MA Global Philosophy

The purpose of the dissertation is to enable students to demonstrate their capacity to carry out a substantial piece of independent academic work on a selected topic in Global Philosophy. It will be assessed on their capacity to define a topic for examination, to articulate a coherent scheme for examining this topic, to gather the necessary information, and to analyse and present this information in a way which satisfactorily assesses the topic which they have set themselves.

The aim of this module is to provide students with an engaging professional context and project brief to support the development of their MA Dissertation in Global Philosophy. The proposed module serves as a compulsory component of the MA in Global Philosophy programme, insofar as it provides students with a series of bespoke topic masterclasses and research and communications skills sessions that are designed to facilitate their writing a Master's level dissertation on global philosophy from an explicitly applied perspective. The first half of the weeks of study focuses on a series of masterclasses on matters pertaining to advanced research skills, communication literacies, and philosophies of praxis with members of the core academic team delivering the MA Global Philosophy programme. The second half of the weeks of study involves students individually presenting draft projects on one applied global philosophical theme/issue that is intimately connected to their respective MA dissertation. Each student will receive detailed and constructive critical feedback from their peers and from a member of the MA Global Philosophy core team. In this way, the module, crucially, serves as an environment for students to directly collaborate with each other, to provide peer-to-peer support, and develop networking skills in addition to refining their research skill proficiencies.

The aim of this module is to provide students with advanced knowledge of key thematic matters serving as the critical focus of global philosophy, a practice of philosophical engagement that aims to transcend Anglo-Euro-centric patterns and habits of thinking. Students will focus on topics such as race and the history of philosophy, modernity and coloniality, myth-making origin stories within philosophy as a discipline,and the challenge of doing comparative philosophy across linguistic and cultural borders. Students will also be introduced to two non-western philosophical traditions as a background to more advanced work on specific traditions in other modules within the programme. By the end of this module, students will have not just a sensitivity and detailed awareness of some key thematic matters related to the formation and identity of global philosophy and Philosophy as an academic discipline, but they will also be in a position to make active contributions to the interdisciplinary discourse advanced by practitioners of comparative philosophical inquiry.

Border logics are a significant technology of modernity, underpinning the creation of the nation state and the international political order, citizenship, trade, the social structures of public and private, intellectual disciplines, nature and culture, and identity formation to name but the most prominent forms. As such, borders have a strong association with practices of inclusion and exclusion, dividing populations, states, communities, and individuals and only granting value to that which is included within a given border. However, borders are not merely signs of division and rupture; they may equally be a ground for movement and crossing, transgression or exchange. Western Philosophy has tended to construct its disciplinary boundaries by excluding that which it deems to be “non-philosophical,” specifically those intellectual traditions that do not share its procedures and preoccupations. Global Philosophy on the other hand is an enterprise preoccupied with border crossing, of reaching across the differences that borders mark in order to achieve understanding, justice, and intellectual adequacy. It is a fundamentally open discourse which refuses the ethnocentric masking that Western Philosophy so often embodies. In this course we engage with a variety of border logics in order to frame the potential, possibilities and limits of Global Philosophy. Focusing on thinkers who engage with the border theories in a variety of disciplinary and regional contexts, we will argue for Global Philosophy as a mode of intervention and of a certain being towards the other that can contribute to challenging the logic of division and violence that characterizes the contemporary world.

This module is a practical guide for engaging research and ideas in real-world settings. ‘How to change things’ is focused on advocacy, communication and learning to see how organisations work and ideas gain traction. Students will learn how to present research to different audiences, including parliamentary lobbying, report writing and social media. How to effectively put complex research ideas into engaging words, graphics, presentations? How to ensure that ideas are fed to the right audiences? The module encourages students to make a positive difference in the world building on their educational experience at SOAS as a resource. Students will explore how anthropology can be used to positively influence opinion, ways of working, thinking and institutions.

