Course summary

How should you live your life and relate to others? How should we organise society? Who and what should you believe? What is the nature of beauty? How do your mind, brain, body and environment shape your thoughts and feelings? How should characteristics like gender and race be taken into account in theoretical inquiry and social decision-making? Our BA Philosophy degree investigates important and complex issues like these and enables you to address today’s great global challenges. Our priority lies in developing your skills as a philosopher in your own right: you’ll be doing philosophy, not merely learning about philosophy. We’ll support you to engage critically and creatively with difficult problems in an open-minded and collaborative way, including on sensitive and controversial topics. During your studies, you’ll have the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research and work with your lecturers to develop insights into complex new areas of study. Our expertise covers a broad range of philosophical topics and traditions. You’ll develop a solid grounding in central areas of philosophy, such as ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, but also study areas such as aesthetics, feminist philosophy, and phenomenology. Many of our modules directly address contemporary problems facing society, providing you with a clear link between philosophical theory and practice. This is emphasised in the final year of the programme, where you’ll take part in a project to apply your own philosophical knowledge and ideas to develop policies or strategies aimed at solving a real-world ethical or social problem. You’ll graduate with a range of professional skills, including collaboration, effective communication and critical thinking. You will also have developed a deeper appreciation of the ethical and social challenges that face contemporary society and industry and have both the ideas and the confidence required to solve them. From here, you’ll be ideally placed to progress into a range of exciting careers. Throughout the degree, our aim is to support you to become an independent, creative, and critical thinker. First year teaching provides carefully structured support through lectures and seminar discussions to help you develop key skills and gain confidence. By the final year you’ll learn through guided independent reading and smaller interactive workshops and seminars, discussing new research with internationally recognised academics who are currently working in that area. You’ll have access to all course materials through our electronic learning environment. In this supportive environment you’ll develop your abilities to closely analyse texts and arguments, collaboratively work through problems, construct your own arguments, and present your ideas clearly to others. Distinctive features

• Follow your interests: Choose from modules from across a range of philosophical traditions, trace connections to other disciplines, and engage with new areas of philosophical research.

• Think for yourself: Critically and creatively engage with difficult problems in an independent and open-minded way.

• Shape the future: Apply philosophical research to develop policies or strategies aimed at solving real-world social problems.

• Study at the frontiers of inquiry: Analyse contemporary research with staff who are leading researchers in their field.

• Communicate effectively: Develop skills and experience in shaping and presenting your ideas and arguments, and in reaching agreement on difficult questions.