Learning Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this module should be able to
• REFLECT critically upon early modern philosophy and influential 17th and 18th century approaches to moral agency and related issues in ethics, social philosophy, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics.
• IDENTIFY and analyse philosophical arguments in historical texts.
• INTERPRET philosophical texts that were written in the 17th and 18th century, show awareness of different possible interpretations and learn to assess the strengths and weaknesses of different interpretations
• WRITE well-structured and well-argued research essays that explain and critically assess philosophical views and critically position your interpretation in relation to other interpretations in the literature
• ARTICULATE your own response to philosophical views, support them by reasons, and defend them in light of criticism
Indicative Module Content:
This seminar focuses on seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophical debates concerning moral agency. We will discuss selected texts by John Locke, Mary Astell, Damaris Masham, Adam Smith, Sophie de Grouchy, Thomas Reid, and their contemporaries. Through a close study of their writings we will examine issues concerning agency that continue to be relevant in philosophical debates in ethics, social philosophy, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics.