MA Modules

This module comprises a close reading of Phenomenology of Perception, one of the most significant treatments of philosophy of perception in the European tradition. Merleau-Ponty offers a sustained critique of the portrait view of perception and argues that the embodied perceiver must actively appropriate and organise the perceptible environment as a condition of having a world. We begin with his initial adaptation of phenomenology, and proceed to outline his arguments against objectivism as found in the empiricist and intellectualist approaches to perception. Merleau-Ponty’s proposed alternative founded on phenomenological description will then be explicated in detail. Topics to be covered include perceptual synthesis, the body as objectified, as lived and as anonymous, the role of kinaesthetic awareness, proprioceptive awareness and the body-schema, the motor-intentional projection of action and the perceptual field.

• (opens in a new window)Associate Professor Tim Mooney

In this course we will approach the relationship between philosophy and literature through a phenomenological framework by asking: what is the experience of reading philosophy and what is the experience of reading literature? The aim is to discover the manner in which each genre of text reveals something of the human experience but to precisely question the extent to which that revelation actually impacts upon the reader’s experience of being human. Philosophical texts will be drawn from the continental tradition broadly construed to include phenomenology, critical phenomenology, feminism, post/decolonial studies and critical theory. A range of literary texts—novels, short stories, poems, and plays—will be read in conjunction with these philosophical texts. Students will be encouraged to engage with these texts through the prism of their own research interests.

• (opens in a new window)Assistant Professor Lisa Foran

This Masters-level module examines one or more topics arising from recent empirically-informed philosophy of mind, action, perception and/or cognition. Through guided reading, critical argument and classroom discussion, students will develop an understanding of some key philosophical issues in the philosophy of mind and how these relate to broader questions in the study of the mind and cognition.

Note: While the module assumes some basic familiarity with some of the methods of philosophy and/or cognitive science, such as might be gained from an introductory undergraduate course, no prior knowledge of the philosophy of mind is required or assumed.

• (opens in a new window)Assistant Professor Keith Wilson

This course will provide an overview of the relationship between John Henry Newman and philosophy.

After having considered the two main philosophical sources of his formation, namely Aristotle and Cicero, his contribution to the 19th century intellectual debates will be examined.

Themes to be covered include the understanding of the historical development of ideas, the relation between education and morality, the justification of religious beliefs, the personal conquest of the truth, the tension between conscience and civic duties.

Newman’s ideas will be compared with those philosophers whom he overtly confronted and criticised: John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

Finally, the course will focus on his legacy and influence on later philosophers, particularly Ludwig Wittgenstein.

• Dr Angelo Bottone

This seminar will introduce students to key contemporary feminist philosophers and debates between feminist philosophers with a view to understanding how their work draws from and challenges dominant philosophical traditions in the creation of new philosophical understandings of knowledge, ethics, self and politics.

We begin with an exploration of what is feminist philosophy? Feminism has a much more recent history than Philosophy. Feminism can be characterised as a popular (or unpopular) social movement that seeks to change the status quo to enable equal participation by girls and women in the public to that of boys and men, and to create a cultural parity of esteem for both masculinity and femininity. Besides this egalitarian project feminism has another impulse which is to seek to deconstruct the meaning of what it is to be male or female and to inscribe new signification for these terms and for the relationship between them. The ambivalence of these goals might be seen to excite many of the debates among feminists. The initial seminar will seek to collectively arrive at definitions for what Philosophy is and does which will begin a discussion that will continue for the remaining weeks: how might we define feminist philosophy?

Feminist philosophy is vibrant with debate and revision and the topics that will be addressed in our reading and discussion will offer a variety of contestations among feminists. These topics will include:

1. What is Gender and its significance?
2. Feminist epistemology and feminist philosophies of ignorance
3. Feminist conceptions of what is a Self?
4. Feminist Ethics
5. Feminist Political Philosophy
   

We will meet face-to-face in our seminars. The lectures (PowerPoint) and required reading will be available in advance on-line on the Brightspace learning platform. It is expected that students will engage with this material before our lecture time slot. When we meet for our seminars we will be able to have a lot of interactive discussion on the required reading. The lecturer will merely re-cap the key points of the lectures uploaded on Brightspace and answer points that students find confusing, interesting, exciting, debatable or even objectionable in the readings and lectures.

