Overview

The MA in Political Philosophy provides students with the opportunity to get to grips with some of the central and enduring questions of political philosophy. How ought we to live? What reasons can we give for being moral? How can people with different views on the good life live together without conflict? These are questions central to political life in the 21st century and the programme allows students to explore them with reference to great political philosophers past and present.

The core modules provide students with a working knowledge of contemporary political philosophers such as John Rawls, David Gauthier and Michael Walzer together with an investigation of the most important approaches to the history of political philosophy. A variety of option modules allow students to study issues, connected with toleration (free speech, pornography and racism), continental political philosophy, legal philosophy, political integrity and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Students also have the opportunity to write a 13-15,000 word dissertation on a topic of their choosing.

• Morrell Centre for Toleration

 

Structure

The MA consists of four taught modules plus a dissertation on a topic of the student's own choice. Students must take:

• Contemporary Political Philosophy
• Approaches to the History of Political Thought

In addition students must choose two option modules from the following list (options available will vary slightly from year to year):

• History of the Idea of Toleration
• Reason and Power in European Political Thought
• Contemporary Philosophy of Law
• Thomas Hobbes in Context (not running 2011/12)
• Contemporary Issues in Toleration
• Ethics and World Politics

The last component of the course is a 13-15,000 word dissertation on a subject of the student's choice.

Part-time

The MA in Political Philosophy may also be taken on a part-time basis over two years (24 months). Instead of taking two taught modules in the first two terms, as is the case with full-time students, part-time students will normally take one module per term over four terms (the first two terms of Years One and Two), and will then spend the rest of the time working on their dissertation, which must be submitted by the beginning of September of Year Two.

Assessment

For both full-time and part-time students, the four taught modules are assessed by 4,000 word essays (one for each module). Taken together, the essays account for 50% of the final mark; the dissertation, which should not exceed 15,000 words, accounts for the remaining 50% of the final mark.

Essays are submitted at the beginning of the term following that in which the module was taken.

Students

Simon Taylor

Simon Taylor’s first degree was in History and Politics. In 2006 he successfully applied for an AHRC award to study on the MA in Political Philosophy at York. He is currently studying for a PhD at Columbia University in New York.

“Political philosophy and the history of political thought were the topics which most engaged me throughout my undergraduate degree, and I relished the opportunity to explore these issues in greater depth during the MA.

“The most attractive aspect of the MA was the wide and varied choice of courses. This afforded me the opportunity to pursue my interests in both historical and contemporary political thought. In addition, the Political Philosophy Group provides a genuinely welcoming and inclusive atmosphere within which to discuss ideas.

“I have recently begun a fully-funded PhD at Columbia University, and I feel certain that the support I received throughout the MA - both personally and intellectually - has been invaluable in helping to prepare me for this further study.”

Staff

 

Dr Alex Bavister-Gould

I am a contemporary political theorist.

After attending the University of York for my BA in Politics and MA in Political Philosophy (The Idea of Toleration), I stayed to complete my doctoral thesis (under the supervision of Professor Sue Mendus) on "The Significance of Conceptions of Conflict in Contemporary Political Philosophy". Since then I have been a lecturer and teaching fellow in the department, and taught a range of courses including Contemporary Political Philosophy, The History of Political Thought, Introduction to Political Theory and Politics, Power and Society.

Professor Susan Mendus

Since 1985 I have been a member of the Morrell Studies in Toleration Programme at York and have published a number of books and articles on the topic of toleration.

More recently, I have been working on problems of impartiality and my book Impartiality in Moral and Political Philosophy was published by Oxford University Press in 2002.

My current research focuses on two themes: political integrity; and religious belief and liberal political theory. I am currently completing a book on political integrity, in which I address the age-old question of whether politicians can be morally good. My work on religious belief and liberalism is at an early stage, but I am interested in the way in which modern liberal political theory conceptualises religious difference and whether it has an adequate understanding of religiously motivated acts of violence.

Much of my writing is informed by literature, and I am intrigued by the way in which fictional writings (especially novels and plays) can enrich our understanding of political problems.

Professor Matt Matravers

My first experience of political philosophy was Book One of Plato's Republic, and from that moment I was hooked.

That happened in the first week of my undergraduate career at LSE. By my second year, I knew not only that I wanted to pursue political philosophy, but also that what I wanted to study was the problem of freedom and responsibility.

