RPE Essay Prize

For the 2014 Competition - click HERE..

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Religion, Philosophy and Ethics Essay Competition 2013

First prize: a new iPad

Four Runners-up receive a £20 Amazon voucher

The Religion, Philosophy and Ethics (RPE) course at the University of Gloucestershire is launching the new RPE Essay Prize.

The competition is open to all those currently studying for any AS or A2-level examinations (or equivalent) in the UK. The first prize is a new iPad, and there will be four runners-up prizes of £20 Amazon vouchers.

Entries must be no longer than 1500 words including footnotes but excluding references and can take any form e.g. essay, dialogue, etc. All sources must be referenced.

The deadline for the 1500 word essay is 5pm on 31^st October 2013 and will be judged by RPE lecturers. The winner will be announced on the RPE Blog on 1^st December 2013

To enter please choose one of the titles below and email your entry to

dwebster@glos.ac.uk (please note you may only submit one entry to the competition).

Entries must be written in as a Microsoft Word document. Entries will normally be acknowledged within 5 days. In your email, please put your name, the Sixth Form / FE college you attend, and the title you have chosen to answer. The subject of your email should be 'essay competition'.

The University of Gloucestershire reserve the right to publish entries but entrants will retain copyright over their work. We intend to publish the winning essay on the RPE Course Blog at www.r-p-e.blogspot.com

Choose one of the following titles:

Title 1: Does religion still have any relevance in the twenty-first century?

Title 2: What would you say to someone who declares we cannot know anything for certain? Can this be disproved?

Title 3: Are there any ethical rules for which there are no exceptions and, if so, why? If not, why not?

Remember:

·       1500 words maximum

·       Your essay must include the title/your name/contact email at the top of the page

·       The essay must be an attachment to the email as a Microsoft Word document

Any essay that does not satisfy these three conditions will not be considered by the judging panel.

The panel decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

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Course Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RPEglos/        (open to all) 

Video Interview blog: http://philosvids.wordpress.com/

Planning the year ahead..

Students in Seville Alcazar

As we look back, we can see what has been enjoyed, and found useful, by our students, and plan the coming year.

We went to Spain with the second years in March: a 5 night trip based around Cordoba - where we look at the interaction of Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions. We visit the Mezquita, The  

A well-earned rest after the journey

The Mezquita in Cordoba

Jewish Museum, Seville Cathedral, Cordoba Alcazar, Seville Real Alcazar, Medina Azahara, the Torre de la Calahorra museum, an archaeological museum, the bathhouse of the Caliphs, and I'm sure I've missed somewhere out! It is a bust few days, but  an amazing trip where students gain a huge amount of understanding. There's a report from the 2011 trip HERE, and pictures from the recent one HERE.. We have a tour guide for sections, and there is some free time too..

Leicester for Diwali

London Visit

We also - in a perhaps less glamorous location - plan to repeat our visit to Diwali in Leicester: Our report is HERE..  Next year we plan to arrive in order to have a meal before we commence the visit. It might even not rain..



We have also been to the Swaminaryan Hindu Temple in London (see HERE for a report), which we hope to visit this year, as well as planning a trip to the Ashmolean museum in Oxford..

Less picturesque but equally exciting is our plan to skype in some guest speakers next year, from as far away as Australia, for Q & A chats with our students. Of course we are also planning our lectures and day-to-day seminars, extra-curricular plans and the like - you can get a taste of these on our course Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RPEglos/ , or download our Course Leaflet HERE..

CHANGING RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN A CHANGING WORLD - videos, etc

Speaking at CESNUR

I recently attended CESNUR13, a conference about New Religious Movements. The proceedings are HERE, but I also made some short videos while I was there, which are at : http://philosvids.wordpress.com/  - along with other videos by the RPE staff...

They cover things as far apart as Jehovah's Witnesses' Music, Cyborgs and Transhumanism in Paganism, Satanism, Spiritual Tourism, and more..

Should be of interest - and useful for those taking our module on NRMs within the RPE course: HM4503 New Religious Movements.

“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering”

For RPE 305 Philosophy and Literature we will be starting off by looking at Albert Camus' novel The Plague. For your 'summer reading', then, you should at the very least read this novel - and more than once if you can! You may then like to read his novella The Stranger, which we will be looking at next.

The Plague can be read at many levels, but I suggest the best way to approach this is to imagine if you are put into a situation where you are trapped in a plague-ridden town and your whole world is turned upside down: you could die at any moment and your friends and loved ones are dying around you. How would you respond? How do the characters in the novel react to this situation? Can you blame them for their actions and who, if anyone, remains 'true' to him/herself? 

I would also suggest you familiarise yourself with the basic existential themes. A good starting-point is:

Flynn, Thomas, Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction, OUP (ebook), 2006.

Note this is a library ebook so you can access this on your computer, print it off etc.

Although it has its critics, we will also be looking at a number of passages from Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism (E&H), published by Yale University Press.

Feel free to post any of your thought here. 

Assuming that truth is a woman – what then?

For those of you who will be taking the module RPE307 Close Philosophical Reading, we will be looking at Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. The plan is to have a close reading of one section each week for discussion, but I also intend to have an online reading group on this blog that is open to all. The module will not start until January 2014, but it will certainly do you no harm to start some background reading before then. Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil covers most of his philosophical ideas, and so you should familiarise yourself with a good, basic introduction. If I may 'be so bold' to recommend my Nietzsche: The Key Ideas. A revised, extended edition called A Complete Introduction to Nietzsche should be coming later this year. In addition, I recommend students acquire at least one of the following section-by-section commentaries on the text:

Burnham, Douglas, Reading Nietzsche: An Analysis of Beyond Good and Evil, Acumen Publishing, 2006

Lampert, Laurence, Nietzsche’s Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil, Yale University Press, 2004

Southwell, Gareth, A Beginner's Guide to Beyond Good and Evil, Blackwell, 2008

As Nietzsche himself says, ‘the hardest thing to translate from one language to another is the tempo of its style.’ There are many translations of Beyond Good and Evil, and they vary greatly.  In my opinion, the Marion Faber translation is still the best in capturing Nietzsche’s ‘style’.


Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by Marion Faber, OUP, 1998 (Reissued 2008)

As a starting point, you should read the Preface (a couple of pages) which contains certain major themes as well as introducing Nietzsche's way of working. As you are reading it (and you should read it at least two or three times to get used to his style and way of thinking), try to be aware of these. In particular:

·       ‘Assuming that truth is a woman – what then?’ What do you think Nietzsche means by this when you read what he says after?

·       What does Nietzsche mean by dogmatism? Who are the dogmatists?

·       What is Nietzsche’s view of much of philosophy so far?

·       Why does Nietzsche refer to Jesuitism and the democratic Enlightenment?

·       What do you think Nietzsche is setting out to do?

It will also help you to 'get to know' Nietzsche, and I highly recommend Julian Young's book here. It's long, but detailed and up-to-date, and it is also a philosophical biography, so you will get a very good idea of his views. You should also watch the excellent film on Nietzsche from the Human All-Too-Human series. 

Have fun and keep posted as I will be adding more on Nietzsche from time to time...and let me know what you think of the Preface! 

Syria, Iran, and why people should learn a thing or two about religion

On BBC’s Question Time recently (20/6/13), the Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips, when asked a question about the civil war in Syria, declared that Syria is the ‘pawn of Iran’ and that Iran should be ‘neutralised’. She stated that Iran is run by people who believe that if they ‘bring about the apocalypse’ they will bring to earth the ‘Shia Messiah’. 

This is one example where an ignorance of Islamic belief and practice can be very dangerous and why I think it is so important for people to gain some education in what are fundamental religious beliefs, and how this can mold a person’s political stance. Shia theology, amongst the ‘Twelver’ (or Imami) Shia anyway (Shia is, in itself, quite diverse) - which is the dominant religion in Iran (the rulers of Syria are Alawite Shia, which is not the same) -  does hold the view that the twelfth imam (the Mahdi) will return at a time of chaos and upheaval, and this will lead to a period of peace and justice. As practically every generation has experienced chaos and upheaval, it is certainly not uncommon for Shia Muslims to expect this time to come soon, but this is very different from Melanie Phillips remark that they wish to bring about the apocalypse. This is, therefore, an example of very sloppy arguing from someone who claims to be 'rational' here.

Interested in our course? Find out more...

For loads more info join the Religion, Philosophy and Ethics Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/RPEglos/ - or just browse what we've been up to there.

The Religion, Philosophy & Ethics course is based at our FCH campus here in Cheltenham
 
You can read our course leaflet HERE, or visit our video blog at http://philosvids.wordpress.com/ 

Happiness?

So.. Happiness.. It seems to be everywhere at the moment. Not actual happiness - but discussion about it. You can find Justin Whitaker (over on his blog) talking about there being good and bad types of it : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2013/06/beyond-happiness-buddhism-and-human-flourishing.html

He argues that the good sorts can't be found by uncovering some secret - but that important forms of happiness actually come from extended hard work - particularly hard work on rooting out ingrained negative ways of thinking and behaviour (that'd be meditation and ethics then).

Over at http://dispirited.org/2013/06/12/happiness-and-the-welfare-of-others/ you can find me (and only one cat picture this time) claiming that perhaps we should worry less about happiness and more abut virtue.

Either way - and I know it's a topic that my colleague Professor Melissa Raphael will be discussing at our Open Day on Saturday -  it seems to be a pre-occupation in Western society : but might we be tempted that, as people with enough food, clean water and no war in our daily lives, to perhaps think of it as a peculiarly "First World Problem"?

New RPE Leaflet..

Want to know more about the RPE course? Download our leaflet HERE...

Philosophical Weddings?

Someone over on twitter (I'm @davidwebster btw) was asking about wedding readings - and I was

reminded that some actually choose a philosophical rather than religious text: From Plato's Symposium...

Really..

Take a look at http://www.hitched.co.uk/wedding-planning/readings/extract-from-platos-symposium_443.htm  if you don't believe me..

You may know the section? Humans were originally four-legged and four-armed - then the God's sliced then in two - and love is the search for your - literal -other-half - for what completes you.. Sweet..

Here is the full text:

Humans have never understood the power of Love, for if they had they would surely have built noble temples and altars and offered solemn sacrifices; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done, since Love is our best friend, our helper, and the healer of the ills which prevent us from being happy.

To understand the power of Love, we must understand that our original human nature was not like it is now, but different. Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. There were three sexes then: one comprised of two men called the children of the Sun, one made of two women called the children of the Earth, and a third made of a man and a woman, called the children of the Moon. Due to the power and might of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened. They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them.  

It was at this point that Zeus divided the humans in half. After the division the two parts of each desiring their other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of humankind. 

Each of us when separated, having one side only, is but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half. Those whose original nature lies with the children of the Sun are men who are drawn to other men, those from the children of the Earth are women who love other women, and those from the children of the Moon are men and women drawn to one another. And when one of us meets our other half, we are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight even for a moment. We pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one, to spend our lives as one person instead of two, and so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two; this is the very expression of our ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.

Buddhism, Karma and Rebirth: Life-After-Death

Over at http://philosvids.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/buddhism-karma-and-rebirth-life-after-death/ I ask Dr Paul Fuller about some issues in Buddhism..

enjoy!