• (opens in a new window)Professor Katherine O’Donnell

How do we understand encounters between self and other? What is the relation between subjectivity and intersubjective life? This module examines different philosophical perspectives for analyzing encounters between self and other, and investigates alternative theories of recognition and intersubjectivity in the tradition of continental philosophy. Themes covered will include the subject, intersubjectivity, recognition, difference, power, domination, and self/other relations.

In order to address these questions, we generally begin by tracing major theories of intersubjectivity and recognition in the German philosophical tradition, such as those developed by Fichte and Hegel. We contrast these to phenomenological accounts such as those offered by Husserl, or the existential-phenomenological accounts of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. We also consider accounts of recognition and relationality offered by contemporary philosophers such as Honneth and Foucault, as well as postcolonial and feminist philosophers. We therefore consider not only face-to-face encounters but the way in which intersubjective relations are constitutive of subjects. We also examine the way in which patterns of interaction form a background of norms and meanings that constitute the lifeworld, as well as the ways in which recognition is employed as a means to understand forms of human relationality and sociality.

•  (opens in a new window)Associate Professor Danielle Petherbridge

How does technology affect the way we interact with each other and conceptualize and perceive ourselves? Can technological use make us better or worse moral agents, friends, partners, or make for better or worse institutions or workplaces, and what sort of transformations can technological tools bring in domains we think are important for human flourishing, such as social relationships and health care?

This module will tackle these and similar questions and will introduce students to contemporary ethical challenges posed by our increasing reliance on technologies such as AI, robots, and social media. We will start with general considerations on what sort of issues new technology present to us, including the development of our virtues, choices in ethical framework, and responsibility gaps. Then, we will look at what effects social media, AI, and robotics can have on our relationships with others and ourselves, as well as professional life. In the second part of the module, we will focus on these effects in health care specifically. We will discuss these topics through specific case studies, as well as bioethics and philosophy texts.

• (opens in a new window)Associate Professor Danielle Petherbridge

Individual supervision on a chosen topic.

May be taken on its own or in conjunction with an existing Level 2 or 3 undergraduate module by agreement with the relevant Module Co-ordinator.

• (opens in a new window)Professor Katherine O’Donnell

What does it mean to be authentic? Are some desires more authentically ours than others? What is the difference between faking or lying and being sincere or true to oneself? In this module, students are introduced to new developments in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, with the goal of answering these questions. To this end, we will explore the nature of propositional attitudes (especially desires), sincere or authentic expression, and many ways in which our own inner life might be opaque to us. Thus we will also cover self-deception, implicit attitudes, and inner speech. Students will have the freedom to pursue their own projects and interests within this fairly large range of topics and questions.

• (opens in a new window)Assistant Professor Elmar Unnsteinsson

This module examines the question of the ‘good society’ from the point of view of a critical theory of society. Assuming some familiarity with the Frankfurt School tradition of critical social theory, it invites exploration of the way forward for this tradition in the face of ‘ecocide’ and in light of recent moves to make it less ‘Western-centric’ and less ‘anthropocentric’. Such decentrings raise questions about the meaning of concepts that have historically been central to this tradition such as freedom, materialism, ideology, immanence-transcendence and social transformation. Following two introductory sessions, the sessions will concentrate successively on the following topics: social critique, immanent-transcendence, human agency, politics, capitalism and social transformation.

