Courses Autumn Term 2026
Starting Monday 28th September
2026-27 Courses will be taking place online and we have grouped them per term. Please contact the tutor for further details as to how exactly their courses will operate. Registration fees will standardly be £135 unless otherwise stated (some shorter courses will be offered at lower fees). Tutors also have the discretion to offer a concessionary reduction of £20. In other respects, the details given at enrolment apply.
MON 1-3pm: 10 weeks starting 28th September (with a break for half term):
Philosophy through Literature
Jane O’Grady
What it is to be human; what love is, how far love, and other feelings, are necessarily play-acted, and how they can be sustained over time; how much truth we can bear to tell ourselves or others, and how valuable or destructive truth-telling can be; how much should be sacrificed in struggles for self-expression and freedom; moments of vision and transcendence – these are the very stuff of literature, which also makes concrete and visceral some of the more standard philosophical issues. The course will look at philosophical insights conveyed in plays, poems, short stories, and excerpts from novels. This term, we’ll start with the Ancient Greek tragedy Hippolytus by Euripides. Among other novellas, short stories and poems, we’ll look at Shakespeare’s King Lear, The Touchstone by Edith Wharton, and the short stories ‘The First Virginity of Gigi Kaisara’ by Gothathone Moeng, ‘Funny Little Snake’ by Tessa Hadley, ‘Going Home’ by William Trevor, ‘Excerpt from Theuth, an Oral History of Work in the Age of Machine-Assisted Cognition’ by Ken Liu, and the long poem ‘The Wasteland’ by T S Eliot.
Cost: £135 (10 weeks)
Email: janeogrady101[at]gmail.com
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MON 7-9pm: 9 weeks starting 5th October:
Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger on Violence
Keith Barrett
There is an alternative history (yet to be written) of Western philosophy as a response to the problem of violence. We will study the problem of violence as it emerges as a theme – or remains tantalizingly beneath the surface – in the work of three great contemporary theorists of the human condition; Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger. We will bring Nietzsche together with Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Freud together with Rene Girard; and Heidegger together with Emmanuel Levinas.
The works studied will include: Nietzsche’s ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ and ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’; Freud’s ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ and ‘Civilization and its Discontents’; and Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ and ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’.
Cost: £110 (9 weeks)
Email:keith[at]londonschoolofphilosophy.org
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TUE 11am-1pm: 10 weeks starting 29th September:
Renaissances: The Italian Renaissance
Anja Steinbauer
Periods of profound cultural change have sometimes been followed by remarkable outpourings of ideas and art. What makes such intellectual renaissances possible? This course uses the Italian Renaissance as a philosophical case study, exploring neglected thinkers alongside contemporary historians to investigate how new ways of reading, learning and thinking emerge. Through thorough readings of Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, Machiavelli and others, together with modern interpreters including Jacob Burckhardt, Eugenio Garin, Stephen Greenblatt and Ada Palmer, we will explore how the Italian Renaissance transformed European thought. Along the way, we will ask what it can teach us about crisis, creativity and the possibility of intellectual renewal in our own time.
Cost:£135 (10 weeks)
Email:anja[at]philosophynow.org
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TUE 1.30pm-3pm: 10 weeks starting 29th September:
20thC Political and Social Philosophy Reading Group
Anja Steinbauer
Cost: Free (10 weeks)
Email:anja[at]philosophynow.org
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TUE 6-8pm: 10 weeks starting 29th September:
History of Western Philosophy part 1
Jane O’Grady
This course gives a chronological survey of some the great Western philosophers who
have formulated, and tried to solve, enduring puzzles – what reality is, who we are, how we should live. It traces the ongoing argument, and invites your contributions to it. Part 1 (this term) runs from the ancient Greeks to John Locke (see course outline 1 for more details; Part 2 runs through some Enlightenment philosophers to Hegel; Part 3 runs from Schopenhauer to Sartre (see course outline 3 for more details). You can join any or all of these courses.
Cost £135 (10 weeks)
Email:janeogrady101[at]gmail.com
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WED 11am-1pm: 10 weeks starting 30th September:
Ethics: Contemporary Perspectives
Sam Fremantle
This course will focus primarily (approximately two thirds) on contemporary debates in Meta-ethics; the study of the status of our moral beliefs. Are moral statements objective truths or subjective expressions of emotion? If they are the latter, what validity can they have? Philosophers to be studied on this subject include Simon Blackburn, Bernard Williams, and Philippa Foot. The other third of the course (approximately one third) will take a look at the three main schools of thought in contemporary ethics: Consequentialist theories, Deontological theories, and Virtue theories. Relevant philosophers will include Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, and Samuel Scheffler. All are welcome to join, though some previous study of philosophy would be helpful.
Cost:£135 (10 weeks)
Email:sam[at]londonschoolofphilosophy.org
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THURS: 11am-1pm: 10 weeks starting 1st October:
Close Readings in Philosophy: Plato’s ‘Republic’
Anja Steinbauer
This term we read Plato’s Republic from beginning to end. Alongside its exciting discussions of justice, education and political life, we will examine the dialogue’s dramatic structure, its use of myth, image and irony, and its continuing challenge to our assumptions about knowledge, philosophy and the “examined life”.
These seminars are devoted to the slow reading of major philosophical works. Rather than surveying a thinker’s ideas or offering an historical overview, we work carefully through the text itself, examining its arguments, literary form, conceptual vocabulary and philosophical assumptions. Participants are encouraged to grapple with the work in all its difficulty, allowing ideas to emerge through sustained engagement with the original text.
Cost:£135 (10 weeks)
Email:anja[at]philosophynow.org
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THURS 1.30pm-3pm: 10 weeks starting 1st October:
Kant Reading Group
Anja Steinbauer
Cost: Free (10 weeks)
Email:anja[at]philosophynow.org