Philosophy at Oxford PPL

you're an A level student

the first thing our director of phil said was 'i know some of you will have studied some philosophy in school...we want you to forget that as they don't usually teach it correctly'

and the second thing they said was 'continental philosophy - a discipline that not everyone agrees exists'

my point is, your experience with school-level philosophy should not be a driving force in your degree choice. plenty of people study philosophy for the first time at university (and do just as well)

oxford ppl students can choose from a list of classes shown here https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses which is pretty broad and typical for elementary philosophy

Hi I'm not an Oxford philosopher but did receive an offer to read Philosophy and Theology at Jesus College so thought I might offer some insight (hope that's okay).

Knowledge of logic is always going to useful when doing philosophy I think regardless of course and as it's given as an option on the Philosophy Aptitude test (which you will not need to do but I did) ,can be asked about at interview and is a compulsory module for all philosophy related degrees I would say Oxford values it. The University of York have a 4 week long online logic course which I did and found highly beneficial.

The philosophy course at Oxford is pretty broad and I imagine would suit your interests. For example there is a optional Kant module and Philosophy of mind and Philosophy of cognitive science modules which would allow you to combine your interests in philosophy and psychology. You can also do a special project or thesis so I imagine they would support you to independently research your interests. Dawkins has also delivered talks at Oxford before know, and if your interest in him links in with Philosophy of Religion and/or Science both are available options. Post- Kantian philosophy is also a module which has some existential philosophers covered such as Nietzsche or Satre.

I would recommend to keep reading and responding to original philosophy texts as unseen texts are often presented at interview and most modules do have some key texts associated with them.

In the first year, there are three components to the philosophy course, which are the exact same as those studied by those doing PPE, Philosophy and Modern Languages, and Philosophy and Theology:


For Finals (second and third year), PPL students take up to five philosophy papers, out of a total of eight. You can take the full range of philosophy papers available to all those studying any of Oxford's philosophy degrees, which are listed here. Between them they cover basically all the major areas and subfields of philosophy, and afford you tremendous freedom of choice to study a wide variety of different topics. So it's not like you have to focus on those areas in philosophy which are closest to psychology, although you can if you want. The only distinctive thing about philosophy in PPL is that there are certain requirements for Finals. If you take two philosophy papers, at least one of them has to be Early Modern Philosophy, Knowledge and Reality, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Logic and Language, Philosophy of Science, or Philosophy of Cognitive Science; and if you take three or more philosophy papers, at least two of them must be from that list.

As mentioned, if you're interested in continental philosophy, then there is a paper devoted to it: Post-Kantian Philosophy, which covers Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Some of the other papers do also pick up on some continental themes -- Aesthetics for instance -- but it is true that most of them are taught from a largely analytic perspective. I wouldn't worry about your pre-reading in this regard though; Oxford don't expect any prior philosophical knowledge. The important thing for admissions is that you show that you can think like a philosopher.

I'm a PPE student (who is doing philosophy and economics for Finals), so if you have any further questions about philosophy at Oxford, feel free to ask.

First off, Thank you so much!! Im really glad I don't have to take philosophy of mind or cognitive science and you gave me that info. In terms of the general lectures you have, could you give some examples of what some philosophy lectures and practices are like? Right now in my Cambridge program we're focusing on the metaphysics of personhood and consciousness, and I read a paper on how Aphantasia would be dubious to Kierkegaardian and Sartrian accounts on Selfhood and imagination, would that be the type of work in terms of 'analytical' post-kantian work? (In addition, where would the philosophy of identity and personhood stand in the papers? In ethics, philosophy of mind,or Knowledge and Reality, or something else? Or is it not covered in Oxford's philosophy course?)

Oh also where does Hume and Machiavelli typically lie? They have some...interesting ideas, so I was curious if they are typically a part of the courses . Machiavelli im assuming is in Political philosophy and Hume broadens into Ethics and branches of knowledge and reality?

First off, Thank you so much!! Im really glad I don't have to take philosophy of mind or cognitive science and you gave me that info. In terms of the general lectures you have, could you give some examples of what some philosophy lectures and practices are like? Right now in my Cambridge program we're focusing on the metaphysics of personhood and consciousness, and I read a paper on how Aphantasia would be dubious to Kierkegaardian and Sartrian accounts on Selfhood and imagination, would that be the type of work in terms of 'analytical' post-kantian work? (In addition, where would the philosophy of identity and personhood stand in the papers? In ethics, philosophy of mind,or Knowledge and Reality, or something else? Or is it not covered in Oxford's philosophy course?)

