Master of Arts in Philosophy
Hybrid
Courses
Common Core
PHI596Philosophy Project
3 credits
This training activity is intended as a seminar whose ultimate goal is to have the students devise a research project in the field of philosophy. The seminar is linked to all the teachings and especially to social science research methodology. Students are supported during the course, to the realization of the first steps in the construction of their research projects. The main object assigned to this seminar is to build a research project, which will be finalized in the Dissertation.
After attending the seminar, the students are required to submit a final written project (20 typescript pages). Epistemology forms part of the course. This is a study of the concepts and methods of the various currents of modern epistemology, which originated in the early ”epistemological breaks" that separate the pre-scientific period of the classical rational science and highlight their implications in the renovation of the statuses of science, epistemology and the history of science.
MTR575Research Methodology in Humanities
3 credits
The course aims to introduce a working method, in order to conduct scientific research. It is mainly about conducting research required at the level of Master’s thesis and implementing the different stages of scientific research, ranging from the position of the problem until the drafting and final presentation of the research. Furthermore, regarding a research topic, the course looks at how to select a problematic and devise relevant hypotheses, choose an appropriate technique and then apply it. Students will learn how to communicate the results of research in the form of a clear, rigorous and scientific text. The purpose of this course is to master the design, drafting and submission of the dissertation.
Specialization
PHI683Philosophical Approaches to Phenomena - Limit of Existence
3 credits
The studies conducted in the framework of the rotating courses related to a specific thematic focus of phenomenology, are located in the most ample philosophical horizon of contemporary phenomenology. Each issue relating thereto is treated each year according to the choice of the researcher, the Professor in charge of the course. This main axis, around which rotate the problems of various courses, focuses on the study of phenomenalimit of existence. They specifically refer to the primordial events of life and affective tonalities fundamental to existence, which manifest an excess of sense and experience, overwhelming any representation made by a reflexive and intentional consciousness. Of these borderline phenomena revealing "phenomenality saturated and saturating" we quote: God, the world of life, transcendental birth, death, anguish, transcendental emotions, living flesh, live temporality and eternity, suffering, love, the experience of the other or the ethical paradox as well as the esthetic truth.
PHI671Philosophy and Communication
3 credits
The course aims to deepen the principal mutations in the philosophy of communication from the twentieth century and to develop critical reflection of the media. It covers two areas. Firstly, it interrogates the meaning of this new "paradigm" of contemporary philosophers who revisit the problem of truth in a postmetaphysical context (JeanMarc Ferry). Hence the relationship of this new philosophy to analytical philosophy. Secondly, it studies the issue of communication and, more precisely, contemporary communication, through its various aspects, namely communication and relationship, communication and intersubjectivity, philosophy media, the Internet and new mass media. It places the media in contemporary culture, hermeneutical theory and the main methodological tools, criticism of cultural industries and reflexive appropriation of symbolic imagery, etc.
PHI515Philosophy and Intercultural Dialogue
3 credits
This course focuses on a revisit of the issue of dialogical philosophy and its impact on the intercultural encounter and reciprocity. Its purpose is to show that no cultural entity can monopolize the space of the historical manifestation of the truth. It covers five specific areas: an attempt to define interculturalism in the era of global pluralism; a focused discussion on the controversial thesis of the clash of civilizations; a tight confrontation between the East and the West in what it conveys as essential and indispensable in terms of constitutive elements, intrinsic aspirations and repressed potentialities; a trial of the philosophical foundation of the concept of dialogue, with preferential reference to the thought of Martin Buber; an open debate on three controversial topics of multiculturalism, namely the universality of human rights, global citizenship and Eurocentrism. The basic philosophical presupposition that underlies the entire development of these areas is the realistic perception of pluralism of acts required to the critical analysis of reason, which assumes the meaning in its various interpretations.
PHI681Philosophy and Religion
3 credits
The course focuses on the study of the complex relationships between philosophy and religion. Considering philosophy as reflexive, essentially rational attitude, and religion as a belief in the sacred and the supernatural, which can only be grasped by privileged people and appropriate methods, it releases the essential characteristics that marked the historical relations between the two religious and philosophical currents, thereby allowing them to define a position of principle regarding their mutual relations. Three components underpin this course. The first analyzes the fundamental aspects of philosophy, as human work and relative truth. The second explains the features of religion, revealed as the work of God and absolute truth. The third examines the reciprocal relationship between these two areas, and identifies the principled position of philosophers and theologians faced with the problems raised by the binomial Faith and Reason.
