Leagan Gaeilge   Text Version   Display: Zoom (-) (+)   View ( Normal High contrast ) Printer Friendly  A to Z  Sitemap

 

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 PIXXX in Semester One and PI216 and PI249 in Second Semester. You must take two other Optional modules in Semester One.  PI240 and PI210 can not be taken together. 

In Second Semester, you must choose one Optional module between PI230, PI234, PI247 and PI248. 

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: This course is examined by 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 

Paintings and Ideas in Victorian Britain

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI256	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Professor P. Crowther

Course description: This interdisciplinary module considers the development of painting in the British Isles from the 1830's to the start  of the first world war.  It pays special attention to how poetry and Ruskin's cultural and aesthetic theories influenced the art in question, and reviews the aesthetic status of Victorian painting in general.

Prerequisites: None 

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

Methods of assessment and evaluation: Overall assessment is by essay at the end of the semester.   Written course work (essay) - if required - is added to the evaluation.

Core Texts:

Victorian Painting - Lionel Lambourne

Victorian Painting - Julian Treuherz

Victorian Painters - Jeremy Maas

Art for Art's Sake:  Aestheticism in Victorian Painting - Elizabeth Prettejohn

Selected Writings - John Ruskin

Elements of Drawing - John Ruskin

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.

Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI255	1	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer: Professor P Crowther

Course Outline:  The module introduces students to key thinkers, topics and debates in the understanding of our aesthetic responses to art and nature.  It gives particular emphasis to the ontological and cognitive bases of different art forms, and to the conditions of their critical evaluation.

Prerequisites: None

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

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

Monroe Beardsley, A History of Western Aesthetics

Contextualizing Aesthetics: Plato to Lyotard ed.  J.Jeffers and G. Blocker

Routledge Companion to Aesthetics ed. J. Levinson,

Ricard Wollheim; Art and its Objects

Languages of Art, Nelson Goodman

Introduction to Philosophy of Art, Stephen Davies

Defining Art, Creating the Canon, Paul Crowther

But is Art?  B. Tilghman

 

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 Doyle

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 Doyle will examine the relation between empirical science and metaphysics in the eighteenth century period of Enlightenment, with particular emphasis on the philosophies of Hume and Kant

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 text will be considered:

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

Topics in practical philosophy

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI234	2	2 (Tutorials not included)	5

Lecturer : Dr F. O'Murchadha

Course description : This course will examine philosophical accounts of the Emotions concentrating on the Stoics and on the Modern reception of Stoicism expecially in Montaigne, Descartes and Spinoza. Special attention will be paid to the distinction between emotion and passion and the relation between the passions and the ethical goal of a good life.

Prerequisites: None

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

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

Core texts: A Reading List will be given out at the start of the course.

History of Ethics

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

Lecturer : Prof P Crowther & Dr O Richardson

Course Description:  What is the best life for a human being? Is virtue necessary for that life? And if so, is a virtuous life a happy life? What makes an action right or wrong? Do we have moral obligations to ourselves and to others? If so, what is the nature and source of these obligations? In this course we will engage with these questions by examining the history of moral philosophy. This means that we will face the difficult task of interpreting philosophical texts that are often presented to us in translation, authored by thinkers who are not our contemporaries, and aimed at audiences that do not necessarily share our philosophical intuitions. This process, though arduous, will hopefully help us to understand who we are, and what we ought to do.

Prerequisites: None

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

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

Course text books:
1. Plato, The Republic (Hackett Publishing)
2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Hackett Publishing)
3. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge University Press)
4. Mill, Utilitarianism
5. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
6. Library reserve and e-resources.


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 lecture based supplemented by tutorials

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.

Phenomenology 

Course	Semester	Contact hours/weekly	ECTS
PI248	2	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:

 

    

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility