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BA Final Year Requirements

Timetable: the timetable for semester 2 is available in the Philosophy Department, 19 Distillery Road. 

Entry requirements: A pass in Second Arts Philosophy or its equivalent in the case of visiting and exchange students. Students registered for the B.A. (International) must also have attained a satisfactory academic performance during their year abroad.

Important information: essay deadlines and penalties

Dates of Semesters (Teaching)

 

Timetable                                                          


Compulsory/Optional Courses:

Five (5) of the following courses are to be taken, plus the Extended Essay. At least two (2) modules must be taken in each semester. PI335 and PI246 can not be taken together.

Schedule of Courses:

Individual Course Units:

Philosophy of Science

Lecturer:  Dr N. Tosh

Course description:  Philosophers are interested in science because they are interested in knowledge, and science provides - or appears to provide - knowledge of a particularly impressive kind. But what exactly can philosophers learn by reflecting upon it? There is no agreed answer to that question; in this course we will survey some of the most important debates. After a general introduction to epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge), we will cover a selection of the following topics: induction, explanation, laws of nature, instrumentalism, and scientific realism. Along the way we will use some elementary formal logic; worksheets will be provided to help those who have not studied logic before. No scientific knowledge will be assumed.

Pre-requisites: 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: 

Bird, A. Philosophy of Science

Curd, M., and Cover, J. (eds.) Philosophy of Science: The central issues

Hume,D. An enquiry concerning human understanding, Sections II-VII

Kuhn, T. The structure of Scientific Revolutions

Ladyman, J. Understanding philosophy of science

Okasha, S. Philosophy of Science: A very short introduction

Papineau, D. 'Methodology', Grayling, A. (ed.) Philosophy: A guide through the subject

(A detailed list of readings will be distributed at the beginning of the course.)

Moral Theory

Lecturer:  Dr H Schmidt Felzmann

Course description: This course will introduce students to the principal positions in contemporary moral theory including consequentialism, deontology and virtue theory. It will also explore the question of the role of feeling in moral choice. The course will deal with the main contemporary moral theorists within the context of moral theory going back to Hume and Kant.

Prerequisites: None

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

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

Core text: 

Mark Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction, Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 

History of European Idealism

Lecturer : Dr T Doyle

Course description: The period of German philosophy from the 1770’s to the 1840’s is known as the “age of German Idealism ”or the period of “classical German philosophy”. Taking the general theme of the relationship between self and world as our guide, we shall begin with Kant’s “transcendental idealism”. We shall then examine how Hegel’s “absolute idealism” offers us an alternative understanding of the relationship between self and world.

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

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

Core texts:

Selected passages from the following texts shall be considered:

Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit, (Oxford, 1977), translated by A. V. Miller.

Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, (MacMillan, 1929), translated by Norman Kemp Smith.

(A detailed list of readings will be distributed at the beginning of the course.)

Marxism and Existentialism

Lecturer: Mr J Mahon M.A.

Course description: The aim of the first part of this course is (a) to introduce the student to the works of Marx and Engels, (b) to furnish a history of Marxist thought from the mid-19th century to the present day, (c) to acquaint the student with issues in contemporary Marxism.

The second part of the course discusses Twentieth Century Existentialism. Following a strict chronology, it provides an examination of selected works by Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Prerequisites: None

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

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

Core texts:

G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1978.
A. Wood, Karl Marx. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1981.
J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
1985.
S. de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Harmondsworth: Penquin 1963.
Force of Circumstance, Harmondsworth: Penquin 1968.
A Very Easy Death, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1969.
The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Citadel 1991
A. Camus, A Happy Death, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1982.
The Outsider. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1983.
The Myth of Sisyphus. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1975.
Resistance, Rebellion and Death, Vintage: New York, 1960.
J.P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness. London: Methuen 1957.
War Diaries. London: Verso 1985.

