Philosophy Honours (2021)

Postgraduate Courses on offer in Philosophy during 2021:

 

Note: Honours and MA Coursework students can take ONE course outside the Philosophy Department as part of their Philosophy programme.

PLEASE CONTACT THE RELEVANT LECTURER TO GET THE INFORMATION ON WHEN THE CLASS MEETS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Semester 1:

• Paper 1: Time, Change and Freedom
  Francis Williamson (Term 2)
  This is a course in the Philosophy of Time and its relation to issues of human freedom.
  We basically read the text by the late Quentin Smith and L. Nathan Oaklander called Time, Change and Freedom: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1995). The text is in dialogue form and deals with a variety of points of view on this intriguing topic, ranging over the classic debate between A-theorists and B-theorists, or the tensed versus the tenseless theories of time, substantive versus relational time, time and change, time and personal identity, fatalism and determinism, and so on. There are 11 dialogues, and we will be tackling two of these per week. No previous acquaintance with the Philosophy of time is presumed.
  
  The course is a term course (in Term 2 only), and there will be two seminars per week conducted via Zoom.
  Please contact Francis if you are interested — f.williamson@ru.ac.za
  
  
  
• Paper 2 — Aristotle’s Metaphysics
  Larry Bloom (Semester 1)
  This seminar will focus entirely on a single text: Aristotle’s Metaphysics. We will work our way through the text focusing on reading closely and deciphering for ourselves what the concerns in the text actually are, if we should take those concerns seriously, and if the text manages to answer the questions it itself raises. Indeed, what we should be doing when reading a text like the Metaphysics will be one of the focuses of the course.
  Though it is the title given to his book by later commentators, Aristotle never used the word “metaphysics.” What we call metaphysics Aristotle generally referred to as “first philosophy”—the branch of knowledge that studies the first principles and causes of all things. Whether or not there are such principles and causes and, consequently, whether or not the branch of knowledge that studies them exists—that is, whether or not metaphysics exists—is one of the central questions of the book. In this way and many others the text presents itself less as a record of predetermined dogma and more as an inquiry. Over the course of the semester we will be engaging in that inquiry along with Aristotle.
  Contact Dr Bloom  - l.bloom@ru.ac.za 
  
  
• Paper 3 — Critique of Racial Liberalism
  Uchenna Okeja (Semester 1)
  The goal of this seminar is to engage in a close reading and analysis of a recent book by Charles Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism. In the book, Mills examines
  the long history of liberalism in political philosophy to show its illiberal and inglorious side. Mills
  retells the story of liberalism in order to rescue it from its own silences that threaten its viability as a political imagination. Our goal in this course will be to examine the assumptions, methodology and conclusions presented in the book in order to attain a nuanced understanding of contemporary liberal political philosophy. At the end of the course, each participant in the course should be able to develop independent perspective on the topic. It is hoped that Mills will meet virtually with the class in one of the lectures. Details will be communicated in due course.
  
  Reading: Charles W. Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
  Contact Prof Okeja - u.okeja@ru.ac.za
  
  

 

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Semester 2 (to be announced)

• Paper 4
  
  
• Paper 5
  
  
• Paper 6
   
  
  

 

 

Last Modified: Wed, 10 Mar 2021 08:41:45 SAST