New Philosophy MA programmes at Liverpool
Simon Hailwood
Please forward to interested parties.
The Philosophy Department will be running the following new programmes from
September 2007 (subject to final approval):
MA in Art, Aesthetics and Cultural Institutions
This exciting new Philosophy Masters programme offers the opportunity to
study art, history of art, aesthetics, design, film and other related
academic subjects as well as the chance to consider the theory and practice
of curating and museology. A key component of the programme is active
collaboration between Philosophy, CAVA (Centre for Architecture and Visual
Arts) and local cultural institutions including Tate Liverpool, National
Museums Liverpool, Static, and Culture Campus. Tate Liverpool will
contribute a module on contemporary curating. This collaboration will
create an academic environment in which students can grasp the practical
application of theory and, if they wish, develop more practise-based
skills. These skills will be developed in a research skills and placement
module which will include an internship either within an external cultural
institution or in the University of Liverpool’s own art gallery and museum.
For further details of this programme contact Dr Simon Hailwood
hail...@liv.ac.uk
MA in Philosophy as a Way of Life
The aim of this programme is to provide students with a means of engaging
with current attempts by philosophers within both the analytic and
continental traditions to rearticulate and reassess Ancient, Late Antique
and Neoplatonic conceptions of philosophy as intimately ‘connected’ with
conduct and the ‘subjectivity’ or inner life of the philosopher. This
conception has been variously articulated, as implying, for example, that
the philosophical enterprise is itself a form of ‘spiritual exercise’
or ‘spiritual practice’, or that there is such a thing as a
distinctively ‘philosophical’ way of life. In seeking thus to offer a
generic and summary account of what this ‘practical’ conception of
philosophy might be said to involve, we invoke difficult and contested
concepts—‘subjectivity’, ‘spirituality’, the ‘inner life of the
philosopher’. Concealed behind the reference to a ‘connection’ between
philosophy and conduct are strongly polarised positions about whether
philosophy can provide any kind of guide to how we should live, or whether
a particular way of living is a condition for doing philosophy. The
rationale of the programme, in other words, is to provide an opportunity to
reconsider what amounts essentially to the popular notion of philosophy,
which is a kind of residue of the approach to philosophy that was
associated, not just with the figure of Socrates, but also with the Stoics,
the Epicureans, the Cynics, the Sceptics, and then later with such
philosophers as Plotinus. There has been a resurgence of serious interest
in such conceptions recently, a resurgence which centres around rhetorics
of "happiness" and "well being", and which derives in part from the impact
of the work of the French philosopher, Pierre Hadot, the English
translation of whose seminal work on Late Antique philosophy has brought
the expression ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’ into popular currency, but
also from the work of such Anglophone writers as Iris Murdoch, Martha
Nussbaum and Richard Sorabji, as well as from the recently renewed interest
in the philosophical position of Kierkegaard and recent cross-cultural work
in Comparative Philosophy. Such work has led to a deeper understanding of
philosophical practice in the context of a well-led life. A particular
focus of the programme will be to explore the analogy between philosophy as
a treatment for the soul and medicine as a cure for the body, an analogy
that is to be found in all the world's great philosophical traditions,
though used to different effect within each. The programme will seek to
offer a treatment of these topics through modules in the History of
Philosophy, on Plato and Aristotle, the Hellenistic Philosophers and the
Neoplatonists, as well as the work of Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Heidegger and Sartre, alongside such thematic modules as moral philosophy,
environmental philosophy and the philosophy of religion.
For further details of this programme contact Dr Michael McGhee
mcg...@liv.ac.uk
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Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/pal.