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BA Second Year Requirements:

Entry requirements: A pass in First Arts Philosophy or its equivalent in the case of exchange and visiting students.

Dates of Semesters (Teaching)

Timetable

Schedule of Courses: 

Six modules must be taken. The Core modules that must be taken are PI213, PI216 and PI249. You must take one Optional module from PI210, PI240 and one Optional module from PI241, PI248 in Semester One.

In Second Semester, you must choose between PI230 and PI247. 

Individual Course Unit Details:

Ancient Philosophy:

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI213	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Dr N Tosh

Course description : Philosophy in the West begins in Ancient Greece and an understanding of Greek philosophy is essential to an understanding of philosophy generally. This course will introduce students to Greek philosophy through a discussion of a number of key themes. These will include the distinction between the one and the many, questions of being and becoming, justice, happiness and the good life. We begin with the Pre-Socratics, devote several weeks to Plato and Aristotle, and conclude with a discussion of the Hellenistic schools of Scepticism, Cynicism and Stoicism.

Prerequisites: None

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based supplemented by tutorials

Methods of assessment and evaluation: written examination.

Core Text:

S. Marc Cohen, P. Curd, C. D. C. Reeve, Readings In Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales To Aristotle London: Hackett Pub, 2005 

Phenomenology 

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI248	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Dr F. Ó Murchadha

Course description: This course will familiarize students with the methods and themes Phenomenology focusing on the work of Husserl and Heidegger. The course will concentrate especially on such themes as consciousness, intentionality, reduction, truth, emotion embodiment, and the other.

Prerequisites:  None

Teaching and learning methods: This course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials.

Methods of assessment and examination : Overall assessment is by essay.

Core Texts:

Heidegger, M.: Basic Writings (New York: Harper and Row, 1977)

Welton, Donn (ed.): The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

Supplementary Reading:

Bernet, Rudolf.: An Introduction to Husserlian phenomenology (Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press,1993).

Moran, Dermot: Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2000)

Sokolowski, Robert.: Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
.
Welton, Donn: The New Husserl: a critical reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003) 193 HUS

Zahavi, Dan.: The New Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology (Bloomington:

 

History of Irish Thought

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI241	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Dr T Duddy

Course description: This course covers the history of Irish thought from the seventh century to the twentieth century, focusing in some detail on the ideas of selected individual thinkers.  The course begins with the thought of the Irish Augustine, an Irish monk from the seventh century.  It continues with an examination of the work of the great ninth-century thinker, John Scottus Eriugena.  The bulk of the course will discuss the thought of the modern thinkers, including Robert Boyle, John Toland, George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift, Francis Hutcheson and Edmund Burke.

The course will conclude with a discussion of the work of the nineteenth-century radical thinkers, William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler, and the twentieth-century thinkers, Iris Murdoch, William Desmond and Philip Pettit.

Prerequisites: None 

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials.

Methods of assessment and evaluation: Overall assessment is based on written examination. Written course work (essay) - if required - is added to the evaluation.

Core Texts:

Duddy, T., A History of Irish Thought, Routledge 2002.

Moral & Political Philosophy

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI210	1	2 (Tutorials not included)

Lecturer: Mr J Mahon  MA 

Course description: This course has two parts. The first part is intended to familiarise students with the works of classical political philosophers, such as Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes Bentham and Mill, as well as with such contemporary counterparts as J. Rawls, R. Dworkin, A. Sen, G.A. Cohen, T. Nagel and I. Berlin. The unifying theme of this part of the course will be the good society, and this idea will be explored by analysis of such cognate concepts as freedom, justice and equality. The second part of the course concentrates on what is technically called meta-ethics.  Meta-ethics is a study of the way or ways in which moral language is like and unlike language used for other purposes. This part of the course may also be described as a protracted inquiry into the rationality of morals. It treats such topics as morality and knowledge, the nature of ethical disagreement, reason, emotion and morality, the is/ought question, and moral dilemmas.

Prerequisites: None

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials. 

Methods of assessment and evaluation:  Overall assessment is by essay.

Core texts:  

C.B. MacPherson, The life and times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford  University Press, Oxford 1977

R.E. Goodin and P. Pettit (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Blackwell: Oxford, 1993, 1995.

J.S. Mill, On Liberty, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974.

T. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, Oxford U. Press: Oxford, 1991.

J. Steiner, European Democracies, 3 rd edition, Longman: London, 1995.

W.D. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy,  MacMillan,  London 1970.

D.Z. Philips & H.O. Mounce, Moral Practices,  Routledge & Kegan Paul, London  1970.

G.J.Warnock, The Object of Morality,  Methuen,  London  1971.

J.J. Thomson & G.Dworkin (eds.),  Ethics ,  Harper & Row,  New York  1968.

P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics,  Blackwell, Oxford, 1991.