The module aims to show in which ways trans and crip perspectives are relevant for scholarship and activism on gender and sexuality and foregrounds a critical perspective on racism, nationalism and colonialism in its overall approach. Moreover, it provides reflections on cultural and media studies methodologies, including how to deal with difficult/shocking content, trigger warnings, spectatorship, language use and questions of access/non-access to visual/audio material.

What makes a person worthy or unworthy of freedom? Who is entitled to justice? What do we mean by equality? Although understood and dealt with differently in different contexts, these questions have constituted, as they still do today, the central concerns and dilemmas in all past societies. Starting with different formulations of a ‘just society’ across time and space, this module explores historical contexts in which these magic yet elusive ideas took on new meanings and significance. Organized thematically, weekly reading assignments and discussions address such topics as revolution, emancipation, forms of free and unfree labour, decolonization, and gendered aspects of rights and obligations.

As a compulsory module in our MA programme, Reconfiguring Global History is designed to foster conversations about the way we understand the past, present and future of the planet, across disciplinary and departmental borders. It introduces students to ongoing debates and encourages their participation in these discussions. It is meant to provide a collegial and stimulating environment for students to develop their own ideas and projects. Readings will explore current themes and debates on areas such as gender, sexuality and the body, urban history, history of emotion, racial capitalism, oceanic history, environmental and climate history, and histories of colonialism and empire.

This course is an introductory module to environmental law that aims at giving students a solid and comprehensive foundation of key concepts of environmental law and a grounding in some of the most topical and foundational debates. These include the role of justice frameworks in relation to environmental law, as well as key debates in environmental legal regulation. The aim is to provide a platform from which to better appreciate some of the central tensions and dynamics in the study of environmental law generally. The course will introduce environmental law in its North-South context, in historical perspective, in a domestic, comparative and regional context. It will cover the context for environmental regulation, principles and regulatory techniques from a theoretical and practical perspective.

This course will interrogate a series of core concepts in contemporary political theory. Rather than treating theoretical concepts as purely abstract, they will be explored through a series of topics of global significance where we can see the concepts at work. We will cover areas such as the climate crisis, structural racism, repressive use of state power, and interventionism. Through these explorations we will come to a better understanding of what is at stake in theoretical concepts such as sovereignty, rights, justice, and democracy. These reflections are couched in a larger consideration of how political theory may contribute to a liberatory politics, and how we reflect our role as political theorists. This module provides students an opportunity to engage systematically with key normative concepts and their valences in the World.

The Module presents a critical analysis of Artificial Intelligence with a particular emphasis on its implication for human security. It connects current research into the ethics of AI, to comparative philosophies including the socio-economic theories of the Frankfurt School and their emphasis on the perils of modern forms of production for human existence and the threat of “perfectionism” in capitalist societies. In addition, the course will consider the “techno-politics” of Paul Virilio and the critical approaches of Iranian philosophers such as Jamal Al-e Ahmad.

The aim of this module is to provide students with an engaging critical treatment of the concept of reason and its relationship to modernity, postmodernity, and transmodernity. Students will focus on whether reason is inherently in the business of domination, marginalisation, and erasure of difference. Transmodern epistemologies, such as Enrique Dussel's notion of pluriversal thinking, Aníbal Quijano's notion of de-linking from coloniality/modernity, and Walter Mignolo's concept of epistemic disobedience, will take centre-stage. This module, crucially, philosophises about reason from a range of critical social theoretic perspectives to equip students with an array of sophisticated and discursive tools for making sense of a key concept of interest to a significant range of global philosophical traditions.

This module focuses on aspects of the intellectual history of the medieval Islamic world, above all the history of philosophy and systematic theology. It will examine various thinkers and schools of thought of the classical and post-classical periods, including Aristotelianism, Mu‘tazilism and Ash‘arism, and will introduce key concepts, problems and debates, particularly in metaphysics, natural philosophy, epistemology, ethics and anthropology. These topics will be approached analytically, situated and interpreted within their broader contexts, and read through representative primary texts in translation. Attention will be given to contemporary scholarly methodologies and debates in the field.

