Module description
Through lectures/seminars, students will explore the ways in which philosophers and theologians have understood their own disciplines and the contribution that they can make to delineating and responding to specific problems in the human condition: freedom and responsibility; the good life; evil, sin and suffering; death and the afterlife. The aim will be to deepen students' sense of what these problems are from a philosophical and/or theological perspective by considering the questions raised by the texts to be studied in the module, e.g., do we possess free will and, if so, in what does it consist? In what does a good life consist and how is it related to morality, personal fulfilment, love? What is evil and how can we make sense of its presence in human affairs? Does the meaning of life depend on there being an afterlife or not? The aim is not so much to provide answers to such questions as to explore why they are important issues for us to consider in order to develop a deeper conception of our individual and collective life.
NB The course complements 4AAT1027 Elements of Ethics and, with that course, provides an introduction to the philosophy of religion and ethics.
Assessment details
One 90 mins examination (100%)
Teaching pattern
Two-hour weekly classes over ten weeks