This is a shelf course. A shelf course comprises a number of modules related to this broad area of study. Each module is a separate semester of study in this area and is offered in rotation. You can study TWO modules but you cannot study the same module twice.

Subject Area: Philosophy
This course can also be studied in the following specialisations: Women's and Gender Studies*

Module: "Advanced Moral Theory"
What ought I do? How ought I live? Answers to the central questions of normative ethics typically draw upon moral theory, or the abstract underpinnings of ethical inquiry. This course introduces students to advanced topics in moral theory. Topics to be considered may include: the nature of moral obligation, egoism, the natural law tradition, the social contract tradition, consequentialism, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and virtue ethics. Relevant metaphysical and epistemological questions will be raised as well. Are there objective moral facts, or is morality simply a matter of subjective attitudes? Is human nature the basis of morality? Do we have free will? Is there only one correct moral outlook?

Module: "Race and Gender" (Semester 2, 2011)
* Note: Only this module contributes to Women's and Gender Studies minor

We often understand philosophy ideally to represent a neutral, disinterested point of view: as purely rational, untainted by partiality or prejudice, and detached from the social and political confines that cloud objectivity. In recent decades, however, theoretical feminism and postcolonial theory have built a case that this view of philosophy ignores the particularity of the philosopher’s perspective, which is most usually white and male. This course introduces students to critical literature addressing the question of how social situation, such as race and gender, is expressed in modes and styles of philosophising. By making a claim to be neutral, does philosophy exclude certain positions marked by social difference? If philosophy is traditionally ‘masculine’ and 'white,' then (how) can women and non-Europeans be accommodated by philosophy? Does conventional Western philosophy reflect the ‘whiteness’ and ‘maleness’ of its practitioners? And how have philosophers historically represented racial and sexual otherness?