Oh also where does Hume and Machiavelli typically lie? They have some...interesting ideas, so I was curious if they are typically a part of the courses . Machiavelli im assuming is in Political philosophy and Hume broadens into Ethics and branches of knowledge and reality?

Oh and lastly (apologies), how is the discourse and tutorials done in Oxford/uni? I have been interested in philosophy for a long time, and Sugrue's lectures are amazing , but I'm worried if philosophy at uni is just premise after premise after premise to get to a conclusion given the 'analytical' nature of the course. Is there still an ability of discourse, dialougue and debate, or is it primarily based inside rigorous formulation of ideas (although that doesn't sound neccessarily bad tbh)? Are you primarily trying to create an argument based solely on premises and conclusions in a formulaic matter, or is there still freedom to discuss ideas within a classroom? Thank you in advance!

Could you be more specific about what you mean by 'what some philosophy lectures and practices are like'? fwiw, philosophy lectures are often not that well-attended; like all Oxford courses, the centrepiece of teaching is the tutorial system, which works particularly well for philosophy as something like Socratic method-style teaching. I can't comment on your second question really, because I'm not taking the post-Kantian paper. As far as personal identity is concerned, it's a topic in first year General Philosophy and Finals Knowledge and Reality. It's studied from an analytic perspective, so you'll be looking at the likes of Locke, Parfit, and Williams.



Hume is one of the most important philosophers of all time, so of course he pops up all over the place. If you want to study him in depth, he's one of the set authors for the Early Modern paper. He's also one of the topics on the Ethics and Aesthetics papers, and you may look at him for Knowledge and Reality. Machiavelli I don't think appears anywhere; the Political Theory paper is largely contemporary, looking e.g. at Rawls and his critics.



There is an expectation of precise argument and clear analysis, yes, but I don't think this is incompatible at all with the freedom to discuss ideas. The tutorial system, after all, is all about 'discourse, dialogue, and debate'. The extent to which you will do hyper-specific linguistic or logical analysis will vary by topic, of course; you'd probably expect more of it in, for instance, Knowledge and Reality than Ethics. A final note: I'd never heard of Sugrue, but I looked him up, and he doesn't seem to be considered very reliable, let's just say. I'd recommend looking at some more credible sources.

Incidentally, Sugrue died a couple of weeks back.

Sorry, improper wording, what I meant by it was I was wondering how are typical lectures and philosophy weeks like? What would a typical lecture, tutorial, and essay work (for the tutorial) be like? It's just so I can understand the more 'analytical' nature a little more (alongside philosophy in general). And Philosophy lectures are not that well attended? Do you mean that they typically have little amount of students doing a particular paper, or that people typically miss lectures as they focus on their tutorial and reading work instead; do people still attend all the lectures that they are asked for/do in their papers? (in addition, I know that there is a lot of independent work, how is the independent reading vs lecture/tutorial ratio in the Philosophy course? )

Thank you for the input on Hume, I have downloaded samples on 'A treatise of Human Nature' and 'The Prince', I will be reading Hume starting next week but I am interested in reading Machiavelli, if not for the course , just in general interest in how...non-normative, beliefs, he holds.

Thank you! I believe that I wouldn't mind particularly hyper-specific arguments , as long as free dialogue and debate can occur conjunctively! In terms of Sugrue, I just looked into him online, he apparently had some very dicey opinions in his most latest talks/radio work . Apologies if that's what you looked into , I had no idea about his radio work or anything like that, I only knew him from his older lectures on Youtube which really inspired me due to his articulation and breadth of knowledge in different fields. Would it negatively impact me if I discussed him in my personal Statement? I understand pre-reading isn't necessary, but I've read Descartes meditations and I am currently reading Dawkins' God Delusion, and will start to read next week Hume and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ( I know, Kant is wordy , and I have also just started reading Sartre's 900 page long On Being and Nothingness ...so wish me luck), are all of those a good mix alongside Sugrue's lectures ( I understand Sugrue makes his own interpretations here and there, but generally he stays along the contents side in his lectures...I think) ?