This module outlines the development of African Philosophy in the 20th century, a discourse that hinges on the following questions: does philosophy exist in Africa? What are the specific qualities that distinguish it from Western philosophy? We will survey the trends in African philosophical thought classified under the rubrics of ethnophilosophy", "nationalist-ideological philosophy", "sage philosophy", and "professional philosophy", and discuss specific concepts with philosophical reference or resonance, such as race, time, but also development or art. Several classes will be devoted to influential contemporary philosophers, in particular Paulin Hountondji, Kwame Anthony Appiah, V.-Y. Mudimbe, Henry Odera Oruka, and Kwasi Wiredu."

This is a thematic course on one aspect of the Buddhist tradition in East Asia, mainly China and Japan. The subject of the course may be different every year. The first topic to be analysed will be the esoteric tradition (mi-jao/mikkyo). In the following years other major systems of Buddhist thought, such as the Tiantai/Tendai and the Pure Land traditions, will be explored. The course will address the history of the selected tradition, its specific doctrinal tenets, its textual corpus and its major deities, and the forms of worship that characterize it. Attention will be devoted to the influence that the selected form of Buddhism exerted in the formation of the culture of China and Japan (with more emphasis given to Japan).

This module will offer a main narrative of Taoism as a recognisable tradition of religious ideas and practices throughout the history of China.

This module examines the relationship between philosophical thought and religious practice. It is often assumed, without due interrogation, that philosophical insight springs from religious experience, that religion possesses the capacity to construe cognitive gateways through which philosophical understanding emerges. Thus, on the one hand, the module seeks to establish the soteriological dynamics that shape the processes leading to philosophical insight. On the other hand, it explores the ways in which philosophical systems shaped religions practice. These two areas of investigation focus on the experience of the individual. Third, the module maps the interconnections between communal religious practice in ritual and philosophical theory. It sets out the processes and stages through which philosophical structures emerge as a result of collective religions experience.

This module will trace the development of Jewish thought from its Middle Eastern origins in antiquity to the Westernisation and Europeanisation of Judaism in the 19th century, as the consequence of the philosophical Enlightenment and Jewish Emancipation. Jewish thought can be understood properly only within its respective historical, political, and cultural contexts. Starting with the Torah/Hebrew Bible as the very basis of Judaism, subsequent sessions will explore Jewish thinkers' encounters with Hellenism (Philo of Alexandria), Roman imperialism (rabbis), Islam (Maimonides), European Enlightenment philosophy (Moses Mendelssohn), Psychoanalysis (Freud), Existentialism (Rosenzweig, Buber, and Soloveitchik), Marxism (Levinas), and Postmodernism. The module will familiarize students with an intellectual tradition that developed mostly outside of the western orbit until a hundred years ago, and explore the changes brought about by assimilation to western European culture.

Simulation theory- the idea that we are living in an illusory, simulated world has gained popularity in recent times with the rise of VR headsets, online gaming, digital technology and advanced AI systems. Films such as the Matrix, sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick and entrepreneur Elon Musk have all popularised the idea that we are all living in a computer simulation. This module explores the social, ethical and philosophical contexts of such ideas and seeks to complicate our understanding of simulation theory by examining similar claims and thought experiments made within various philosophical traditions, but with a particular focus on ancient Indian systems of thought. From Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi wondering if he might be a a butterlfy dreaming he is a man, to entire philosophical schools such as Advaita Vedanta, Madhyamaka and Yogacara Buddhism, the claim has been made that the world that we perceive is in fact some sort of illusion (maya). Indian traditions engaged in a lively and complex philosophical debate about the status of the world, the nature of truth, perception, ethical behaviour and the role of meditative/yogic practice in the light of such claims. This module introduces students to the depth and richness of these ancient debates and considers how they might complicate and enrich both the possibilities and the critique of modern forms of simulation theory and related philosophies such as panpsychism and panentheism.