feminism, queer studies and trans philosophy in analysis of genders and sexualities in religious traditions and cultures around the world. We will examine deities and goddesses, gendered language in religions, cisheteropatriarchy, and LGBTQIA life in e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as in Chinese, and Japanese cultures. We will discuss genders, rituals, spirituality, sexual practices, procreation, abstinence, and asexuality, reading a range of feminist, queer and trans philosophical works, and texts ranging from the Kama Sutra to Confucius and the Vatican documents, Scriptures, and empirical research. Assignments allow students in Philosophy, Humanities, and Social Sciences develop their expertise using their preferred methods and topics, on religions of their choice.

20 credits

Phenomenology

This module introduces students to Phenomenology - a philosophical tradition in continental European philosophy, which is closely related to Existentialism. Phenomenology seeks to understand the human condition. Its starting-point is everyday experience, where this includes both mundane and less ordinary forms of experience such as those typically associated with conditions such as schizophrenia. Whilst Phenomenology encompasses a diverse range of thinkers and ideas, there tends to be a focus on consciousness as embodied, situated in a particular physical, social, and cultural environment, essentially related to other people, and existing in time. (This is in contrast to the disembodied, universal, and isolated notion of the subject that comes largely from the Cartesian tradition.) There is a corresponding emphasis on the world we inhabit as a distinctively human environment that depends in certain ways on us for its character and existence. Some of the central topics addressed by Phenomenology include: embodiment; ageing and death; the lived experience of oppression; human freedom; our relations with and knowledge of, other people; the experience of time; and the nature of the world. In this module, we will discuss a selection of these and related topics, examining them through the work of key figures in the Phenomenological Movement, such as Edmund Husserl, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Frantz Fanon, and Edith Stein.

20 credits

Dissertation Project 2

A variety of topics including an independent choice will be set  For each topic, a short list of key readings is provided. Having chosen a topic, students are expected to master the readings and then supplement them with at least two other pieces of relevant literature, having used the available library and web resources to uncover research. They then, having agreed a title with a supervisor assigned to them for the module, write an extended essay that identifies the central issue (or issues) under discussion, relates the various responses to that issue found in the literature, evaluates those contributions, and goes some way to identifying a satisfactory resolution of the issue.

20 credits

Plato's Symposium

The Symposium is a vivid, funny and moving dramatic dialogue in which a wide variety of characters - orators, doctor, comic poet, tragic poet, soldier-cum-statesman, philosopher and others - give widely differing accounts of the nature or erotic love (eros) at a banquet. Students should be willing to engage in close textual study, although no previous knowledge of either ancient philosophy or ancient Greek is required. We will be exploring the origins, definition, aims, objects and effects or eros, and asking whether it is viewed as a predominantly beneficial or harmful force. Are some manifestations or eros better than others? Is re-channelling either possible or desirable, and if so, how and in what contexts? What happens to eros if it is consummated? We will in addition explore the issues that the dialogue raises about relations between philosophy and literature, and the influence it has had on Western thought (e.g. Freud). The edition we will use is Rowe, C . J., 1998, Plato Symposium. Oxford: Aris and Phillips Classical texts.

20 credits

Moral Theory and Moral Psychology

This course examines the relationship of moral theory and moral psychology. We discuss the relationship of science and ethics, examine the nature of self-interest, altruism, sympathy, the will, and moral intuitions, explore psychological arguments for and against familiar moral theories including utilitarianism, virtue ethics, deontology and relativism, and confront the proposal that understanding the origins of moral thought 'debunks' the authority of ethics. In doing so, we will engage with readings from historical philosophers, including Hobbes, Butler, Hume, Smith, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche and Moore, as well as contemporary authors in philosophy and empirical psychology.

20 credits

Memory and the Self

Our memories of our personal past (i.e. our episodic memories) play an important role in our lives. They help us perform mundane tasks like finding our keys, but they arguably also form the foundation of our sense of self and personal identity. They let us know who we are by recording what we've done and experienced. In this module we will try to better understand what episodic memory is and to what extent it grounds our understanding of the self. This module will introduce students to the cognitive science of memory and to core issues in the philosophical foundations of cognitive science.In the first part of the module, we will look at methodological issues that arise when we attempt to describe the mind's structure within philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. In the second part of the module, we will look towards the cognitive sciences to better understand what sort of thing episodic memory is. In the final part of the module, we will consider the relationship between episodic memory and our sense of the self. This is an interdisciplinary module. Understanding how the mind is structured is a complex project. In order to make progress we need to appeal to both empirical and philosophical work (and work that blurs this distinction). We'll read scientific and philosophical papers; however, no prior knowledge of cognitive science (or neuroscience) will be presumed.

20 credits

Language, Speakers and the World

This module explores in depth some of the most important notions in 20th and 21st century Philosophy of Language, an area of study which has often been seen as central to analytic philosophy more generally. As well as examining theories of central elements of language, such as names and descriptions, it investigates potentially puzzling phenomena such as fiction and the vagueness of language. And it explores issues in Applied Philosophy of Language including questions about lying and misleading, about forms of silencing, and about language and power. Language is at the heart of much distinctively human activity, and so study of language provides insight into us - its users/speakers - and also into how we relate to each other and to the world.

20 credits

Plus a selection of modules available from other schools.