• (opens in a new window)Professor Maeve Cooke

This course will look at recent research on the interdependence between culture and mind. Two aspects of culture that the course will particularly focus on are language and moral norms. One of the broad themes that we will explore is relativity. So called ‘linguistic relativity’ is the view that (a) languages affect our thinking as well as our experiences of the world and (b) vastly different languages will give rise to very different, possibly incommensurable, ways of thinking about the world. We will look at recent empirical evidence for this view, and its philosophical implications. We will also look at empirical evidence for and philosophical discussion of variance in moral norms across different cultures. An opposing thought is that language or moral norms are to some extent universal. We’ll examine empirical evidence that bears on and philosophical discussion of this hypothesis.

• Dr Meredith Plug

Individual supervision on a chosen topic.

May be taken on its own or in conjunction with an existing Level 2 or 3 undergraduate module by agreement with the relevant Module Co-ordinator.

• (opens in a new window)Professor Katherine O’Donnell

Our Module will address the inception and the development, the confrontations as well as the similitudes, both the historical sources and the philosophical orientations, between three fundamental "gestures" in contemporary European philosophy: “critical theory” in Adorno and Horkheimer, the “kritische Abbau” or “destructio” of onto-theology or metaphysics in Heidegger and the “deconstruction" of the metaphysics of presence in Derrida. Our first task will therefore involve a genealogical contextualisation of these three “gestures" in order to analyse and interpret why, how, and in which manner—that is, according to which disposition and in view of which heading—each of these, in retrieving our philosophical tradition, engage in opening novel spaces and directions for what Hegel termed “the need for philosophy”.

Consequently, we will engage in showing how each of these philosophical "gestures" propose new reformulations of the traditional philosophical questions of meaning and signification, telos and arché, judgment and testimony, truth and justice in history.

From the study of these three “gestures”, our Module will also endeavour in presenting the premises towards a renewed approach to historical events, past and future, in our lived-present.

• (opens in a new window)Associate Professor Joseph Cohen

This module will engage closely with several major works by Friedrich Nietzsche. Each year students work through two of his books from cover to cover. This year’s texts will be:

• The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
• On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

• (opens in a new window)Professor Brian O'Connor

What is love? Is there just one type of love or are there different types of love? Do, can, or should we love ourselves in the same way as we love other fellow human beings? Do, can, or should we love God in the same way as we love fellow human beings? Can or should love be explained in terms of pleasure or passionate desire? Does love create a union between individuals that love each other? If so, what type of union is it? Is love a matter of caring for oneself or others? Does self-love entail selfishness? Can we love others and focus on their good without expecting anything in return? What is friendship? Can friendships be cultivated and, if so, how? What, if any, role do friends play in one’s personal and moral development? Is it possible to have many friends or can one only have a small number of genuine friends? What distinguishes friendship from other social interactions that we have with others? Does friendship involve mutual care or concern for each other?

Questions like these will be the main focus of the seminar. We will begin by considering ancient Greek debates on this topic and will then primarily focus on philosophical debates that took place during the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. We will discuss selected texts by Plato, Aristotle, Mary Astell, John Norris, Damaris Masham, Mary Lee Chudleigh, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Sophie de Grouchy, and others. Through a close study of their writings we will examine issues concerning love and friendship that continue to be relevant in philosophical debates in ethics, social philosophy, moral psychology, social ontology, and related areas.

• (opens in a new window)Professor Ruth Boeker

Political Philosophy is classically an inquiry about justice and liberty, and how the state can or should act within and around them. However, there have been important critiques of the ‘liberal’ approach that has been shaped by philosophers like Rawls, criticising the methods, scope and content of political philosophy in recent decades. This course provides an overview over topics beyond classical liberal political philosophy, departing from Rawls to examine questions of nationalism and political legitimacy.

In the first half, the course will examine nations and nationalisms, communities and identities, violence and borders, fascism and the far right, as well as considerations about repairing past wrongs. In the second half, the course will cover questions of political legitimacy, including deep political disagreement, deliberative democracy, public reason, epistemic democracy, as well as the right to revolution and anarchism. The course will provide students with the ability to engage with contemporary political philosophy and to trace political discourse to its philosophical roots.

• (opens in a new window)Dr Quan Nguyen