Philosophy, Politics and Society study programme

For the elective course, you can choose a masterseminar in semester 1 or 2 outside of your specialisation, an internship or free elective courses at master level.

Master seminars

You can choose 2 out of the following 4 courses (each with a study load of 10 EC). The 4 courses are: Biopolitics, Polical Ecology, Science, Policy and Values and Climate Ethics.

Biopolitics

In the wake of Foucault’s research on power, biopolitics can be described as the set of discourses, policies, practices, and techniques adopted by political institutions to govern and categorize the biological aspects of human populations. This course is an advanced introduction to the main philosophical theories and conceptions of biopolitics. You will familiarize yourself with the most influential authors (such as Foucault, Agamben, Esposito), concepts (e.g., bare life, biopower, immunity), and approaches that have defined biopolitical studies over the last decades. The course will provide you with a historico-philosophical toolbox that will allow you to discuss urgent political and social issues (such as the relationship between science and power structures, the intersection of biological concepts and political discourse, the balance between security and freedom during pandemic emergencies) from a biopolitical point of view.

Political Ecology

Some of the greatest challenges faced by humanity lie at the crossroads of science policy, political action, and ecological awareness. In recent decades, an increasing number of philosophers have started to argue that we cannot meet these challenges as long as we persist in thinking about the world in terms of two separate domains called Nature and Culture.

In this course, we will study the work of Bruno Latour, one of the most influential figures among these thinkers. We will pay special attention to (1) Latour’s views on why the nature-culture divide is so problematic, (2) his alternative conception of the world in terms of heterogeneous ‘actors’ that combine into dynamic networks, and (3) the practical redefinition of politics as ‘political ecology’ that he hopes to bring about with his philosophy.

Science, Policy & Values

Many people believe that science aims at objectivity in the sense of being value-neutral: good science focuses on gathering and interpreting evidence independently from any moral, social or political preferences on the part of the scientist. This also makes sure that science can provide impartial policy advise when alternative decision options (about e.g., discrimination, emission rates or COVID-19 measures) have to be evaluated. But there’s a big question whether such value-neutrality is really achievable or even desirable as an ideal. Can we really suppose that individual scientists or even groups of scientists can fully bracket their values when conducting their scientific research? And is it even desirable that scientists do this if it is obvious that even considering a certain hypothesis has large societal consequences? In this seminar we will discuss questions such as these in light of Heather Douglas’ thought-provoking book Science, Policy & the Value-Free Ideal. Students are expected to critically examine the ideas in this book with the help of additional literature, give presentations in which they report on their findings, and write a paper in which they thoroughly argue for a thesis related to the course.

Climate Ethics

Climate change has been called a ‘perfect moral storm’, since it involves the convergence of a set of global, intergenerational and theoretical problems. In this course, we will zoom in on various of the ethical problems posed by climate change.

1. When we burn fossil fuels today this will primarily affect future generations. Although most people hold the moral intuition that we have duties towards those who are as yet unborn, it proves to be remarkably problematic to provide a theoretical foundation for such intuitions. We will discuss how various moral theories break down in the intergenerational context.
2. Climate change will not only affect humans, but non-human nature as well. Do we have duties towards other sentient species? Or do we even have duties towards all life forms? What is the characteristic that makes life morally considerable?
3. Climate change poses a social dilemma on a global scale. What are our individual duties to reduce our impacts? What are our collective duties? When we agree that we ought to reduce our climate emissions, what then is a fair allocation of responsibilities and costs between the various countries? Are countries responsible for past emissions, i.e. do they have a carbon debt?