Hermeneutics is the theory and practice of textual interpretation. Originally hermeneutics was applied only to biblical exegesis, but by the 20th C it had become the philosophy of understanding and meaning creation in all areas of human life. In this course we will follow the development of this branch of philosophy through its main exponents: Dilthey, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Habermas. We will then consider one of the most ‘hermeneutic’ literary critics of the 20th C: Harold Bloom, thr... [More]

Would you like to gain an overview of the history of philosophy and the major contribution philosophy has made to areas of thought such as political theory, ethics, aesthetics and the sciences? This course encourages the development of critical thinking and the use of informal logic techniques. Philosophers studied include the Greek pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche and Foucault. Come along, extend your intellectual horizons and find out why this introd... [More]

The love and pursuit of wisdom are perhaps the oldest and most persistent grand themes of the western philosophical tradition. But what does wisdom mean in these contexts? And what does it mean to be a lover of wisdom? Indeed, is it possible now in any sense? Some philosophers believe that it is; others believe that we have forgotten what it means to be a lover of wisdom (or at least, a faithful lover in this context!) Is the love of wisdom greater than the love of happiness, or of ... [More]

Science is a ‘methodology’: a particular way of observing and explaining the world, of answering the one big question: “What must the world be like, in order that it produce the phenomena we observe?” Part two of this four part series applies the language and logic of Science to the task of distilling from our observations of worldly affairs the fundamental elements of ‘reality’ – of what the world must, or at least must not, be like – and to construct from them a reasonable model o... [More]

New online services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn challenge longstanding ideas about privacy and intellectual property. At the same time, they are cultivating an ethos of sharing and transparency that is impacting on business, government, and civil society in important ways. As these new technologies change the world, they change us. This course draws on philosophical ideas to explore how social media is changing our sense of personal identity and ethics. The course ... [More]

We can usefully understand a given society in terms of its characteristic visions of ultimate reality. What, as shown both by its philosophical preoccupations and its socially valued activities (its economic relations, its sacred rituals, its art), is its basic vision of what truly is? In this course we turn the spotlight on western culture. We familiarise ourselves with some of the major philosophical issues involved in contending views of the ultimately real. We consider how in di... [More]

The Ancient Greek Skeptics aimed to cure dogmatists of the ‘disease’ of claiming to know things for which they had no proof, and of imposing their opinions on others. Skepticism is an appealing theory when it is used as a critique strategy against dogmatism; but is it a viable theory in its own right? In this course we will examine skepticism as it develops historically as a theory and also what it means to have a ‘skeptical attitude’. We will ask if there are benefits in developing... [More]

In Two Concepts of Liberty, Isaiah Berlin comments that: “Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilization”. Berlin is one of the great minds of the 20th Century; his writing covers nearly a 60 year span, from the 1930’s to his death in 1997. He wrote on: Liberty, Freedom and Political theory; The history of Ideas, relating th... [More]

The relationship between neuroscience and metaphysics is a complex and intriguing one. It highlights questions about the mind and the brain, memory and identity, freewill and determinism, happiness and pleasure, neural correlates of consciousness, the emotions, desire and fulfilment, ethics and morality, as well as the relation, if any, between quantum theory and neural mechanisms. In this fully illustrated day we will examine carefully some of these questions in order to see whethe... [More]

Heidegger and Nietzsche offered profound reflections on the question of meaning, the question of being (and non-being), and the questions of purpose and of freedom. We focus on Nietzsche’s attempted ‘overcoming of metaphysics’, his response to the challenge of nihilism in the modern world and his deep debt to the ancient Greeks (especially Heraclitus); we also focus on Heidegger’s recalling of Being; his profound critique of Nietzsche; his engagement with, and critique of, the age o... [More]