This course introduces and explores the work of some key figures in 19th and 20th century continental philosophy: Nietzsche, Foucault, and Hannah Arendt. The approach taken is predominantly philosophical rather than historical, and will involve examining critical claims and arguments about the nature of morality, the nature of human freedom, relationships between knowledge, truth, power and morality, and the role of history in understanding these. It is expected that students will engage with the original texts, formulate the central arguments to be found in them, and assess their cogency.

As well as engaging closely with the original texts, students will be expected to undertake guided but independent research into critical receptions and interpretations of these thinkers. All of the thinkers studied are intensely controversial, and have been subject to competing interpretations and assessments. Students will be expected to develop an understanding of their ideas, and their place in the wider discipline, by critically engaging with the secondary literature.

What moral obligations do we have towards future generations – to people who are yet to be born, and to merely possible people whose very existence (or non-existence) depends on how we act now? This special subject explores this question by examining both a series of practical case studies and some of the main concepts and theories that philosophers use when thinking about these issues. Questions considered normally include:

• How should we weigh quality against quantity of life? Would a world with a relatively small number of ‘happier’ people preferable to one with many more ‘less happy’ ones?
• Ought we to try significantly to extend the human life span (to 150 years or beyond)?
• Should cryonics be permitted and what ethical issues does this raise?
  • Is there a moral obligation to refrain from having children (e.g. for environmental reasons) and what measures may governments take to encourage or enforce population control? Conversely, might there be a moral obligation to have (more) children?
  • Should we use selection techniques to minimise the incidence of genetic disorders and disabilities in future populations?
  • Should parents be allowed to use these techniques to determine the characteristics of their future children (e.g. choosing their child’s eye or hair colour, or sex selection)?
  • When considering the future, how should the interests of non-human creatures be weighed against those of humans? How strong are our moral obligations to prevent extinctions, and to preserve wildernesses?
  • When considering long-term environmental issues (e.g. climate change, nuclear power) and long-term financial issues (e.g. national debt and pensions) how should we balance the interests and rights of people who exist now against those of future people?

This course considers conceptual questions around 'health' and 'disease' (and related concepts of 'disability', 'normality', 'medicine', 'treatment') and explores how these relate to issues of health policy.

We start by considering concepts of health and disease. Does whether a condition is a disease depend purely on matters of biological fact? Or, does a condition also have to be harmful to count as pathological? Is there any distinction that can be drawn between mental and physical disorders? Is it justified to treat people with mental disorders differently, e.g. in involuntary treatment? Should psychopaths who commit horrible crimes be considered to suffer from a disorder, or are they evil? What does it mean to say that someone is ‘normal’?

Many critics worry about medicalisation, and think that ever more conditions are coming to be considered diseases. Is this true, and does it matter? We’ll also consider conceptual issues connected to treatment. ‘Evidence Based Medicine’ aims to employ treatments that have been shown to work. But, how can it be determined whether a treatment works? What should the aims of therapy be? What is the distinction between medicines and other drugs?

This module will examine some of the major debates in religious and atheistic thought, looking in particular at the way in which these debates are framed by a specifically modern epistemological framework, and the ways in which religious thought and atheistic thought might be though to be mutually constitutive and mutually implicated rather than simply oppositional.

The aim of this module is to examine and evaluate some of the most central issues in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Western religious and atheistic philosophical debates. The module will begin by looking the philosophy of G W F Hegel and its implications for subsequent religious and atheistic thought. It will then proceed to consider the thought of the post-Hegelian masters of suspicion: Feuerbach, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche. After this, it will look at ways in which religious and atheistic thought have been brought together, as manifested in various forms of Christian atheism. Finally, it will consider postmodern critiques of modern atheism and the nature of the associated return of religion.

This course will examine some of the core philosophical questions raised by warfare and conflict. We will look at the ethics of war and killing, but also at more neglected philosophical issues in this area, and non-Western approaches as well as classic texts in the Western tradition.

We will do so by examining some of the central dilemmas faced by soldiers, policymakers and non-combatants, in the form of a weekly question for discussion. These questions include: Can war be beautiful? When, if ever, should we go to war? What counts as legitimate action in war? What, if anything, do we owe to our enemies? Is soldiering a good life? What does technological development mean for warfare? What should a responsible citizen do when their country is or looks about to be, at war? Who has the epistemic authority to speak about war? Is war always tragic?

Every year the department runs several Special Subject modules in philosophy, in which students engage in depth with research topics chosen by individual members of staff. These modules offer an opportunity to work on cutting-edge philosophy, in a small group, under the guidance of a subject expert. They are open both to final-year undergraduate students and to MA students (under different codes for administrative purposes).

Special Subject classes are run as seminars or reading groups: the tutor convenes the group, sets reading, and guides discussion, but does not lecture; students are expected to be active, self-directed, and well-prepared participants.

Depending on student numbers and timetables, MA students may either take seminars with undergraduates or in their own separate groups. MA students also have their own, further meetings with the module tutor.MA students' assessed work for this module will be marked at the appropriate level, distinct from and higher than undergraduates' assessed work, and requiring a greater degree of depth, independence, and knowledge of the appropriate philosophical literature. Guidance will be provided.

