Key facts

Type	Weekly Classes
Location	Reading
Address	Room 108 Building 22 London Road Campus Reading.
Dates	Wed 24 Apr to Wed 26 Jun 2013 Day: Wednesday Time of meeting: 7.00-9.00pm Number of meetings: 10
Subject area(s)	Philosophy
CATS points	10
Fees	From £145.00
Application status	In progress - closed to new applications
Course code	R12P491PHW
Course contact	If you have any questions about this course, please email ppweekly@conted.ox.ac.uk.

Overview

This course helps you think more clearly and rationally about what sort of person to be and how to live your life. It explains fundamental philosophical ideas that enable you to improve your relationships and make better decisions in your everyday life.

Description

You, like everyone else, are faced with difficult choices regarding what sort of person to be, how to live your life, and how to go about making decisions in practice. This course helps you make those choices as well as possible.

The first half of the course is devoted to explaining fundamental ideas and arguments in ethics. The second half shows how they can be employed in practice. Issues explored include: how to better relate to your friends and partner; how to deal with difficult people; to what extent to help strangers; obligations to future generations; career and business ethics; weakness of will; and how best to go about improving yourself.

No prior knowledge of philosophy is needed for participation in this course, only a willingness to question, think rationally and learn, coupled with experience of living a life!

Programme details

Week 1: Introduction to philosophical reasoning. An exploration of the importance of deepening self-understanding, and trying to learn with regard to all aspects of decision-making.
Week 2: Is selfishness justified? Or should you rather have an equal concern for others? If so, which others: your family, your friends, your fellow countrymen, everyone...? An exploration of Kant’s idea that you should always treat every person as an end, never as a mere means or object.
Week 3: What is truly best for a person? How do we go beyond mere opinion, intuition & observation in order to establish a firmly grounded understanding?
Week 4: An explanation of the distinction between competitive goods (e.g. money, power, desire gratification) and shared goods (e.g. love, friendship, cooperation, shared goals, truth, beauty).
Week 5: The distinction between higher and lower pleasures and emotions. The role of empathy, creativity and the aesthetic. How to get better at grasping and dealing constructively with complex situations, particularly social situations.
Week 6: Which goals should you have?
Week 7: What is the true nature of friendship, love, sex & marriage? How can you improve your relationships? How can you reduce conflict and argument? Why is fidelity important?
Week 8: Strategies for dealing with difficult people - whether family members, work colleagues or others.
Week 9: How can you combine being ethical with success in career, business and public life? How best to deal with competition and rivalry? What is your responsibility to community, country & strangers?
Week 10: What is the nature of weakness of will? What are the best techniques for overcoming it?


Background Reading:
Plato Gorgias
Kant Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals
Gaita, R Good and Evil: An absolute conception
Thompson, Michael Life and Action
Parfit, Derek On What Matters
Scruton, Roger Beauty

Browse The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online at http://plato.stanford.edu/ especially the articles on ‘Well-Being’ ‘Empathy’ ‘Kant’s Moral Philosophy’, ‘Aristotle’s Ethics’ ‘Love’ and ‘Friendship’.

Staff

Course aims

Course Aim:
To teach participants some fundamental philosophical ideas which can help them think better about what sort of person to be, how to live their life and how to go about decision-making in practice.

Course Objectives:
1. To teach participants some key philosophical ideas, arguments and distinctions connected with the question of what sort of person to be, how to live your life and how to go about your decision-making.
2. To help participants understand how these ideas, arguments and distinctions can be employed in practice.
3. To help participants to think clearly and rigorously about the issues in question, and to back up their claims with arguments.

Assessment methods

Students write either four assignments of 250 words each, or a 1000 word essay. They receive friendly, sympathetic, helpful and constructive feedback.

Teaching methods

There will be a friendly co-operative approach to the issues with which this course confronts us. Students will be presented with ideas, arguments, thought experiments and examples, which they will be encouraged to question, discuss, reflect on and write about.

Teaching outcomes

By the end of the course students can expect to:
1. Be able to understand and express a variety of key ideas and arguments in Ethics.
2. Have improved their skills in analysing and evaluating ideas and arguments.
3. Be able to think clearly and rationally about issues dealt with in the course, especially where these connect with their own views, how they live their life, and how they make their decisions.

Fee options

Programme Fee

EU Fee: £145.00

Non-EU Fee: £145.00

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