Bioethics

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI240	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer:  Dr R Hull 

Course description: This seminar is concerned with contemporary issues in Bioethics.  It will introduce a variety of normative ethical theories to provide a foundation for the critical analysis of a range of issues arising from the biological and medical sciences. These are likely to include abortion, euthanasia/physician assisted suicide, disability, genetic modification and resource allocation. It is intended that students will gain knowledge of moral philosophy that equips them to evaluate some of the most pressing dilemmas facing biomedical practice.

Prerequisites:  None

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials.

Methods of assessment and evaluation: Overall assessment is by essay.

Core texts:       

Beauchamp, T., & Childress, J., Principles of Biomedical Ethics, OUP, 1994.

Singer, P. (Ed), A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, 1993.

Topics in continental philosophy

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI233	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Professor P Crowther

Course Outline:  This year, the course will focus on phenomenology of the visual arts. It will consider the ontologies of picturing, sculpture, and photography, and the nature of our experience of these. A special emphasis will be placed on how the experience of visual art engages imagination, and transforms our relation to time and space. Consideration will be given also to the difference between visual idioms that are genuinely artistic, and ones that are not. Detailed attention will be paid to texts by Wollheim, Heidegger, Dufrenne, Merleau-Ponty, Adorno, and Crowther.

Prerequisites: None

Teaching and learning methods:  This is a seminar course with restricted numbers.

Methods of assessment and examination: Overall assessment is based on an essay of 2000 - 2500 words

Core Texts:

Material studied will be selected from the following main works

Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art
Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, ed A. Hofstadter
Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience
Merleau-Ponty, The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed Galen Johnson
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kantor
Crowther, Phenomenology of the Visual Arts (even the frame)

 

Philosophy of language and logic

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI249	2	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer:  Dr N Tosh 

Course description: For much of the twentieth century, the Anglo-American tradition was largely driven by developments in the philosophy of language. This course provides an introduction to some of those developments. Focusing on the topics of meaning, reference and truth, we will engage with the work of Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke and Davidson (among others).  The course begins with a short introduction to formal logic.

Prerequisites:  None

Teaching and learning methods:  The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials.

Methods of assessment and evaluation: Overall assessment is based on written examination.  Written course work (essay) - if required - is added to the evaluation.

Core texts:

W. Lycan, Philosophy of language: A Contemporary Introduction

A.W. Moore (ed.),   Meaning and Reference.

Primary sources will be specified during the course.

History of modern Philosophy

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI216	2	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer:  Dr F O' Murchadha/Dr T Duddy

Dr. Ó Murchadha will examine the development of Rationalism from Descartes to Kant. Special attention will be paid to the rationalist attempt to give a systematic account of both human and non-human reality. Dr Duddy will outline and discuss the work of the main British empiricists, namely Francis Bacon, John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, with a particular focus on Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding. 

Prerequisites: None

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials.

Methods of assessment and examination: Overall assessment is based on written examination. Written course work (essay) - if required - is added to the evaluation.

Core Texts:

Selected passages from the following texts will be considered:

Roger Ariew & Eric Watkins (eds) Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998).

History of Ethics

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI230	2	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer : Dr H Schmidt Felzmann

Course description : This course is an introduction to ethical thought in the history of Western Philosophy.  Authors from Aristotle to Nietzsche will be discussed with regard to their historical background, their basic ethical concepts and the structure of their ethical theories.  The course will enable students to understand and assess different approaches to moral philosophy.

Prerequisites: None

Teaching and learning methods : This course is a seminar course with restricted numbers.

Methods of assessment and evaluation: Overall assessment is by essay.

Core texts:

A. MacIntyre ,  A Short History of Ethics, Routledge 1989.

nietzsche and Philosophy

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI247	2	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Dr T Doyle

Course description:  This course shall introduce students to some of the central themes informing the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Comprising a close reading of his writings, it offers students an opportunity to explore such concepts as perspectivism, the will to power, nihilism, the death of God, master and slave morality, genealogy, the Ubermensch and eternal recurrence. Nietzsche's response to traditional philosophical problems of truth and knowledge and his use of the language of falsification and illusion shall also be considered. All students shall be expected to engage in class discussions.

Prerequisites : None

Teaching and learning methods: This course is a seminar course with restricted numbers.

Methods of assessment and examination: Overall assessment is based on an essay.

Core Texts:

Ansell Pearson, Keith and Large, Duncan (eds), The Nietzsche Reader, Blackwell, 2006.

Secondary Texts:

Clark, Maudemarie, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Ansell Pearson, Keith, (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, Blackwell, 2006.

May, Simon, Nietzsche's Ethics and his War on 'Morality', Clarendon Press, 1999.

Schacht, Richard, Nietzsche, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.

Solomon, Robert C., and Higgins, Kathleen M., Reading Nietzsche, Oxford University Press, 1988.

    

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