At the time of my last entry, we’d only just finished exam season but Teaching Block 2 is now well under way. I myself am taking three units: ‘Death, Dying and Disease’, ’Space, Time and Matter’ and ‘Philosophy of Mathematics’.
Death, Dying and Disease has been a lot of people’s favourite unit so far. Whilst the ability to provide countless morbid jokes has been much appreciated (Person A: “What have you got planned for the rest of the day?”, Person B: “Death.”, Person A: “…”), the unit has also been meaningful on a much deeper level. Topics range from ‘What is death?’ to ‘Is death bad?’ to ‘How should we distribute a finite amount of healthcare resources?’. In other units, I’ve come to the end of a seminar believing that free-will is an illusion or that time isn’t real and yet been quite happy to get on with the rest of my day. In the death unit, however, it’s hard not to feel personally affected in at least some way by the discussion.
When I first arrived at university we all received a welcome email from our Head of Department, Professor Havi Carel, which contained a similar thought. The email differentiated Philosophy from other subjects like Chemistry or Economics on the grounds that you would not only learn a whole host of highly valuable and useful skills, but that the subject would also force you to radically revise, or at the very least reflect very deeply upon, the way that you live the rest of your life. If you don’t end up becoming a professional chemist, you can soon forget about electrons and the periodic table. On the other hand, if you don’t end up becoming a professional philosopher you will still inevitably feel the impact of what you study here for years to come.
It’s not all morbid though. ‘Space, Time and Matter’ is a historical guide through the development of science and metaphysics. So far, we’ve travelled from the Pre-Socratics up until Descartes, with Newton, Mach and many more still to come. ‘Philosophy of Maths’ is also providing much to think about. If you like maths, you’ll love this unit, but there’s also a few students in the class who didn’t have a great deal of mathematical background to begin with and who are enjoying it just as much. I think it’s always interesting how the units fit together in unexpected ways. Knowledge from one area of philosophy can often be applied to other seemingly unrelated topics and this week I managed to take ideas about infinity from ‘Philosophy of Mathematics’ into a discussion about immortality in ‘Death, Dying and Disease’.
I hope that helps give an idea of the kind of thing I’m getting up to in Philosophy this term. I look forward to being back in a month to update you all with what’s going on in spring in Bristol.
James 
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