King's College London

We are accustomed to encountering ‘the sceptic’ as a hypothetical adversary to overcome. The ancient world, however, presents us with a rich variety of philosophers who lived their scepticism – advancing it as a viable and attractive way of life, and developing detailed systems and defences of their positions. Others attacked such sceptics and their scepticisms, and a lively debate raged. In this course, students explore these varieties of sceptical and anti-sceptical thought in the Pre-Socratic philosophers Xenophanes and Democritus, the towering Classical figures of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the Hellenistic schools of Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism and, finally, in the anti-sceptical treatises of Augustine and Al-Ghazali.

The course places anti-discrimination law in a broader context: theoretical justifications for the anti-discrimination principle are examined, and use is made of historical and social science material where appropriate. The course makes clear the assumptions which underlie traditional thinking concerning anti-discrimination law, and expose these to critical scrutiny. This task is especially important because of the recent expansion and consolidation of anti-discrimination law in Great Britain, as a result of the Human Rights Act 1998, the new anti-discrimination directives under Article 19 TFEU, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Equality Act 2010.

This course introduces students to the key texts, arguments, and controversies in European political thought from ancient Greece to the end of the 17th century. This is based on the close reading of classic and complex texts, situated in their broader intellectual and historical context. A single canonical thinker – such as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes or Locke – will typically be central to each week’s teaching, but these thinkers are read in relation to the political environments that shaped them and the debates in which they participated. Where possible these key thinkers are considered alongside the work of other thinkers as well as other relevant primary texts. Students explore the early development of key ideas and issues – such as kingship, natural rights’, republicanism, and the relationship between church and state – that have formed, and continue to form, the conceptual bedrock of Western social and political debate.