BA(Hons) Philosophy (with Foundation Year)

This module will help you understand the expectations of higher education and develop the academic skills needed for your chosen social science pathway. Indicative content will include researching, organising and presenting ideas for essays, reports and case studies, alongside academic style, referencing and avoiding plagiarism. You'll develop reading, note-making, summarising, analysis and evaluation skills, and learn how to locate reliable books and journal articles. Planning, time management, reflection, oral presentation, examination preparation, academic use of information technology and collaborative teamwork will build your confidence as an independent learner.

This module will introduce you to key issues and theoretical approaches spanning sociology and criminology. Indicative topics will include identity and culture in social life, digital media and online cultures, education, social exclusion and inequality. You'll examine crime, deviance and social problems in relation to class, gender and ethnicity, alongside social, cultural and legal understandings of crime. The module will also provide opportunities to explore the profiling of dangerous and risky offenders and criminal justice institutions, helping you develop your understanding of the social world through social science ideas and research.

Through philosophy and political science, this module will introduce tools for understanding the contemporary world. You'll explore foundations of Western philosophical thought through classical texts, considering knowledge, being, the self, ethics, justice, education, beauty, politics and the state. The module will also examine the contemporary political and international order, including states and the international system. Themes such as climate change, terrorism, poverty, war and peace, culture, religion and security will help you reflect on connections between philosophical concepts, real political systems and current societal issues.

This module will introduce psychological research, theories and models alongside key topics in policing. It will typically include perspectives in psychology and selected themes from developmental, cognitive, social, humanistic and differential psychology. You'll also explore principles of investigative practice, community policing, contemporary challenges and evidence-based policing. Through these connected areas, you'll develop critical thinking and ethical approaches to building an evidence base. Group work and guided activities will strengthen your academic reading and writing, information searching, presentation software skills, planning, time management and collaboration.

This module will introduce the major authors, texts and ideas of Ancient Greek philosophy, from the earliest thinkers to Aristotle. You'll explore how epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics and aesthetics were understood as connected areas of enquiry. Topics will include knowledge and scepticism, virtue and morality, desire and reason, dialectic, human nature, justice, society and philosophy as a way of life. Studying the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle will develop your philosophical vocabulary and provide a historical and critical foundation for further study.

In this module, you'll explore historical debates about human nature, existence and the influence of social and cultural environments. You'll consider how secularism, embodiment and reason shape understandings of humanity, before examining existentialist questions of freedom, choice, moral agency and responsibility. The module may draw on philosophers and literary writers from the eighteenth century to the present, including Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir and Fanon. You'll develop critical engagement with texts and practise communicating philosophical ideas through different media.

This module will develop the core skills needed to construct and assess philosophical arguments. You'll learn key terms and techniques from informal logic, and may also encounter formal logic, while exploring argument forms, fallacies, validity and soundness. Alongside these practical tools, you'll examine central debates and theories in epistemology, building your understanding of how knowledge claims can be evaluated. The module will typically include material from non-Western philosophical traditions and may critically assess Western theories of knowledge, preparing you to apply philosophical reasoning throughout your studies.

In this module, you'll build a foundation in practical, social and political philosophy and apply philosophical thinking to contemporary global issues. You'll explore historical and conceptual approaches associated with thinkers who may include Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx and Weber. The module will typically then examine selected themes across political, technological and environmental challenges, which may vary to reflect current concerns. By connecting historical and contemporary ideas with real-world crises, you'll develop an understanding of philosophy's practical relevance to the global social environment.

In this module, you'll explore the nature and significance of artistic practice and aesthetic experience across literature, music, film and visual art. You'll examine historical and contemporary philosophy of art, considering questions about representation, artistic media, creativity, authorial intention and meaning. Topics may include photography and digitalisation, definitions of art, philosophy in film, and relationships between art, ritual, love and light. Through debates involving thinkers such as Plato, Plotinus, Stanley Cavell, Roland Barthes and Arthur Danto, you'll develop a critical philosophical approach to art and creative practice.

This module will introduce metaphysics as a general and abstract field of inquiry, exploring ontology as first philosophy and the relationship between concepts and reality. You'll examine key metaphysical concepts and debates across the history of philosophy and in contemporary thought. The module will consider why metaphysics is central to other areas of philosophy and how it relates to different fields of study. Through comparing positions and arguments, you'll develop a stronger understanding of questions about existence, reality and the structures through which we interpret the world.

Combining philosophical theory with practical application, this module will develop your understanding of philosophical methods, arguments and impact. You'll learn how knowledge is produced, stakeholders are engaged and research is communicated, particularly to non-academic audiences. Academic content will include Kant's critical philosophy and may include other central figures, enabling you to relate ideas to contemporary life and possible career pathways. Reflection on practical experience will help you identify transferable skills while strengthening critical thinking, public communication, briefing, presentation and workplace communication capabilities.

You'll carry out specialist studies in the field of contemporary Continental Philosophy, allowing you to apply diverse methodological approaches to contemporary challenges.

You'll dive into and analyse the fundamental philosophical, ethical, and social problems arising from current and future developments in technology.