Teaching
PhD courses offered 2010-2011
In the first year of their studies, PhD students have to enrol in any three courses/modules from the list below. Each course/module is worth 10 credits. At least one and no more than two courses must be from the institution (i.e. Trinity or UCD) at which they are not registered. In addition, they must audit the course of their supervisor.
See below for details about essay submission deadlines.
Semester I
UCD dates: September 13 - December 3, no reading week
Trinity dates: September 27 - December 17, reading week November 8 - 12
UCD: PHIL40250 Merleau-Ponty (Tim Mooney)
Friday 11-13
This module comprises a close reading of Phenomenology of Perception. It begins with Merleau-Ponty's appropriation of Husserl's phenomenology, and proceeds to explicate the critique of objectivism as found in the empiricist and intellectualist approaches to perception. Merleau-Ponty's proposed alternative founded on phenomenological description will then be considered. Topics to be covered include the perceptual field, the living body as subject, kinaesthesia, proprioceptive body-image and body-schema, motor-intentionality and perceptual synthesis.
UCD: PHIL40710 Phenomenology of Embodiment (Dermot Moran)
Wednesday 14-16
This seminar aims to develop an in-depth, critical understanding of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology of embodiment, through a critical reading of selected texts from Husserl including Ideas II and Crisis of the European Sciences. Themes covered include Husserl's conception of philosophy and phenomenology, the phenomenological approach, the distinction between physical body and lived body, sensory perception, feelings, emotions, agency, and the embodied person in the ‘life-world’. Husserl's phenomenology of embodiment will be compared with other approaches including that of Merleau-Ponty.
UCD: PHIL40350 Law, Liberty & the State (Gerard Casey)
Tuesday 11-13
This module examines the interdependency of three related notions: law, liberty and the method of political organisation known as the state. The possibility of polycentric legal orders will be examined, together with the contention that the state is a bulwark against disorder and a necessary condition of genuine freedom. Harold Berman's "Law and Revolution" is required reading and should be available from the College Bookshop. Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty" is also required reading and will be made available on Blackboard, together with a significant amount of other material.
UCD: PHIL40410 Philosophy and Literature (Joseph Cohen and Fran O’Rourke)
Thursday 14-16
The relationship between Philosophy and Literature will be here examined firstly in a historical genealogy. We will thus begin our interpretation of this rapport with Plato and elaborate its transformation through the philosophical epochs of Modernity, of German Idealism, of early and contemporary Existentialism and Deconstruction. Our reflection will thus attempt to reveal in which manner and according to which modality the rapport between Philosophy and Literature has been thought in the history of Western thought. We will examine hermeneutically the possibilities of reading the relation between Philosophy and Literature through the works of both philosophers and writers.
UCD: PHIL40420 The Good Society (Maeve Cooke and Tony Fahey)
Wednesday 11-13
The course considers the good society from the often diverging viewpoints of critical social theory and of empirical social science and policy making. It will consist in part of a conversation between Professor Maeve Cooke, based on her book Re-Presenting the Good Society (MIT Press, 2006) and Professor Tony Fahey, based on his books The Best of Times? The Social Impact of the Celtic Tiger in Ireland (with H. Russell and C.T. Whelan, Institute of Public Administration/ Springer, 2007/2008) and Living Conditions and Quality of Life in the Enlarged EU (with J. Alber and C. Saraceno, Routledge, 2007). Participants will join in the conversation from week to week and will select particular themes on which they will make their own contributions. The course will start with a brief introduction to the concept of critical social theory, to the current self-understanding of empirical social science and its approach to concepts of quality of life and social progress. It will then explore issues such as the role of reason and imagination in social theory and policy making, the function of information gathering and measurement, the place of social explanation, the possibility of faulty perceptions of needs and the gap between theory and practice.
UCD: PHIL40730 Mind and World; McDowell and his Critics (Rasmus Thybo Jensen)
Monday 14-16
This course is focused on a reading of John McDowell’s seminal work Mind and World (1994). The book presents us with a philosophical outlook that attempts to reconcile our conception of nature and our conception of rationality. This attempt has received a great deal of attention and criticism since its appearance. We will read the six chapters of Mind and World as well some of the works that provide the background for the book (Strawson, Sellars, Davidson, Evans). Furthermore we will engage with some of the major critics of McDowell’s philosophy (C. Wright, C. Peacocke, C. Taylor and H. Dreyfus amongst others). This in turn will allow us to track the development of McDowell’s philosophy since Mind and World. Central questions will be: Is perception direct or indirect? Is perceptual content conceptual or non-conceptual? How can we make sense of the intentionality of thought? Should we attempt to give a naturalistic account of the human mind? How should we conceive of the relation between the consciousness of human beings and the consciousness of other animals?
