Liberal Arts

Our first core module in the Liberal Arts degree takes us to the world of Antiquity. We will read together one of the key texts of the last 2500 years in the western tradition – Plato’s Republic – looking at its analysis of the problem of injustice and its proposals for creating a just city. We will visit Plato’s cave and think about the significance of this as a model for critical education across many different cultural, political and social arenas. The suggestion that the soul and the city should find themselves in each other will also be part of our discussions. We will also read Virgil’s Aeneid together. Here we will reflect on exile, journeys, love affairs, and tears, as well as the representation of the underworld, which will prepare us for returning there with Dante in a later module. The module begins by trying to do justice to the existential experience of beginning your degree, something we will return in three (or six) years' time.

This module looks at the first principle of harmony in ancient and medieval liberal arts as it was seen to condition and structure the ethical and metaphysical properties of the universe. We will think about this idea of harmony, explored in various ways across modules in year one, in relation to music, astronomy, maths, rhetoric and philosophy and the accompanying ideas of civilisation and barbarism. We will see why music was deemed so dangerous in Plato’s Republic and Laws, how it is related to maths in the teachings of Pythagoras and the influence of these ideas on Plato’s Timeaus. This will form part of an introduction to the Quadrivium and Trivium subjects of Liberal Arts upon which we can begin to think about the nature of a modern liberal arts education.

This module introduces students to the idea of ‘humanism’ in the Liberal Arts tradition with particular reference to the ideas, themes and practices (Christian, Islamic and Judaic) central to the period of Western history called the Renaissance. We will explore the revival of classical learning in the studia humanitatis, some of the key features and figures of artistic, literary and political life as well as the darker and stranger side of the Renaissance as it colluded with or promoted slavery, sexual exploitation and warfare. Most importantly the module will illustrate ways in which the Renaissance holds an ‘educational’ import both within itself and in terms of a legacy. Where appropriate, tutors will relate the material to both ancient and more modern issues and ideas. The module aims to increase student knowledge and understanding of the Renaissance but also to draw out its fundamental import for the notion of education in its widest sense.

In this module we return to the underworld that we last visited with Aeneas. It is still Virgil that acts as our guide, but this time accompanied with Dante The Pilgrim. Before reading the Inferno together we will explore the model of the medieval cosmos that shaped Dante’s imagination. This means looking the Ptolemaic model and in particular at the idea of emanation that explained how the spheres moved truth through the universe. We will read Christian, Islamic and Judaic sources from the period. The bulk of the module will be the journey through the Inferno, looking at various incidents and their significance. We will employ Dorothy L Sayers’ reading of the Inferno as our companion commentary, gaining religious and sociological insight from her work. Having emerged from the Inferno with our guides, we will look at a recent controversy surrounding the question of plagiarism on the part of Dante with regard to earlier Islamic sources.

In this module we study some of the dramatic works of ancient Greek comedy and tragedy to introduce us to various ideas about the nature of human experience and representation. As modes for depicting the experience of loss and suffering or the dissolution of identities and reputations, both comedy and tragedy engage the audience with the ludicrous and fragile nature of human existence. In the first instance, students explore the cultural context within which ancient Greek tragedy and comedy emerged, considering the rise in tandem of theatre and democracy. Students will look at some of the key conventions of Greek drama, drawing contrasts with modern theatre. And students will explore the contrasting aesthetics of Plato and Aristotle: can we construe tragedy as a means by which to purge the soul of negative emotions? With various cultural, aesthetic and philosophical ideas in sight, students will read three canonic Greek tragedies: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and Aristophones’ comedies The Clouds and Lysistrata. Reference will also be made to the works of Euripides, Seneca, as well as modern adaptations of Greek tragedies and comedies such as André Gide’s Oedipus (Oedipe: drame en trois actes, 1930).   

In Liberal Arts and the Harmony of the World we immersed ourselves in the harmonious cosmos of the ancient world, its soul, its motions, its music and its mathematical structure. We considered the nature of the relation between Plato’s unchangeable eternal Forms and the changeable life of the created universe. We continue in this vein by looking at the related themes of innocence and experience. Using a range of philosophical, religious, artistic and literary texts and ideas, we explore a world of innocence and ‘demonic experience’ in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Blake’s art and poetry, the social, political and educational implications of the ‘loss of childhood’ in western modernity and whether Huxley’s Brave New World has anything still to teach us about what it means to be human.

To what extent is film a medium for philosophical thinking? Just how far can it go in bringing about a higher education regarding human existence and experience? Is film as a medium able to ‘think’? In this module we will analyse the confluence of philosophy and film from across a wide variety of films, texts and theorists. From, for example, Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Nietzsche and Kant, and from, for eample, The Matrix and Contact to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Truman Show, Her, Inception, Synecdoche, Arrival and Fight Club, we will inquire into big questions and ideas through the prism of film and discover ways in which the composition of scenes, screenplays, acting styles, colour, pacing, order and music in film serve to deepen our philosophical curiosity, insight and understanding.