Oddly, although I had 'done' Rawls's A Theory of Justice, I was not then much interested in distributive justice. All that changed when I did my PhD. The topic - true to my interest in how, and in what ways, people can be held responsible - was the justification of punishment. What I noticed was that whilst there was a massive amount of new literature on distributive justice, there was comparatively little connecting the advances made in that field with retributive justice. Once I started work on it, I got more interested in both fields and in many ways the difficulties and pay-offs of looking at these two areas together remains the guiding theme of what I do. My PhD turned into my first book, Justice and Punishment.

More recently, I have returned to my core interest in responsibility and the conditions in which it makes sense to praise, blame, reward, and penalise people for their actions or inactions. The result of that is a short book, Responsibility and Justice, which will be published by Polity late in 2006. As part of that work, I became fascinated by the problem of whether we can legitimately be held responsible for our personalities. That has led me to look at the issues of personality disorder and 'dangerousness'. The critical issue is what can a liberal state legitimately do with those who are not 'mad', but who are (believed to be) dangerous. Looking into this has led me to research in psychiatry and law.

What connects all this with toleration is, I believe, an interest in (some of) those at the margin of liberal society such as criminal offenders and those classified as dangerous.

Dr Martin O'Neill

I work on a number of topics in moral and political philosophy.

I am especially interested in freedom and responsibility, equality and social justice, and issues at the intersection of political philosophy and public policy.

Before coming to York in January 2010, I was Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy, based in the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester (2007-09). Before that, I was Research Fellow in Philosophy and Politics at St John’s College, University of Cambridge (2004-07), and Director of Studies in Philosophy at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I hold a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and a B.Phil. in Philosophy, both from Balliol College, University of Oxford. I wrote my Ph.D dissertaton, on “Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility”, under the supervision of T.M. Scanlon and Derek Parfit, in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University.

Dr Jon Parkin

Trained as a historian, my interest in political philosophy emerged from a fascination with the relationship between ideas and practical politics in early modern Europe.

My particular interest is in the various ways that the arguments of thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes found their way into everyday politics and culture. My research over the last few years has focused upon the impact of the work of Thomas Hobbes, perhaps the greatest political philosopher to write in the English language. My first book, Science, Religion and Politics and Restoration England (1999), looked at the effects of Hobbes's works through the writings of one his critics, the Anglican natural law theorist Richard Cumberland (whose Treatise of the Laws of Nature I edited for Liberty Fund in 2005). This case-study formed the prelude to a much larger treatment of Hobbes's early reception in England, Taming the Leviathan, recently published by Cambridge University Press, in which I examine the sometimes surprising ways in which Hobbes's work influenced late seventeenth century political theory and popular culture.

In addition to my historical work, my interest in reading and reception has prompted me to reconsider methodological issues connected to the study of the history of political thought. I am planning to explore this area in a new monograph arising out of my teaching on the MA module Approaches to the History of Political Thought. The idea is to investigate the contrasting approaches of writers such as RG Collingwood, Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss and Quentin Skinner, with a view to considering the political and philosophical implications of their methodological positions.

As a member of the political philosophy group at York I am also involved in the Morrell Studies in Toleration programme. My work on Cumberland and Hobbes considered the nature and role of religious toleration in Restoration England, and together with Tim Stanton I recently organised a British Academy conference on Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment and the 2007 Morrell Conference on Censorship and Self-Censorship.

Dr Tim Stanton

I completed my doctorate on 'John Locke, Edward Stillingfleet and Toleration' in 2003, under the supervision of Dr Ian Harris.

My research continues to centre on (i) the development and character of Locke's theory of toleration and its relation to his wider thought. It has led to an interest in (ii) its implications for contemporary theories of toleration and the views of politics to which they are connected. These interests embody larger interests still, in (iii) historiography and methodological questions arising out of the study of texts and in (iv) understanding the varieties of moral and political reasoning that proliferate in modernity.

My teaching commitments reflect these interests: I lecture on the writings of Michael Oakeshott in the first year module 'Great Political Texts' and teach History of Political Thought, Contemporary Issues in Toleration, and some Contemporary Political Philosophy. I also convene the Morrell Political Theory Workshop, which is open to MA and doctoral students in the Department of Politics.

Dr Kerri Woods

I work mostly in contemporary political philosophy, in particular on human rights theory, environmental ethics, and global justice.

I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Departmnet of Politics from 2008-2011. Before coming here, I did my PhD at the University of Glasgow and taught political theory there, and political theory and philosophy at the University of Stirling. I also have interests in feminism and in sentiment.

 

Scholarships

Annual Fund scholarships are made possible by the generous donations of University of York Alumni. Annual Fund Scholarships for 2011/12 offer a stipend of £4500 for one year of full time registration on a Masters programme.