Postgraduate philosophy modules for 2013–14

Our postgraduate philosophy modules offer you the chance to engage in the in-depth study of key philosophers. Below is a provisional list of module offerings for 2013–14 and may be subject to change. Our module directory contains further information on the structure, teaching, coursework requirements and reading lists for individual modules.

Autumn term

• MA Writing Workshop, PY951

  Taught by Steven Gormley and Wayne Martin

  This module provides intensive training in postgraduate-level philosophical writing. Each week participants write and get feedback for short essays, while working on the philosophical issues and micro-skills of writing in classes.

  In 2013 the topic is ‘Quine, Derrida, and Meaning’. Although their philosophical approaches seem opposed, both are concerned with the inscrutability of reference and the structure of meaning in language. The workshop examines how they approach the challenge of understanding semantic determinacy and how they explore the limit-notion of semantic nihilism.

  • Full module details

• Kant's Revolution in Philosophy, PY500

  Taught by Peter Dews

  Kant's Critique of Pure Reason represents a radical new beginning in European thought, posing what he regards as a hitherto neglected question: the very possibility of metaphysics. To answer this, Kant develops a new model of the relation between subjectivity, conceptual understanding, and the experienced world, which became a decisive reference point for subsequent 'continental' European philosophy.

  This module examines Critique of Pure Reason’s central innovations: Kant's 'Copernican turn' to 'transcendental' philosophy, his conception of the conditions of possibility of experience, the dialectic of pure reason, and the metaphysical illusions into which reason falls when making claims about what lies beyond experience.

  • Full module details

• The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Political Theory, PY948

  Taught by Jörg Schaub

  This module introduces MA students to probably the most influential and significant tradition of twentieth-century European critical social philosophy, The Frankfurt School, in particular the leading figure of the tradition’s 'third generation', Axel Honneth.

  Drawing on his work, we explore the distinctive features of critical theory and discuss whether the Frankfurt School has a particular concept of critique. We also examine Honneth's theory of recognition, his notion of emancipatory struggles for recognition, and his recognition-theoretical reformulation of concepts such as ideology and reification.

  • Full module details

• Contemporary French Philosophy - Foucault and Phenomenology, PY947

  Taught by Béatrice Han-Pile

  The first part of this module focuses on Foucault's neglected introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence, which presents a phenomenological critique of Freud's explanatory approach to psychic phenomena and outlines a middle ground between psychology and fundamental ontology, the study of 'Menschsein' or 'man-being'. The second part examines Foucault’s later indictment of post-Kantian thought as having succumbed to the 'Analytic of Finitude’ through his reading(s) of Kant in The Order of Things and his introduction to Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.

  • Full module details

Spring term

• Hegel, PY933

  Taught by David McNeil

  This module focuses on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and the relation between Hegel's metaphysics and his accounts of human agency, freedom, and social life. We examine Hegel’s distinctive conception of truth in his account of the dialectical movement of experience, particularly the distinction drawn between what he calls the certainty of a moment of consciousness and the truth of that certainty.

  We explore how Hegel's account of a necessary progression from 'immediate consciousness' to 'the philosophic standpoint' depends upon this distinctive conception of truth, which can be understood in relation to Hegel's contention that 'truth in the deeper sense consists in the identity between objectivity and the notion'.

  After examining Hegel's account of dialectic in the Introduction, we look at Hegel's views on a number of central themes of the book: sensory perception and our knowledge of the physical world; self-consciousness and the struggle for recognition; individuality and alienation; the dynamics of modern political revolution; the moral perspective and its limits; religious consciousness, the 'unhappy consciousness', and absolute knowing.

  • Full module details

• Heidegger, PY935

  Taught by Irene McMullin

  This module examines the central themes Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, while focusing on the individual's relationship to the public norms through which she understands herself. Heidegger's reformulation of the traditional notion of selfhood rejects the modern conception of self as subject, requiring us to reconceive the relationship between self and society.

  We address how the self is individuated, despite being immersed in the averageness and anonymity characterising public roles and norms, and the distinction between individual others and public structures of intelligibility through which they are typically encountered, a distinction resting on Heidegger's understanding of the relationship between the individual and time.

  By examining the role temporality plays in structuring selfhood, we develop a richer account of how the self is individuated and how such selves can encounter each other in all their particularity.

  • Full module details

• Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, PY938

  Taught by Peter Dews

  The nature and status of the 'Unconscious' has been a source of controversy since Sigmund Freud's introduction of the concept into European thought. Beginning with Freud, we will move via Jonathan Lear to the work of Jacques Lacan, seeking to explore and understand the motivation for his reformulation of the unconscious in terms of the division of the speaking subject caught in a web of intersubjective relations. We will then compare Lacan’s ideas with the conception of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the work of the great ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, seeking to understand what is a stake, philosophically, ethically and psychoanalytically, in the way these two thinkers understand language, subjectivity, and the status of the Other.

  • Full module details

• Topics in Continental Philosophy, PY950

  Taught by Fiona Hughes

  The topic of this module is philosophical aesthetics. We concentrate closely on Kant's third critique and, particularly, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, while exploring issues that arise from it pertaining to the judgement of artworks. We consider a range of artworks in conjunction with Kant's philosophical perspective, including examples from contemporary art practice.

  • Full module details