Art History and Philosophy & Ethics BA (Hons)

ART HISTORY

Liverpool has more museums and galleries than any UK city outside London. It also hosts the country's largest contemporary art biennial. This makes it a lively place for studying art history.

In your three years, you'll explore art and visual culture from a wide historical range. You'll focus on modern and contemporary art. Hope’s partnership with Tate Liverpool and National Museums Liverpool enriches the course. You'll hear from guest speakers in the museum field. You'll also get access to Liverpool’s best art collections. The course focuses on critical thinking and visual literacy. It explores different approaches and theories in art history.

Hear from student Bryony Large about what it's like to study Art History at Hope. 

PHILOSOPHY & ETHICS

Philosophy and Ethics explores the big questions of life and morality: on what basis do we judge things good or evil? It challenges you to examine your assumptions, opinions and worldview. Do we need to believe in God for life to have meaning – or have the arguments for the existence of God broken down? What does it mean to be human? Do we have free will, or is our life completely determined?

Through close attention to the primary texts of philosophers such as Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, our Philosophy and Ethics degree will help you learn to analyse and evaluate arguments, and to compose and communicate your own ideas in a reasoned way. You will have a grounding in the foundational questions of philosophy. As you progress, you will look in depth at philosophy of religion, political philosophy, applied ethics and issues of human personhood, artificial intelligence, ecology and animality.

Liverpool is a great place to study philosophy: the city famously wears its heart on its sleeve, and is home to a rich web of cultures that explore the human condition through humour, art and performance. The Liverpool Hope team has developed a programme that aims to be contemporary and timely, especially in the field of applied ethics. And in a city that has been riven with sectarian strife in its past, the innovative approaches that the team takes to thinking about religion in the modern world are highly topical. 

This degree will help you to develop your professional capacity by equipping you with the intellectual skills and perspectives needed to face the ethical and ideological challenges of the contemporary world. Such skills are essential for careers that require you to grasp with complex and often conflicting ideas across a whole range of professions.