PS/PSPS I understand that quality of reading, especially for my Personal Statement, is much more important than Quantity. For the key books that interest me, I am keeping a log of summaries of key ideas and/or my own thoughts on them to look back to both generally and for my Personal Statement, but given that I cannot focus on one book for an extensive time right now , I prefer to have more broader, episodic, and structured reading sessions, with 14 15 minute sessions per week, 2 per day , focusing on a particular topic in each 'slot' and a particular book for that slot , for example I am reading Existential Psychotherapy by Yalom on Thursday 1st sessions for a 'psychotherapy' topic for my personal interest in integrative psychotherapy, and I have now just changed my sessions to be 5/5 philosophy/psychology and 4 others (instead of having my second session be primarily one psychology book that I drag on as I cannot read it extensively in one sitting, and now have a higher range of both philosophy and psychology topics in my reading), which now can include Kant and Hume for moral philosophy/infamous figures respectively (understandable to allow those 2 to be interchangeable to those two topics, but its how I've structure it for now)…That's my long winded and rambling explanation to why I'm reading so many books at once now (I'm hoping at Uni with both my extensive independent hours allowing me to focus on these topics and the papers I choose, I will slightly centralise my reading more, but for now this works/ I prefer it this way) .

Thank you for the info and thank you in advance for replying to my questions!

Your work week will typically be organised around reading for and writing your tutorial essay. For philosophy, in general you will receive eight tutorials for a paper, i.e. one per week for a term. It is actually the reading that will take up most of your time -- around 200 pages a week is certainly not uncommon (though reading lists tend to be longer than you can manage in just a week; you are not expected to read everything on them, and one of the skills you will pick up is being selective in what you do choose to read). Tutorial essays, by contrast, tend to be fairly short, as preparation for the succinctness required under the time pressure of exams; certainly no more than 2000 words, and often only around 1500.

As for lectures, it is more the latter -- they are generally not seen as essential, and perhaps function more as a summary of the material you will have read or be reading for that topic. It's up to you how many you attend; some people go to every lecture for the papers they're taking, some people to none, and most probably to somewhere in between those two extremes. Like tutorials, the typical lecture course for a paper runs once per week for a term. Another factor is that there's no guarantee that the lectures for a paper will be running in the same term as you're doing tutorials for it.

Finally a note on reading: there's no harm to reading lots (though equally I would say that kind of volume is absolutely not necessary), and there's certainly merit to looking at the great historical texts, but I would perhaps also recommend that you read a contemporary introduction to philosophy, for instance Thomas Nagel's What Does It All Mean? or Simon Blackburn's Think.

Hello, I was wondering if anybody could give me some clarity on the philosophy done at the oxford PPL course.

On paper, the idea of doing Psychology and Philosophy was a brilliant idea because I love looking into how different ideologies of philosophy can affect psychtherapeutic treatment, and, in general, the ways in which a philosophical idea, work, or interpretation , can aid in psychological work.

The only issue is that the primary work I've looked into in philosophy in my own time (I am taking an A level in it) has been on Existentialism (specifically Existential psychotherapy), Kant , Dawkins, and Sugrue's lectures on Freud and Machiavelli.

I have also done some metaphysics with a Cambridge program I'm doing, and I'm reading a logic textbook, however they haven't been at the forefront of my specialised super-curricular work.

I am discussing this because existentialism and Machiavelli have been both seen as 'continental philosophies', and I have heard from people that philosophy at Oxford is very analytical.

Is this true? What are the type of lectures one goes through in philosophy?

(In addition, the structure for PPL states that philosophy ranges from 'the philosophy of mind to the philosophy of cognitive science', which is a much smaller range than the faculty...are these just examples and PPL still allows most types of philosophical work offered, or primarily only allows philosophy related to the mind?)


Any input from Philosophy students at Oxford (and even more so PPL students) would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Hey, I do Phil at Oxford. in your first year you will do a course on formal logic and moral philosophy, and general philosophy.

in formal logic you learn propositional logic, predicate logic and L= which is a little different. its very useful and basically the core of any philosophy degree.

in moral Phil you only study Mill and philosophers who expand on his ideas or respond to them. its quite a small area but still pretty interesting

general philosophy is really good (I'm doing it now lol) as you cover eight different topics (knowledge, scepticism, mind/body, identity, induction and free will) and usually it will be in 2 week chunks so you have exercises one week and an essay the next week. this way you can focus completely on one area of philosophy for two weeks.

then in your second year you will be able to choose your modules a bit more (look at course structure on the website!!) so for e.g. you can choose between knowledge and reality and early modern Phil (I'm doing early modern) but also keep in mind that's for my course (philthe) so not sure about yours. there will be a lot more choice in your second and later years so if you can grit your teeth through year 1 you'll be fine.

oxfords a nice place to study, I would recommend it. will steal your happiness and will to live though