Philosophy of Religion

Lecturer: Dr F. O'Murchadha

Course description:This course will discuss one of the principle problems of the philosophy of religion, namely the relation of faith and reason.   The relation of faith and reason has been a matter of controversy since the early Christian thinkers.   In modernity, with a revised account of reason and rationality, the question became increasingly complex and the philosophical positions on this issue increaingly divergent.   We will look at five philosophers from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth/Twenty First Centuries: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Levinas and Marion.

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 text:

A detailed Reading List will be given out at the beginning of class.

 

  AMERICAN PRagmatism

Lecturer:  Dr T. Doyle

Course description:  This course shall examine some of the central themes at the heart of American pragmatism.   We shall begin by addressing the historical and scientific background informing the emergence of the pragmatist movement in nineteenth-century America.   Taking the pragmatist denial of absolute beliefs as our guiding theme, the course shall explore the pragmatist writings of William James in the nineteenth-century and Richard Rorty in the twentieth-century.  In particular, we shall focus on James's rejection of philosophical oppositions.  Finally, we shall turn to the neo-pratmatism of Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature paying particular attention to both his critique of the representational view of the mind and his recommendation of social pragmatism.

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 text:

A detailed list of prescribed readings will be distributed at the beginning of the course.

 

Topics in Applied Philosophy

Lecturer:    Dr. R. Hull

Course description: Course description: This course is concerned with the application of the study of philosophy to issues of pressing public concern. It takes the experiences of disability and social deprivation as case studies and looks at how such experiences can best be theoretically articulated. Particular attention is given to rival theories of human freedom and their relevance to contemporary social and political debates. Attention is also focused on how different theories of justice and morality imply very different social responses to the issues of disability and deprivation. Subjects covered include Rawl's theory of freedom, Nozick's libertarianism, the acts/omissions distinction and the doctrine of double effect. The course is designed to give students an analytical background that can be used to explore other contemporary social and political issues.

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 text:  

A selection of texts will be made available at the beginning of the course.

  READINGS in Phenomenology

Lecturer: Dr P Crowther

Course description: This course will focus on phenomenological writings on aesthetics, emphasizing problems bound up with the ontology of what is distinctive to individual art forms (visual ones in particular), and the nature of our experience of art.   Detailed attention will be paid to texts by Heidegger, Dufrenne, Mealeau-Ponty and Adorno.

Prerequisites: None

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

Methods of assessment and examination: Overall assessment is based on a essay on the end of the semester.

Core Texts:

Material studied will be selected from the following main works

Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, ed. A. Hofstadter
Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience
The Merleau-Ponty, The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed. Galen Johnson
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kantor.

Phenomenology in France

Lecturer:  Dr. F. O'Murchadha

Course description: This course introduces students to some of the foremost figures in post-war French philosophy.  It does so taking as the guiding theme the relation of self and other, while discussing the methodological and ontological assumptions guiding the various accounts.   Beginning with Sartre we will discuss his conflictual account of the relation of self and other as sado-masochistic.   This will be confronted with the Merleau-Ponty's account of the 'chiasm' where self and other intermingle.  Developing from these two thinkers Levinas and Derrida will be discussed as representative of a new wave of French phenomenology in the 1960's.   It will be shown how in both a radicalisation of the notion of alterity is evident which brings both the conflictuality and the harmony of Satre's and Merleau-Ponty's account into a new dimension of ethics and deconstruction.   Themes covered will include intentionality, the ego, desire, love, hate, sexuality, responsibility and freedom.

Prerequisites:  None

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

Methods of assessment and evaluation:  The course will be evaluated by essay and in-class test.

Core Texts:

Sartre: Being and Nothingness, London:  Routledge, 1969
Merleau-Ponty:  The Phenomenology of Perception, New York : Humanities Press c1962
Levinas: Totality and Infinity, Pittsburgh, {Penn}: Duquesne University Press
Derrida:  Violence and Metaphysics in Writing and Difference, Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1978 

Extended Essay

The Extended Essay is compulsory and is intended to allow the student to demonstrate the full range of understanding of some the major themes of philosophy that have been studied for the previous 3 to 4 years

For more information about the extended essay click here.

    

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