This is an intensive final-year module running over five weeks during the summer term. It is the default capstone project for all Philosophy students and involves a guided and structured approach to support students in completing a research project of their own.
The theme for Summer Term 2024 is Philosophy and Film. Philosophers sometimes use films to illustrate their ideas. Some of them participate in the writing of film criticism. However, it has also been suggested that films can themselves be works of philosophy. This suggestion raises fundamental issues about the nature of both philosophy and film. Our aim will be to explore and test it. We will do so primarily through a series of lectures and seminars and associated film screenings. We will consider how selected films may help us to think through fundamental issues concerning what it means to be human: bringing in such topics as selfhood, temporality, conformism, exemplarity, irony, religion, freedom.
- Module Supervisor: Daniel Watts