PHI516Philosophy of Art
3 credits
The purpose of this course is a reflection on art and the values of beauty. Firstly, it studies the concept of the autonomy of art according to Kant, based on the criteria of beauty. Secondly, it deepens the concept of heteronomy of art, unique to the School of the German Romantics Schlegel, Novalis, Tieck, etc. Thirdly, it analyzes the dual aspect of autonomy and heteronomy of art in Schiller‘s concept.
PHI517Philosophy of Love
3 credits
The purpose of the course is to delimit the meaning of the concept of love which finds its roots in the etymology of the word “philosophy” where the prefix “philein” is translated as love. It is divided into three parts. The first examines the relationship between the two terms “philein” and “philos”. The second examines the concept of love through relational philosophy; showing that if the experience of love is precisely one of the communication of consciousness, with the idea (Plato) that of the triad Eros Philia Agape, revealing the problem of communication of consciousness. The third component establishes a critical analysis of the highlights of the metamorphosis of love in its dialectical relation to the forms of art.
PHI682Political Philosophy Problems
3 credits
How to orient ourselves in the political world? Several specific courses regarding the various problems of political philosophy answer this question over more than one plan. A reasoned array of themes relevant to modern and contemporary political philosophy, are offered every year, alternately by professors and specialists in political philosophy. Each develops, according to their competencies, a problematic to look at with their students, covering: contractual and contractual theories, pure theory of law, pure law, natural law and positive law, legitimacy and legality, distributive and commutative justice, power and abuse of power, state and revolution, a phenomenological conception of state, etc.
PHI514Will to Power Philosophy
3 credits
The study of the will in philosophy focuses on the main question: To what extent is volition a free act? If the will expresses a complex dynamism that translates a pluralistic complicity between one or more desires or needs with any other discernment, to reach a decision, the transition to the act or the gratification of the desire is not always the product of a pure rationalization. Indeed, the study of philosophical texts of the postidealistic period of Schopenhauer to Ricoeur, through Nietzsche and Freud, marks out the itinerary of a volition, which is affirmed by excess. So first, we ask the question of the historical development of wanting and not wanting, since antiquity to the present day, focusing on the analysis of the mystical and psychological approach of the term. Secondly, we deepen the philosophical contributions of the Romantics and contemporary philosophers concerning volition as a free and premeditated act. Thirdly, we examine the issue of will, as it has been treated by any philosopher of modern and contemporary times.
Capstone
Mission
The principal mission of the Master's program in philosophy is to prepare students for careers in the second cycle of secondary and higher education, and research in philosophy. The program provides them with philosophical competencies, which act in the transformations and thoughts of science, politics, religion and arts.
Program Educational Objectives
1. Graduates will be able to become secondary school teachers within educational establishments.
2. Graduates will be able to have careers as assistant professors in universities and as budding researchers in the research laboratories of philosophy.
3. Graduates will be able to make careers in the various fields of journalism, in areas of cultural and religious mediation, in institutions and national, international political and ethical organizations, and in the field of diplomatic missions.
4. Graduates will demonstrate all the skills necessary to pursue a Doctoral course and excel in research.
Program Outcomes
a. Students will adopt an appropriate rigorous working method, which combines all technological, ethical, and epistemological principles, and put into practice the drafting of preparatory work, the purpose of which justifies the realization of a preproject in philosophy.
b. Analyze the basic principles of intercultural dialogue in its correlation with the dialogical will and highlight open debates on various controversial issues of interculturalism.
c. Correlate the main mutations of philosophy (will, art, communication) and develop critical thinking.
d. Address problems of political philosophy and assess the complex relationships between governance and societal change.
e. Deepen the phenomena limits of existence (God, transcendental birth, death etc.) in their correlative relationships and deduct, through the phenomenological method, their impact on the human experience.
f. Formulate the great questions of religion and clear the paradoxical relationship of the distinctive elements that separate and reconcile faith and reason.
g. Delimit the meaning of the concept of love, identify its ambiguities and show what stems from it as problems of conscience communication within the human experience.
h. Question the concept of art in its correlation with the values of beauty, and recognize the dual aspect of its autonomy and its heteronomy.