Cambridge University Reporter


Philosophy Tripos, 2007: Prescribed texts and subjects

The Faculty Board of Philosophy give notice that the following texts and subjects are prescribed for the Philosophy Tripos in 2007.

Part Ia

Paper 4.     Set texts
Plato, Meno.
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
J. S. Mill, On Liberty.

Part Ib

Paper 3.     Ethics
Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.

Paper 4.     History of ancient philosophy
Section A: Plato, The Republic (V 473 - VII 535)
Philosophy and power; knowledge and belief; Adeimantus's challenge (are philosophers useful or trustworthy?); education and the good; the line and the cave; mathematics and education.

Section B: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
Happiness (eudaimonia); the analysis of happiness (I, 1-7); happiness and fortune (I, 8-11); practical and intellectualist conceptions (X, 7-8).
The analysis of moral virtue and the distinction between virtue and continence (encrateia) (II-IV and VII, 1-10); moral character and responsibility; justice as a virtue (V); the nature of practical wisdom and the interdependence of practical wisdom and moral virtue (VI).
Acrasia (VII, 1-10).
Friendship: the varieties of friendship; self-love and egoism (VIII, 1-5; IX 4, 7-9).

Paper 5.     History of modern philosophy
Avicenna, On the Soul from the Kitab al-najat, translated in Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, ed. M. A. Khalidi (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, 2005), pp. 27-58.
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 75-76 ('On the Essence of the Soul', 'Of the Union of Soul and Body').
Descartes, Meditations on first philosophy.
Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and 'Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence', ed. H. G. Alexander (Manchester University Press).
Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I and Appendix.

Paper 7.     Political philosophy
Locke, Second Treatise chaps. 1-4, 7-11, and 18-19; Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia chaps 1-6.

Part II

Paper 1.     Metaphysics
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Candidates taking Paper 9 may not answer questions in this paper on Wittgenstein's Tractatus (which will be marked with an asterisk).

Paper 3.     Ethics
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Paper 4.     History of modern philosophy
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason to the end of the Transcendental Dialectic (A704, B732).
Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit Introduction, Consciousness, Self-consciousness (paragraphs 73-230); Hegel's Logic: being part of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences paragraphs 1-111; Introduction to Lectures on the Philosophy of History, as far as (but not including) The Geographical Basis of World History.
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, The Gay Science, The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil.

Paper 9.     Special subject specified by the Faculty Board
In 2007: Wittgenstein
Tractatus
Philosophical Investigations
On Certainty
Study of the following topic is also included: the development throughout Wittgenstein's work of his views on: mathematics; solipsism and the self; the nature of philosophy.
Candidates taking this paper are barred from answering questions on the Tractatus in the Metaphysics paper.

Paper 11.     Aesthetics
Plato, Ion, Symposium, and Republic (Books II, III, X).
Hume, 'On the Standard of Taste' in Essays, Moral, Political and Literary.