Module Catalogue 2025/26

Pre Requisite Comment

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Co Requisite Comment

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Aims

This module introduces students to the turn towards a new theory of experience that took place at the turn of the twentieth century, in the form of the new school of Phenomenology, and other thinkers from other traditions that developed in the first half of the twentieth century, of the likes of Henri Bergson and Walter Benjamin, and a number of others.

Outline Of Syllabus

1. This component provides students with a critical-historical approach to phenomenology beginning with the work of Husserl and its development in the German and/or French traditions.

Key thinkers may include (amongst others) Husserl, Heidegger, Stein, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida. Key questions and themes may include:
- Phenomenology as method
- The role of lived experience (Erlebnis) and its relation to theory
- The notion of the living body (Leib)
- The question of being
- Destruction, deconstruction and the relation to the philosophical tradition
- Ethics and the place of the Other
- The future of phenomenology in post-phenomenology and other philosophies which adopt a critical relation to phenomenology.

2. This component provides students with a critical-historical approach to debates in early twentieth century ontology and epistemology, from the time around and between the two world wars.

Key thinkers may include Walter Benjmain, Henry Bergson, the American Pragmatists, Dewey, Pierce, and Lewis, the Neo-Kantians (Cohen, Windelband, Rickert et al.), and Simone Weil.

3. This component provides students with a critical-historical approach to debates in contemporary ontology and epistemology, from 1945 to the present day. Key thinkers may include (amongst others) Deleuze, Baudrillard, Blanchot, Levinas, Derrida, Lyotard, Badiou, Agamben. Key questions and themes may include:
- Deleuze, Lyotard, and ‘philosophies of desire’
- Simulacra and Simulation
- Epistemologies of AI and the blockchain
- Destruction, deconstruction and the relation to the philosophical tradition
- Conceptions of the ‘event’
- Contemporary phenomenology and post-phenomenology and other philosophies which adopt a critical relation to phenomenology.

Key questions and themes may include:
- The Philosophy of Experience
- The Philosophy of History
- Technology
- Political theology
- The transcendental

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Students will develop knowledge of the phenomenological and post-phenomenological traditions and other recent movements in continental philosophy. They will acquire first-hand knowledge of central texts in contemporary European thought and the impact of those texts on the discipline of philosophy itself.

Intended Skill Outcomes

Through lectures, seminar discussions and independent research students will acquire and develop the following skills:

- Critical hermeneutical engagement with philosophical texts

- The use of phenomenological terminology in philosophical argument

- A profound understanding of the relation between subjectivity and objectivity in its various guises in philosophical thought of the twentieth century

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

This module provides an examination of key debates in contemporary continental twentieth century European philosophy. Lectures introduce concepts to students and provide a framework for weekly readings. Students read key texts as a part of guided independent study. Readings are may be unpacked explored in workshops, which mix lecture and seminar formats. BiTwo-weekly seminars allow small group teaching and evaluation of student learning.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The end-of-semester essay provides students with the opportunity of identifying and discussing some philosophical implications of the modules content account, and so of exhibiting their newly-acquired capacity to render historical work as a critical practice. The assessment’s focus on issues that consider phenomenology, ontology and epistemology allows students the opportunity to avail themselves of one or more of the various perspectives offered to them by secondary commentaries and therefore to hone their skills in research.

General Notes

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