UCD: PHIL40750 Realism and its Discontents (Maria Baghramian)
Tuesday 14-16
Starting with Plato and Protagoras debates between realists and their critics have dominated philosophy. Realism comes in many forms, in metaphysics it affirms the existence of a mind independent world and gives credence to the possibility of knowing it. The course examines these dual core claims on behalf of realism and assesses a number of criticisms levelled at them. In particular, we will be looking at the challenge posed by relativists and constructivists to the very idea of objective knowledge. The course will be assessed through two short written pieces and a class presentation. The aim is to introduce you to the writing and presentation skills required for more advanced postgraduate and professional academic work. You’ll be asked to write a 2000-word book review on a recent book of your choosing in the areas covered by the course. At the end of the course you will be required to write and present a 2000-word ‘conference type’ paper . Chapters from the following books will be core to the course: Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge, OUP 2006; Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton UP 1979; Robert Brandom (ed). Rorty and His Critics, Blackwell 2000; Patrick Greenough, Michael Patrick Lynch (eds) Truth and Realism, OUP 2006; Maria Baghramian, Relativism, Routledge 2004.
UCD: PHIL40740 Ancient Natural Philosophy (Tim Crowley)
Thursday 11-1
The Presocratics, it is sometimes claimed, 'discovered' nature: they certainly bequeathed to their successors a number of problems to do with the philosophy of nature. In these seminars we will trace the development of 'natural philosophy' from the earliest Presocratics through the work of subsequent philosophers, in particular Aristotle. The core text will be Aristotle's Physics, which can profitably be read as a series of responses to problems set by the Presocratics. In the Physics, Aristotle introduces his central concepts of matter and form, and, with constant reference to his predecessors, explores a number of issues that define the scope of 'natural philosophy', issues such as the analysis of change, the nature of causation, the question of the void, and the notions of time, place, and infinity. We will consider Aristotle's treatment of these topics and endeavour to assess them both philosophically and in their historical context.
Trinity: History, Psychology and Metaphysics (David Berman)
Arts 5005, Mondays 10-12
This course focuses on the history of modern philosophers from Descartes to Schopenhauer, particularly on their views of the nature of God and the human mind. But it also looks at the ways these philosophers were forced to dissemble and insinuate their real views in order to overcome various forms of social pressure and censorship. Hence the course aims to show how necessary it is to use psychology in order to understand philosophical texts, and also how an understanding of the psychologies of philosophers can be used as a basis for metaphysics.
Trinity: Dilemmas (aporiai) and definitions in Plato's early dialogues (Vasilis Politis)
Plato Centre seminar room, 1937 building, Wednesdays 17-19
It is familiar that in Plato's early dialogues we find Socrates recurrently asking 'What is ...?', for a variety of things or concepts: asking for the definition and the essence of something. This question, and the requirements that Socrates demands of an answer to it (namely, that the answer may not be 'by example-and-exemplar', as when Hippias answers the question 'What is beauty?' by pointing to a beautiful girl, but must be general, unitary and explanatory), are of great interest, and not only for understanding Plato or historically. However, we must also ask, in a more critical vein, why Plato raises this question and attaches such significance to it? Why ask for the essence of anything? - unless, of course, one is already commited to essentialism. This is what part of the course is addressed to. What is less familiar, and we shall look at this closely in the course, is that in these same dialogues Socrates not only raises many questions that are of a quite different form, namely, whether-or-not questions (e.g. whether or not virtue can be taught; whether or not self-knowledge is possible, whether or not being just is good for one) - we may call such questions dilemmas - but appears to be in a state of aporia about them: to be pulled in opposite ways by reasons that appear to him good ones on both sides of such a question.
Semester II
UCD dates: January 17 - April 21, March break March 7 - March 18
Trinity dates: January 17 - April 8, reading week February 28 - March 4
UCD: PHIL 40190 Paradigms of Socio-Cultural Criticism (Maeve Cooke)
Tuesday 11-13
The course provides an introduction to contemporary social-theoretical debates, focusing on approaches to critique of society and culture. Texts discussed include essays by Nietzsche, Freud, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Butler, Derrida and Habermas. In discussing the texts particular attention will be paid both to the mode of critique advocated or practised and to the vantage point from which it is undertaken.
