Component

MA Public Opinion and Political Behaviour
BA Continental Philosophy options

Final Year, Component 02

Continental Philosophy option from list
PY454-6-AU
Existentialism and Phenomenology
(15 CREDITS)

Existentialism encompasses a variety of different thinkers unified by a) the belief that human existence cannot be fully understood using the categories provided by the philosophical tradition or the natural sciences, and b) a commitment to taking seriously the first-person quality of experience as it is lived. For this reason Existentialism has close ties to Phenomenology, which is a philosophical methodology defined by its insistence on examining meaning as it is experienced first-personally in order to uncover the structures governing the possibility of those meaningful experiences. We will address the key Existentialist question: How do you become who you are? We will make use of figures from both within and outside of the phenomenological tradition when addressing this question.

PY456-6-AU
Critical Theory
(15 CREDITS)

This module introduces students to different traditions of “Critical Theory”. Critical Theory, a tradition associated with the Frankfurt School but also embodied by wider radical traditions, aims to reflect critically and holistically on society and the role of the theorist within it in order to tackle oppressions and the ideological forms of thought that underpin them, and thus to contribute to projects of emancipation.

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