Philosophy Degree

andrew369

Hey guys I am in 6th year at the moment and am very interested in taking philosophy. Trinity seems to be the only college which does it as a single honours degree and would be great if anyone can give some feedback on it.

srsly78

Obligatory joke about unemployment.

Try Natural Philosophy instead, it's hard and stuff tho -> http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/official/Prospectus/TPSummary.html.

andrew369

srsly78 wrote: »

Obligatory joke about unemployment.

Try Natural Philosophy instead, it's hard and stuff tho -> http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/official/Prospectus/TPSummary.html.

Thanks for the suggestion but I have no interest in the physics/maths ends of things.

Anita Blow

You should consider PPES as it will give you a background in Political Science, Sociology and Economics also

Darkglasses

I didn't do it myself (I did Single-honours Religion and Theology), but a couple of my friends did it as part of a TSM. It sounded ok but not great, I think the massive size of the class isn't really conducive to the right atmosphere among the students.

andrew369

Darkglasses wrote: »

I didn't do it myself (I did Single-honours Religion and Theology), but a couple of my friends did it as part of a TSM. It sounded ok but not great, I think the massive size of the class isn't really conducive to the right atmosphere among the students.

The website says that the class size is only around 20 for the single honour. Any idea what sort of class size it is including the TSMs and the people on the PPES?

Carvin

andrew369 wrote: »

The website says that the class size is only around 20 for the single honour. Any idea what sort of class size it is including the TSMs and the people on the PPES?

The Single Honors class will usually have about 10-16 people in it. The small classes give you a lot of personal contact with the lectures so the posts here about class sizes couldn't be anymore wrong.

Half of the modules will be in class this size.
The other half will be in a class of about 40-50. (which is fine anyway)
There's also tutorials each week for discussion anyway.

Doing it as a TSM or PPES limits the amount of philosophy modules you'd take by half.

I think the course itself is pretty good and wide reaching if you're interested in philosophy.

Had you any particular questions about it?

andrew369

Hey Carvin thanks for the reply. I was just interested in the pretty general stuff, amount of lecture hours, work loads etc. Also if you find the course to be diverse enough, I would like to get a broad sense of a lot of theories. I was looking at a course in NUIM but found it was a little heavily focused on medieval/Renaissance thought, would be far more interested in more a general view including more modernist ideas, existentialism, humanism, nihilism. Would be great to know if the course helped with writing ability aswell. Thanks again.

Carvin

andrew369 wrote: »

Hey Carvin thanks for the reply. I was just interested in the pretty general stuff, amount of lecture hours, work loads etc. Also if you find the course to be diverse enough, I would like to get a broad sense of a lot of theories. I was looking at a course in NUIM but found it was a little heavily focused on medieval/Renaissance thought, would be far more interested in more a general view including more modernist ideas, existentialism, humanism, nihilism. Would be great to know if the course helped with writing ability aswell. Thanks again.

Lectures hours are around 10 a week for Single Honors. Light hours but there's quite a lot of reading. The work load isn't too heavy since deadlines come in groups. Mostly essays with exams at the end of the year. In 2nd year there's a logic module with constant assessment.
Really the work is whatever you chose to put in. The more you do, the more you get out of it.

The course is pretty broad. One module offers an overall look at the history of philosophy starting with Ancient Greece and all the way through to 20th century.
The rest are based on taking different areas of philosophy (ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, language etc).
Its quite varied as there's a lot of contemporary analytic and continental modules as well as historical and eastern philosophy.

I think it does help with writing as well since most of the assessment is via essays.
Hope this helps.

andrew369

Carvin wrote: »

Lectures hours are around 10 a week for Single Honors. Light hours but there's quite a lot of reading. The work load isn't too heavy since deadlines come in groups. Mostly essays with exams at the end of the year. In 2nd year there's a logic module with constant assessment.
Really the work is whatever you chose to put in. The more you do, the more you get out of it.

The course is pretty broad. One module offers an overall look at the history of philosophy starting with Ancient Greece and all the way through to 20th century.
The rest are based on taking different areas of philosophy (ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, language etc).
Its quite varied as there's a lot of contemporary analytic and continental modules as well as historical and eastern philosophy.

I think it does help with writing as well since most of the assessment is via essays.
Hope this helps.

Thanks again than helps a lot. Will probably put it down near the top of the CAO now. Sounds great that its only 10 hours a week, would give a lot of time for societies and clubs. You wouldn't happen to be in the Phil or Hist by any chance?

Carvin

andrew369 wrote: »

Thanks again than helps a lot. Will probably put it down near the top of the CAO now. Sounds great that its only 10 hours a week, would give a lot of time for societies and clubs. You wouldn't happen to be in the Phil or Hist by any chance?