In this module we will begin to ask what the nature and purpose of education is, including Liberal Arts education.  We will bring various philosophical, social, religious and political perspectives to bear upon the idea and significance of education in ancient and modern societies, including recent models of educational provision. We will explore the relationship between education and the self, education and the wider society, education and knowledge, education and freedom and we will explore, reflect on and challenge mechanical models of learning in debates about the future and philosophy of higher education. The module gives students the chance to reflect on their own experiences of education and those of others and introduces them to various educational ideas and concepts through which to make sense of and/or critique them.

When we think about inequality in the world at large, and in modern western society in particular, it is often the case that the idea of nature, or natural social relations, acts as a foundation for social and political thinking. In this module we will explore how the concept of nature has shaped many of the most important and significant perspectives on freedom in modernity, and at the competing visions of natural ‘man’ and natural justice that form the major cultural and political conversations. We will try to understand various explanations of the origin of social inequality, using the methodology of problem and solution in assessing their diagnoses of injustice and prescriptions for justice. 

Nature, truth, and freedom often sound as if they are separate and need to be studied in discreet academic disciplines. But Liberal Arts has always treated them as three aspects of the one understanding of the universe and of life within it. In this module we go back to the beginning of liberal arts to explore the way that the nature of the cosmos was conceived and modelled according to conceptions of truth and freedom, or first principles. This enables us then to study the history of physics and the study of nature, and to follow its development from Aristotle to Newton. We will look at the medieval cosmos from different religious perspectives, and at the revolutions that emerged from several natural scientists. From this work we will be able to see how the modern age came to define itself scientifically, politically and philosophically, a theme we will pick up again in the next mandatory module in year 2.

• European Culture and the Holocaust (Shoah) - 15 Credits
• Power of the Teacher - 15 Credits
• Art as Education - 15 Credits
• Liberal Artists in the World - 15 Credits
• Contradictions of Enlightenment - 15 Credits
• Minds, Souls and Bodies - 15 Credits
• The Black Atlantic - 15 Credits
• Learning from the East - 15 Credits
• Core Texts 1 - 15 Credits
• Music and Philosophy - 15 Credits
• Independent Study - 15 Credits
• Education & Nature: learning in the Anthropocene - 15 Credits
• Volunteering - 15 Credits
• Culture: High and Low - 15 Credits
• Other Animals: Contemporary Moral Frontiers - 15 Credits
• Eating Well: Food and Value in the 21st Century - 15 Credits
• Displaced: Forced Migration and Refugees Today - 15 Credits
• Stories for Children - 15 Credits
• Exploring Teaching as a Career - 15 Credits

When we think about inequality in the world at large, and in modern western society in particular, it is often the case that the idea of nature, or natural social relations, acts as a foundation for social and political thinking. In this module we will explore how the concept of nature has shaped many of the most important and significant perspectives on freedom in modernity, and at the competing visions of natural ‘man’ and natural justice that form the major cultural and political conversations. We will try to understand various explanations of the origin of social inequality, using the methodology of problem and solution in assessing their diagnoses of injustice and prescriptions for justice. 

Nature, truth, and freedom often sound as if they are separate and need to be studied in discreet academic disciplines. But Liberal Arts has always treated them as three aspects of the one understanding of the universe and of life within it. In this module we go back to the beginning of liberal arts to explore the way that the nature of the cosmos was conceived and modelled according to conceptions of truth and freedom, or first principles. This enables us then to study the history of physics and the study of nature, and to follow its development from Aristotle to Newton. We will look at the medieval cosmos from different religious perspectives, and at the revolutions that emerged from several natural scientists. From this work we will be able to see how the modern age came to define itself scientifically, politically and philosophically, a theme we will pick up again in the next mandatory module in year 2.

• European Culture and the Holocaust (Shoah) - 15 Credits
• Power of the Teacher - 15 Credits
• Art as Education - 15 Credits
• Liberal Artists in the World - 15 Credits
• Contradictions of Enlightenment - 15 Credits
• Minds, Souls and Bodies - 15 Credits
• The Black Atlantic - 15 Credits
• Learning from the East - 15 Credits
• Core Texts 1 - 15 Credits
• Music and Philosophy - 15 Credits
• Independent Study - 15 Credits
• Education & Nature: learning in the Anthropocene - 15 Credits
• Volunteering - 15 Credits
• Culture: High and Low - 15 Credits
• Other Animals: Contemporary Moral Frontiers - 15 Credits
• Eating Well: Food and Value in the 21st Century - 15 Credits
• Displaced: Forced Migration and Refugees Today - 15 Credits
• Stories for Children - 15 Credits
• Exploring Teaching as a Career - 15 Credits

We live in a time when the very idea of what it is to be a human being is questioned at its most fundamental level. The Western tradition seems to have placed the human being at the top of the hierarchy of life and judged everything else as either the same (and therefore worthy) or different (and therefore unworthy). This module looks at recent developments in the question of identity and at its impact on the idea of the modern rational human being. We then critique this idea of human being through the lenses of relativity in science, including the question of ‘time’ and of ‘the atom, and then through the cultural perspectives of race, feminism, animal studies, art, and by way of an introduction to the idea of posthumanism. In each case we will read some of the primary texts together as the beginning our work. The key here is to explore the relation between nature and truth and its impact on our idea of freedom.

