Philosophy: The Great Thinkers (PHIL10003)

Philosophy has been called ‘the Queen of the Sciences’ and to this day the questions it poses are fundamental to disciplines across the university. In ‘Big Questions,’ students are introduced to the state-of-the-art problems in contemporary philosophy. But philosophy has a history, which invites us to consider how a discipline that attempts to arrive at fundamental truths can have so much difficulty finding agreement on issues of perennial concern: What am I essentially? What is truth? What is good?

This subject introduces students to fundamental debates in philosophy by revisiting the texts of great thinkers across history and cultures. The subject begins by considering classical Greek thinkers from Plato to Aristotle before turning to the metaphysical issues raised in the medieval tradition. The second half of the subject looks at three pillars of modern philosophy, Descartes, Hume and Kant, and more recent thinkers such as Rawls, Wittgenstein and Kripke. We will consider such issues as the nature of the self, the notion of beauty, the place – or not – of divinity in nature, justice, and the nature of thought and representation.

Philosophy has a history, and remains an unfinished business. In this course students will learn how to evaluate philosophical arguments by reckoning with some of the greatest minds and most provocative claims in the history of the field.