Yeah the hours are usually spaced out nicely so it encourages you to actually go to socs.
I'm a member of both but not that active in either.
I'm mainly in the Metaphyzz which is the Philosophy society.

andrew369

Carvin wrote: »

Yeah the hours are usually spaced out nicely so it encourages you to actually go to socs.
I'm a member of both but not that active in either.
I'm mainly in the Metaphyzz which is the Philosophy society.

Oh OK, I think I glanced over that one on a web page somewhere. What sort of activities/events would it hold?

Carvin

andrew369 wrote: »

Oh OK, I think I glanced over that one on a web page somewhere. What sort of activities/events would it hold?

We hold meetings every week that usually involve inviting a guest philosopher over to speak. They deliver a paper and then answer questions over free wine and then there's a trip to the pub.
We also have a discussion group and movie nights and things.
Our events are usually up on this site:
http://metafizz.csc.tcdlife.ie/index.html

andrew369

Carvin wrote: »

We hold meetings every week that usually involve inviting a guest philosopher over to speak. They deliver a paper and then answer questions over free wine and then there's a trip to the pub.
We also have a discussion group and movie nights and things.
Our events are usually up on this site:
http://metafizz.csc.tcdlife.ie/index.html

Sounds awesome . Thanks a lot again, may see you there next year, if I am able to get into the course lol.

Histie

I'm a third year single honours student in Trinity.

If existentialism/humanism/nihilism, etc., is your thing then the best advice I could give is to avoid Trinity like the plague. Those are areas associated more with the Continental tradition of Philosophy (people like Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, et al). It is true that there are some courses in Continental in Trinity, but it is heavily dominated by the analytic tradition, and because Continental Philosophy is quite difficult with lots of interconnected areas I'd even question how much you'd get out of the Continental courses Trinity does run. You would probably prefer the Continental/Analytic balance in UCD.

You are strictly speaking right that only Trinity offers Philosophy as a single honours degree because if you just do a Philosophy degree in UCD in first year you have to take modules in other subjects, but it would still just say "Philosophy" on your degree cert, i.e., it's not the same as a dual-honours degree, so UCD offers what's in practice very similar to a single honours degree. They also have a Philosophy department about twice the size of Trinity's! Unfortunately the small size of Trinity's Department seriously curtails your choices in the later years in terms of what's available (if you're a single honours student, you have no choice whatsoever in the first two years); for example, for this year I had to choose six modules out of just eight.

But don't just take my word for any of this. Go to http://www.tcd.ie/Philosophy/teaching/courses.php for courses, and you'll be able to find similar details on UCD's website. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but when thinking about it just bear in mind that while Trinity is great, don't let a College's history or overall reputation overwhelm you in your comparison of different courses when taking into account what you want from the course; you'll get over being a Trinity student and all that soon enough, but you'll have to plough on with the course for four years!

andrew369

Hey Histie thanks for the reply. It is true that I am leaning heavily towards the Continental side of things, people like Sartre and Heidegger are actually two of the main writers who got me into philosophy in the first place. I have checked the UCD module list also and it seems far more interesting (to me at least) than the Trinity or NUIM courses, although I am bit stuck on how I would get to UCD. It is a very awkward commute. I'm not going to pretend I really know enough about philosophy at this stage to write something off just because the course is more analytic. I may prefer analytic more so if I read into it more. Are you happy yourself that you chose the course in Trinity or in hindsight would you have gone for something else?

Histie

Whether or not it would have been better to apply to UCD isn't really something I worry about as it's in the past and there are undoubtedly benefits to Trinity other than the course that you would not have to the same extent in UCD. Also, I would be more analytically-inclined, so it's probably less of an issue for me.

However, as I obviously know more about Philosophy than I would have when applying I can recognise advantages to UCD's course structure over Trinity's even aside from the Continental/Analytic thing, i.e., Trinity's course is more "bitty" whereas a cursory look at UCD's would appear to suggest that they kind of tie topics together in a more skilful way. Because Philosophy isn't as neat a subject as Mathematics or something like that where you have a clear progression from arithmetic to algebra, etc., how the teaching is structured can matter. For example, last year we studied Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" before the next year studying Husserl and Heidegger, upon whose ideas Sartre builds! The Freshman courses have been reformed somewhat and are now better than they were when I was a Freshman, but still it leaves a lot to be desired.


Anyway, perhaps you should try to look in more depth at the different courses and if you have time maybe check out a bit of analytic philosophy. If you haven't read Bertrand Russell's "Problems of Philosophy" it would be a good example of issues analytic philosophy deals with, and it's fairly short. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions when you're thinking about it.