As we have seen Liberal Arts began in the time of slavery in Ancient Greece, and many of its most fundamental ideas and concepts were shaped by these social relations. Truth, freedom and nature were all forged in the shadow of this injustice. In this module we explore different philosophical perspectives on the power relations that are embodied in ideas of mastery and slavery. This takes us to Hegel’s famous description of lordship and bondage and its relation to life and death. This dialectical, or perhaps educative relation is then explored in a number of different arenas, including some that are fundamental to liberal arts. The challenge here is to see what ways some of these fundamental liberal arts conceptions might be reworked, even revolutionised, by a changed understanding of the logic of mastery, and by a logic of education in which freedom is to learn.

This module enables Single Honours or Named pathway students to produce a dissertation solely in Liberal Arts. The subject accepts a very wide definition of what can count as relevant to Liberal Arts. Projects can be a deeper analysis of any aspect of content already covered on the course or a new area building on the skills of theory and critique which is of interest to the student. The dissertation will be a piece of independent research undertaken by the student resulting in an 8,000 – 10,000 word project

• Human Nature - 15 Credits
• Philosophy of the Teacher - 15 Credits
• Life and Death - 15 Credits
• Education, Ecologies and Ethics - 15 Credits
• Independent Study - 15 Credits
• Core Texts 1 - 15 Credits
• Core Texts 2 - 15 Credits
• Sustainability and Social Justice - 15 Credits
• Disenchantment: modern life and modern living - 15 Credits
• Stories for Children - 15 Credits
• Displaced: Forced Migration and Refugees Today - 15 Credits
• Eating Well: Food and Value in the 21st century - 15 Credits
• Other Animals: Contemporary Moral Frontiers - 15 Credits
• Culture: High and Low - 15 Credits

We live in a time when the very idea of what it is to be a human being is questioned at its most fundamental level. The Western tradition seems to have placed the human being at the top of the hierarchy of life and judged everything else as either the same (and therefore worthy) or different (and therefore unworthy). This module looks at recent developments in the question of identity and at its impact on the idea of the modern rational human being. We then critique this idea of human being through the lenses of relativity in science, including the question of ‘time’ and of ‘the atom, and then through the cultural perspectives of race, feminism, animal studies, art, and by way of an introduction to the idea of posthumanism. In each case we will read some of the primary texts together as the beginning our work. The key here is to explore the relation between nature and truth and its impact on our idea of freedom.

As we have seen Liberal Arts began in the time of slavery in Ancient Greece, and many of its most fundamental ideas and concepts were shaped by these social relations. Truth, freedom and nature were all forged in the shadow of this injustice. In this module we explore different philosophical perspectives on the power relations that are embodied in ideas of mastery and slavery. This takes us to Hegel’s famous description of lordship and bondage and its relation to life and death. This dialectical, or perhaps educative relation is then explored in a number of different arenas, including some that are fundamental to liberal arts. The challenge here is to see what ways some of these fundamental liberal arts conceptions might be reworked, even revolutionised, by a changed understanding of the logic of mastery, and by a logic of education in which freedom is to learn.

This module enables Single Honours or Named pathway students to produce a dissertation solely in Liberal Arts. The subject accepts a very wide definition of what can count as relevant to Liberal Arts. Projects can be a deeper analysis of any aspect of content already covered on the course or a new area building on the skills of theory and critique which is of interest to the student. The dissertation will be a piece of independent research undertaken by the student resulting in an 8,000 – 10,000 word project

• Human Nature - 15 Credits
• Philosophy of the Teacher - 15 Credits
• Life and Death - 15 Credits
• Education, Ecologies and Ethics - 15 Credits
• Independent Study - 15 Credits
• Core Texts 1 - 15 Credits
• Core Texts 2 - 15 Credits
• Sustainability and Social Justice - 15 Credits
• Disenchantment: modern life and modern living - 15 Credits
• Stories for Children - 15 Credits
• Displaced: Forced Migration and Refugees Today - 15 Credits
• Eating Well: Food and Value in the 21st century - 15 Credits
• Other Animals: Contemporary Moral Frontiers - 15 Credits
• Culture: High and Low - 15 Credits