UCD: PHIL40760 Hermeneutics of the Gift (Richard Kearney)
Note: this seminar runs intensively for two weeks only, probably from February 21 to March 4 (TBC)
This seminar explores debates on the meaning of gift in contemporary continental thought. We begin with an analysis of certain foundational narratives of giving (Indo-European, Homeric, Biblical, Native American). The seminar will then offer a close reading of three discussions of the enigma of the gift in recent continental philosophy: 1) the hermeneutic reading of Paul Ricoeur; 2) the deconstructive reading of Jacques Derrida and 3) the phenomenologyical reading of Jean-Luc Marion. All three draw from the formative analysis of giving and givenness in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. The seminar will conclude with a consideration of the critical relation between giving and forgiving in the final conversation between Ricoeur and Derrida. The course will be based on selected readings from the following texts: Jean-Luc Marion: ‘Being given: toward a phenomenology of givenness’ and ‘On the gift: a discussion between Marion and Derrida’; Jacques Derrida: ‘The gift of death’, ‘Given time' and ‘On forgiveness and cosmopolitanism'; Paul Ricoeur, ‘Difficult pardon’; Lewis Hyde, ‘The gift’ (Part one: ‘A theory of gifts’); Marcel Mauss, ‘The gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies’.
UCD: PHIL 40330 Critical Theory (Stan Erraught)
Wednesday 14-16
Adorno is undoubtedly the central figure in the history of the Frankfurt School and of early Critical Theory in general: he is also, it is generally agreed, a very difficult philosopher to come to grips with. His method, and the organisation of his texts, often appear to conspire against understanding. In this course, in order to find a way in, we will set out first to locate his texts within broader philosophical contexts: the history of German philosophy generally, and as a response to his time: and to understand his method, and the structure of his works. After that, our focus will be on the relationship (or complicity) between the ‘aesthetic’ and the political, as seen by Adorno. There are perhaps two essential aspects to this: the negative -- the subordination of the supposedly ‘disinterested and universal’ categories of the aesthetic in the service of domination, and the extremely mediated, but notionally ‘positive’ -- the possibility that the free work of art may be a presentation (perhaps the only possible presentation) of an image of how the world might look in the light of redemption. We will look at texts from all of Adorno’s career: The Dialectic of Enlightenment (written with Max Horkheimer), Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory, will be examined in depth, along with essays such as ‘Subject/ Object’ and ‘On the Fetish Character of Music’.
UCD: PHIL40360 Heidegger from Dasein to Kehre (Joseph Cohen)
Thursday 11-13
This seminar will focus on the early Heidegger. We will examine the development of Heidegger's thought from 1923 to 1945 and thus concentrate firstly on Heidegger's elaboration of the question of time, the influence of Husserlian phenomenology, the phenomenological interpretation of Kant, and the investigations on the essence of freedom. Close attention will also be given to Heidegger's understanding of the history of metaphysics and the "necessity" for its Destruktio stipulated in the opening paragraphs of Sein und Zeit. These topics will lead us to a profound understanding of the meaning of Dasein and thus, to the elaboration of the ontological difference. We will then be able to seize the radical turn (Kehre) in Heidegger's thought. Precisely, we shall interpret the "invention", after the inevitable failure of the "existential analytic", of the notion of Ereignis, central to the subsequent development of Heidegger's philosophy.
UCD: PHIL40430 Philosophy of the Emotions (Rowland Stout)
Wednesday 11-13
Through a combination of the studying of key texts and the tackling of a structure of central questions in the philosophical treatment of emotion, this course will address competing theories of the nature of emotion, emotional rationality and emotional knowledge, the social purpose of emotional expression, the role of narratives in understanding emotional states and the use of emotions as ways of perceiving evaluative aspects of the subject's situation. We will engage with such things as pride, fear, anger, jealousy and shame.
UCD: PHIL40620 Theories of Truth (Douglas Edwards)
Tuesday 14-16
What is truth? How do we separate what is true from merely what is believed, or what is justified? What is the relationship between truth and facts? Do what extent do we -- and should we -- value the truth? These are just some of the questions that we will address in this course, which aims to provide a solid grounding in contemporary theories of truth in analytic philosophy. We will look at correspondence, coherence and pragmatist theories of truth before focusing on deflationary theories of truth, which typically hold that that there is no deep metaphysical ‘nature’ of truth, and pluralist theories, which are open to the idea that there are different ways of being true. This will be achieved through the discussion of the work of some of the key figures in 20th/21st Century analytic philosophy.
