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FY-012
Introduction to Being Human
This module will focus on introducing what it is to be human from a broad humanities and social science perspective. It will offer the opportunity to engage with key ideas, theory and literature within these disciplines. It will therefore prepare students for further academic work in the humanities and social sciences and initiate the development of critical thinking and creative abilities.
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HUP242
A Matter of Life and Death: Exploring Existential Philosophy
This module examines key thinkers and themes in the continental philosophy tradition, with a particular focus on phenomenology and existentialism. The authors that will be discussed include Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In exploring these philosophers, students will address major themes such as embodiment, self-consciousness and the self, affectivity, anxiety, freedom, and interpersonal experience. The overarching aim is to consider the response of these thinkers to the fundamental issue of making sense of oneself and one¿s place in the world.
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HUP243
Philosophy of the Enlightenment
This module explores key philosophical ideas as they developed through the age of the Enlightenment. The primary aim is to introduce students to major Enlightenment philosophers in order to see how their theories reflected and contributed to the social and intellectual developments of the time. This will also reveal how their ideas shaped, and to continue to shape, Western philosophy and society more generally. We will examine debates about, among other things, the nature of truth, knowledge, reality, God and the self. The philosophers addressed include Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant. We will also consider critiques of the Enlightenment, including romantic, feminist and critical race perspectives.
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HUP243A
Philosophy of the Enlightenment
This module explores key philosophical ideas as they developed through the age of the Enlightenment. The primary aim is to introduce students to major Enlightenment philosophers in order to see how their theories reflected and contributed to the social and intellectual developments of the time. This will also reveal how their ideas shaped, and to continue to shape, Western philosophy and society more generally. We will examine debates about, among other things, the nature of truth, knowledge, reality, God and the self. The philosophers addressed include Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant. We will also consider critiques of the Enlightenment, including romantic, feminist and critical race perspectives.
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HUP244
Contemporary Moral Controversies
This module explores contemporary issues and controversies in moral and social philosophy. Its focus is primarily practical: it examines current debates about topics such as climate change, animal welfare, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, public monuments, abortion and euthanasia. However, it will situate these issues within ethical theories, which are used to understand and to resolve them.
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HUP244A
Contemporary Moral Controversies
This module explores contemporary issues and controversies in moral and social philosophy. Its focus is primarily practical: it examines current debates about topics such as climate change, animal welfare, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, public monuments, abortion and euthanasia. However, it will situate these issues within ethical theories, which are used to understand and to resolve them.
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HUP309
The Philosophy and Politics of Identity
This module examines how identity operates at an individual, collective and institutional level. In so doing, it explores key concepts concerning personal and group identity, such as authenticity, oppression and recognition. Among other things, students will consider the meaning and value of having identities, how these identities are constructed and challenged, and how they can be accommodated within modern, diverse societies. Students will engage with theoretical debates about self-respect, essentialism and multiculturalism, and their implications for contemporary politics.
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POLM17
Dissertation
Throughout your MA course, you¿ve been developing towards this point ¿ the dissertation. You are emerging scholars with fresh insights and depths of knowledge, and this is the time to put these to work and produce an original contribution to the field that you can be proud of.
Over the late spring and Summer, with the extensive support of a supervisor expert in your area (and building on your existing methodology modules), you¿ll scope out, design, and conduct an independent project of study on a topic of your choosing, pursuing the questions that motivate your interest in the subject. You might be poring over declassified intelligence agency archives looking for evidence of complicity in mass violence, charting the everyday politics of energy and logistics that (quite literally) keeps the lights on, or answering the big questions about where we¿re going in an increasingly precarious twenty-first century ¿ this is a chance for you to truly spread your wings and research what interests you.
Between this extended project, and the accompanying presentation of your findings, this represents the culmination of your studies, building on all the modules you¿ve studied and skills you¿ve gathered. This is a great opportunity to develop detailed knowledge of a particular field, hone competencies that will make you a skilled researcher and policy advocate in the real world, give you skills managing a major research project.
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POY1113
Freedom Justice and Equality: Key Debates in Political Philosophy
This module introduces students to some of the central issues and debates within political philosophy. Through studying this module, you will grapple head-on with ideas and theories that shape the society and world we live in. You will examine lively debates about key politics concepts, such as democracy, justice, equality and freedom, from a wide range of historical and contemporary perspectives. You will also explore contemporary discussions of gender, feminism, race and the environment. Through engaging with original texts and tackling real-world case studies, you will develop the ability to understand and assess competing visions of a just society, as well as working out your own ideas of what society should be like.
