Diploma in Philosophy

Plato ranks as one of the most important thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition. This module introduces the student to some of the fundamental ideas that inform his works as well as guiding the student through some developments in his presentation of these ideas.

This course introduces some of the key elements in Aristotle's thought. It will consider, among other things, Aristotle on language, logic, “first philosophy” or “wisdom”, and effective choice and action. In the appendices, Aristotle on language and logic in the Organon, on nature in the Physics, on “first philosophy” or “wisdom” in the Metaphysics, and on effective choice and action in the Nichomachean Ethics will be considered.

Metaphysics is the study of things in their ultimate causes. As such, the specialty of metaphysics is that it seeks the final explanation or the ultimate causes of things precisely in so far as they are, in so far as they exist, or in so far as they are real. Aristotle called it “First Philosophy” or “Theology” since it leads to the first principle or the ultimate explanation of all things.

All human knowledge begins with sense experience but can terminate sometimes in the senses, or in the imagination or in the intellect alone . Accordingly we can distinguish between three levels of scientific knowledge corresponding to the three degrees of abstraction from matter which can be made by the intellect in its examination of reality.

The course aims to show that from its origins through the early efforts made by the earliest oriental thinkers before the era of ancient great Greek thinkers, philosophy has remained a branch of knowledge concerned with fundamental questions concerning existence, human values, language, knowledge and many other matters.

Etymologically, the word "Epistemology", from the Greek, means the science of knowledge. It is an investigation of knowledge and its problems. A synonymous term is Criteriology which again from the Greek means to distinguish or judge. It deals with testin g knowledge to find truth or detect error.

According to Gibelin in his Foreword to Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Freedom is the central theme of Kant’s philosophy. This course will introduce to Kant, centering on Freedom as a key concept to understand his philosophy, in the three spheres defined by the critical project: Metaphysics, Moral and Aesthetics.

Essential Questions of Philosophy in this very complete course about Being and Knowing.

This course will take students through ethical discourse from the time of Plato to Aristotle, then to Kant and utilitarians. The principal aim of this course is to make students aware of the different traditions or approaches to ethics. Students can then be able to compare some of the most influential ethical theorists in human history.