UCD: PHIL40270 Readings in Classical Metaphysics (Fran O’Rourke)
Monday 14-16
A study of central texts from Plato and Aristotle on the nature of metaphysics and the meaning of 'being'. After reviewing the approach of Parmenides, we will read sections from Plato's Parmenides, Theaetetus and Sophist, and Aristotle's Categories, Metaphysics, and On the Soul. Account will be taken of subsequent developments in metaphysics, especially of contemporary interpretation and critique.
UCD: PHIL40770 Philosophy of Autobiography (Christopher Cowley)
Fridays 12-2
Autobiography' will be taken loosely: it is not only the book I publish or the diary I keep, it also comprises the stories I tell to myself and others about who I am. As such, this module will explore a number of long-standing philosophical problems. What is the self, and how does it develop? How well can I know myself, how well can I understand another self, how well can I make sense of my past self? When is remorse or shame appropriate when thinking about the past, and when is an apology appropriate in the present? What about the risk of self-deception and inauthenticity and corruption throughout? How responsible am I for my character? What role do my relationships, projects and ideals play in shaping my character, in shaping my self-understanding? What role does luck play in who I turn out to be?
Trinity: Power Tools for Philosophers (Peter Simons)
Arts 5008 (Prof. Simons's office), Mondays at 3-5
Every good graduate student of philosophy needs to master a number of concepts and techniques, drawn from a variety of sources, in order to follow and contribute to modern philosophical discussion. These are usually acquired implicitly and patchily. In this course we aim to bring the tools of the trade together and present and train them systematically.
Trinity: The Lacanian Reading of Freud – a critical approach (Ross Skelton)
Arts 5015, Tuesday 14-16
This course comprises five topics. 1. Freud’s concept of identification and the formation of the Ego as found in Anna Freud’s Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. Identification with the aggressor and the formation of the super ego. Narcissistic identification, Lacan’s Mirror phase and Hegel’s master/slave dialectic. Is the subsequent distinction between Subject and ego useful? 2. Freud’s idea of wish fulfullment and Lacan’s reworking of it in terms of need, demand and Hegel’s ideas on desire. Lacan’s ‘desir de la mere’ and his rewriting of the Oedipus complex. Are these distinctions helpful? 3. Freuds early interest in language as found in the Interpretation of Dreams and Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Lacan’s introduction of Saussures linguistics and Levi Strauss’s structural anthropology into Freud and the construction of the Symbolic Order. Is the unconscious an assemblage of structural laws, as Levi Strauss thought? 4. The work of Ella Sharpe’s Dream Analysis using Rhetorical tropes to show how structure of dream and poem coincide. This leads naturally to the question: is (as Lacan claims) the unconscious structured like a language? 5. Freud’s emphasis on emotion and how Lacan distances himself from this as opposed to Klein and Bion who give emotion a central role. This raises questions about emotion in relation to Lacan’s Real, Bion’s alpha function and Klein’s unconscious phantasy.
Trinity: Self and world (Lilian Alweiss)
Arts 5007, Tuesdays 13-14
Solipsism is normally related to epistemological problems about other minds and the external world. The claim is that we can only be certain about the existence of our own mental states but cannot know for certain whether the world or other minds exist. Idealism is linked to the problem of solipsism insofar as idealists claim that the only existing entities are ideas or representations. Ideaslists therefore refer to the world as my representation or idea. This course wishes to ask whether the idealist (solispist) position is coherent. Starting with Hegel and Wittgenstein’s observation that we cannot stake out a limit from one side alone, we shall explore whether it makes sense to refer to ‘our perspective of the world’ if no other perspective is available to us. We shall do this by focusing on the writings of Wittgenstein, Kant, Sartre and Husserl.
Essay deadlines and submission
Trinity: Students enrolled on Trinity courses should note the general essay deadlines: 17 January 2011 for first-semester courses, and 26 April 2011 for second-semester courses. A hardcopy of the essay should be submitted to the Departmental Office (Room 5009) and an additional electronic version should be sent to ucmpbell@tcd.ie. An essay which is not handed in at the Philosophy Dept. office by the due date may be accepted up to one week late with the loss of ten marks. It will not be accepted after the lapse of one week.UCD: UCD module deadlines vary from module to module. Every essay needs to be submitted (i) as a hard copy to Helen Kenny in room D503, and (ii) as an electronic copy through the module's Blackboard page. Failure to submit BOTH copies by the deadline, without extenuating circumstances, will incur a lateness penalty of 2 grade points. Failure to submit both copies within one week of the deadline will incur a lateness penalty of 4 grade points. Essays more than two weeks late will only be accepted at the discretion of the module co-ordinator.