To enhance students' abilities to conduct research using library resources. To develop a capacity for self-motivated philosophical enquiry and reflection. To acquaint students with historical and linguistic approaches to the study of philosophy. To explain the differences between the Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics. To seek to understand the formative influence of Platonic and Aristotelian traditions in European thought up to the C17. To expose the vicissitudes, and occlusions and revivals undergone by these traditions. To explain the nominalist challenges to Aristotelianism in the Middle Ages and the nature of the response inspired by a revived Platonism. To elucidate the role of philosophy in the birth of early modern science. To raise the question of the extent to which philosophical thinking influences more widely shared conceptions of the world and the place and nature of human beings.

(LO1) Students will be able to demonstrate their recognition of the contextual nature of philosophical claims.

(LO2) Students will be able demonstrate how close attention to philosophical vocabulary deepens understanding of philosophers’ arguments.

(LO3) Students will show understanding of the factors involved in evaluating information sources.

(LO4) Students will acquire expertise in accessing sources of academic information.

(LO5) Students will demonstrate understanding of the semantic development of philosophically significant terms.

(LO6) Students will show understanding of a range of different traditions of philosophical thought.

(S1) Ability to identify, access and evaluate sources of information in SJL library holdings and elsewhere.

(S2) Capacity for oral and written communication.

(S3) Increased confidence in their approach to unfamiliar historic texts.

(S4) Ability to identify and reflect critically upon the issues that underlie debates.

(S5) Confidence in considering previously unfamiliar ideas and worldviews.

(S6) Ability to marshal ideas and arguments and present them in writing.

The emergence and development of Plato’s notion of Ideas; Aristotle’s critique of Plato and the rejection of uninstantiated Forms. Hylomorphism. Philo and Ideas in the divine mind. Neoplatonism: Marius Victorinus and Augustine. Dionysius and participation in God. St Thomas Aquinas on divine Ideas; Aquinas on Truth; Aquinas on creation through the Logos. Divine ideas according to Duns Scotus. William of Ockham: nominalism and individualism. Renaissance Platonism. Lorenzo Valla’s repudiation of scholasticism. Nominalist thought and the Reformation. The concept of the world as imbued with purposes and informed by Ideas superseded by that of the world as a mechanism, devoid of values and purposes. Reduction of ideas to their reflexes in the minds of human subjects. The human individual as the bestower of meaning and value. Descartes and the mind as the measure of truth. The new notions of Person and Consciousness in Locke.

Seminars (11 x 1 hour).
Self-directed learning.