Global Philosophies & Worldviews and Philosophy & Ethics

GLOBAL PHILOSOPHIES & WORLDVIEWS

Liverpool is a gateway to the world. This city is home to the oldest Chinatown in Europe, its links with West Africa and the Americas were forged in the dark days of the transatlantic slave trade, and over one-and-a-half million Irish people passed through its port during the ‘Great Hunger’ of the 1845-52 Potato Famine. Each of the communities that have passed through this city brought with them their own ways of understanding the world their worldviews.

Liverpool, of course, is like nowhere else on the planet; it has its unique accent, a biting sense of humour, and an amazing cultural life. And each community that passes through the city leaves something of itself behind, adding to the cultural mix that makes Liverpool a truly global city. That makes Liverpool the perfect place to study how people today deal with all those different ideas and conflicting opinions that pop into the apps on our phones and computers. The roots of Liverpool Hope lie in the work pioneers such as Catholic Archbishop Worlock and Anglican Bishop Sheppard to bring about community reconciliation in the city. So, Liverpool Hope is the perfect place to ask how people today find their way through our media-saturated world. Here How do people coexist with others whose worldview is radically different to their own? What makes for a global citizen? What can we learn from people who are very different from ourselves? What can the story and the people of this city teach us?

This Major gives you a chance to delve into these questions. You will explore what can be learned from the ‘wisdom’ of different traditions in our pluralist contemporary world - chiefly by asking how other people have worked through questions like these. This will take you on a journey across the world. You will study in depth how the philosophical and religious traditions of Asia have tackled these questions. You will also look at the ways that Western philosophers and Jewish, Muslim and Christian theologians have explored them. Along the way you will look at how people form - and reform their worldview. You will ask such questions as does scientism lead to a reduction in human capacity for engaging with reality?  Is the Western secularisation model fundamentally colonialist?

The course gives its students the chance to step back from the noise of our digital world, and develop the professional skill of being able to engage closely with ideas and worldviews that are often misunderstood or underrepresented in society. So, people who take this course will be well-grounded for the kinds of careers that involve understanding, advocacy and working with different communities – for example journalism, the law, policing, politics, education, human resource management.

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.