Liberal Arts – what is it and why study it? Part I
January 4, 2018
Liberal Arts degrees have expanded across universities in Britain over the last few years and their development reflects a growing sense that it is by knowledge across a range of disciplines that new ideas and perspectives can develop. The Liberal Arts degree at the University of Nottingham has been built to foster these links as …
Fare Well
June 23, 2015
Back in April there was a Twitter hashtag where you had to complete the sentence #Iamaphilosopherbecause. My contribution was “science cannot tell me what is a number, what is good, what is knowledge or what is causation. And I’ve kids to feed”. With that light-hearted ending, I was pretty surprised how much anger the tweet …
A postgraduate perspective on the Faculty of Arts
November 17, 2014
So it’s mid-November, and my first term as a postgrad Arts student (English Lit MA, if you’re wondering) is speeding by. I was lucky enough to study at UoN as an undergrad, so I had a heads up on Nottingham life, but it’s still been a big change. Thankfully, a positive one! I’m doing more …
Classics
June 22, 2014
This week I had cause to look again at Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, a book from which I used to teach but had not read for around 20 years. Wanting to lay hands on a copy in the middle of town, I went along to the book shop in the near certain knowledge that …
Immersion and Self-Consciousness
June 15, 2014
Schopenhauer claimed that the function of art was to release the individual from their constant restless striving. We have selfish desires that we look to satisfy, desires which seem beyond our control and not always admirable. But in aesthetic contemplation we can lose our sense of self if we become immersed in the object and …
Football is for Losers
June 11, 2014
The day before my first birthday, England won the World Cup. England’s greatest footballing triumph passed me by. I grew up never seeing them as a World Cup team as they failed to qualify for the ’74 and ’78 finals. In 1982, I finally saw England kick their first ball in the tournament: and what …
The Seventies
June 7, 2014
If obliged to live my whole life perpetually in a single decade, I hope it would be the 1970s. Some think of it, with all its excesses, as the decade that taste forgot. But it was a time of extremes and never boring. Starting more or less with the first manned moon landing, there was …
The Art of Conversation
June 1, 2014
I’ve always had a funny relationship with conversation. I often want to be left alone, to get on with work, read, do the things I like to do, quietly in solitude, and a conversation stops me. Sometimes you can feel trapped in a conversation, finding it dull or uncomfortable, inane and a waste of time, …
If Just One Thing is Not Socially Constructed
May 24, 2014
What is Objective Truth anyway? What is Reality? Anyone who has defended a remotely realist philosophy will no doubt have faced a familiar challenge: it’s all a social construction. Take money. That couldn’t exist without a society giving it meaning, imbuing it with value. And God is surely socially constructed rather than a real being …
The Pain and Pleasure of Learning
May 18, 2014
There is a rather simplistic thought that every single action you perform, you do because it brings you pleasure. Even when you give to charity, the claim goes, it is purely because it gives you a personal thrill. No act is genuinely altruistic; all are ultimately selfish. It’s a simple, reductionist thesis of psychological egoism …
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