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Module PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Module code: PH218
Credits: 5
Semester: 2
Department: PHILOSOPHY
International: Yes
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Philosophical Anthropology: Reflections on the Significance of Life and Death.

This module examines some central philosophers’ reflections on the meaning of the human being, life, death and immortality that have unfolded down through the ages, from Plato’s defence of the immortality of the soul, to Heidegger’s analysis of the human being as a ‘being-towards-death’ in Being and Time. It begins by examining Plato’s arguments for the immortality of the human soul after death of the body in the Phaedo. It then looks at Plato’s influences on Augustine’s reflections on the human being’s natural desire for eternal happiness, God and immortality in the Confessions, before turning attention to Descartes’s account of the human being as comprised of immaterial ‘thinking substance’ and material ‘extended substance’. The module draws to a close through an evaluation of the preceding discussion in light of the centrality that Heidegger accords to the awareness of one’s own finitude in defining what it is to be a human being in his analysis of Dasein in Being and Time. Finally, we deal with the question of whether a life defined by death is truly absurd, and address the importance of living through Camus’ discussion of suicide in the Myth of Sisyphus: ‘the one truly serious philosophical problem.’

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