Select Bibliography

• Behaviour, (Hoover, 1993)

This module will involve an in depth study of a number of contemporary debates in the philosophy of mental disorder. Topics will include the following:

What is mental disorder? You will be introduced to some of the key accounts of mental disorder: What is the relationship between evolutionary dysfunction and disorder? Are disorders necessarily harmful?

• Antipsychiatry/ postpsychiatry - The antipsychiatrists (and more recently postpsychiatrists) argue that the very concept of mental disorder is dubious. Are mental disorders substantially like physical disorders? Or, do diagnoses of "mental disorder" simply label behaviour that is unusual, socially stigmatised, or bad?
• Conceptualising cultural variations - Do mental disorders vary from culture to culture? Would cultural variation mean that a disorder is less "real"?
• Realism and constructionism about mental disorder - What does it mean to say that a disorder is real or constructed?
• Meaning and the limits of reduction - Can symptoms be reduced to faulty brain states? Or, do symptoms such as "delusion" resist reduction?

The aim of this module is to enable you to develop the skills and virtues of a postgraduate-level philosopher and scholar of philosophy, by guided practice in close reading and reasoned discussion of selected works in moral, political, and social philosophy.

Typically, this module runs as a reading group, where we aim to focus on a small number of high-quality texts that are usually chosen in consultation between the convenor and the group of students taking it each year. In the past, the seminar format has featured a moderated discussion of set reading that has been introduced by a student presentation or by the convenor. Assessment will be by 5,000-word essay on a topic of your choosing, developed in consultation with the convenor.

‘Moral, political, and social philosophy’ will be understood broadly, to cover historical and contemporary philosophical work on a range of topics which may include: modernity, capitalism, liberalism, and alternative possibilities; the nature of human rights; individuality, community, and cultural difference; political authority and the authority of law; nationhood, borders, and cosmopolitanism; human wellbeing; freedom and global unfreedoms; equality and global inequalities; utilitarian, deontological, and virtue ethics; the natures of value, of agency, and of practical rationality.

In this module we will encounter some of the most foundational religious and philosophical texts of the Hindu and Buddhists traditions. Texts will vary from year to year, but may include: the ?g Veda, Upani?ads, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, or the Yoga Sutra from the Brahmanical/Hindu tradition, and the Nikayas, Vinaya, Jatakas, Lotus Sutra, and The Bodhicaryavatara from the Buddhist tradition. Through close readings, we will examine some of the core religio-philosophical ideas of early Indian thought as well as pay close attention to the composition, style, and structure of the texts themselves. We will also attempt to situate Hindu and Buddhist textual material within a social and historical context, paying close attention to who participates in the religio-philosophical world of ancient India and in what types of social circumstances religio-philosophical ideas are discussed. Alongside reading the primary sources, we will also situate our engagements within scholarly debates about methods of interpretation such as text-historical criticism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, orientalism, and post-colonial theory.

Assessment is by 5,000 word essay.

What moral obligations do we have towards future generations – to people who are yet to be born, and to merely possible people whose existence (or non-existence) depends on how we decide to act now? In this module we explore this question in detail by examining both a series of case studies and some of the main concepts and theories that philosophers use when thinking about these issues

Question considered normally include:

• Is there a moral obligation to refrain from having children (e.g. for environmental reasons) and what measures may governments take to encourage or enforce population control? Conversely, might there be a moral obligation to have (more) children?
• Should we use selection techniques to minimise the incidence of genetic disorders and disabilities in future populations? Should parents be allowed to use these techniques to determine the characteristics of their future children?
• How should we weigh quality against quantity of life? Would a world with a relatively small number of ‘happier’ people be preferable to one with many more ‘less happy’ ones?
• When considering long-term environmental issues (e.g. climate change, nuclear power) and long-term financial issues (e.g. national debt and pensions) how should we balance the interests and rights of people who exist now against those of future people?
• When considering the future, how should the interests of non-human creatures be weighed against those of humans? How strong are our moral obligations to prevent extinctions, and to preserve wildernesses? Would considerably extending the human life span (to 150 years or beyond) be defensible if this meant that fewer ‘new’ people could be born?

Philosophy is a various, contested, self-reflective discipline. It includes many different areas, questions, and approaches to answering them. Metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics are just some of the more obvious areas. Philosophers at Lancaster investigate questions about the nature of mental illness, free will, the self, the ethics of new medical technologies, Romantic thought, the emotions, autonomy, and many other topics. Our approaches range across critical reading of historical texts, engagement with special sciences including biology and psychology, conceptual analysis, literary studies, phenomenology, and more.

The aim of this module is to use guided practice in doing philosophy, and in thinking about what we’re doing, to develop the skills and virtues of a postgraduate-level philosopher. We pursue this aim in three strands:

(1) Presentations from philosophy staff on their research work, followed by discussion, to offer a tasting menu of some of the varied questions and approaches in contemporary professional philosophy as done here at Lancaster

(2) Reading and guided discussion of an important text or texts in one or more contemporary sub-disciplines of philosophy

(3) Reflective practice in central philosophical styles of skilled reading, writing, research, discussion, and presentation.

Assessment is by 5,000 word essay.