Undergraduate Program

Course Credit: 4

This course explores the basic concepts, and main issues and problems of philosophy. It is divided into two parts. First part deals with methodology, epistemology, theories of truth and theories of origin and nature of the earth. Second part is concerned with cosmology, ontology (metaphysics), philosophical anthropology, axiology and philosophy of religion. This course is designed to help the students to understand critical as well as comprehensive outlook of life and the universe.

Course Credit: 4

This course is intended to introduce the students to Ancient and Medieval philosophy and its historical development through a close study of the thoughts of the “pre-Socratic” philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the philosophers of medieval period.

Course Credit: 4

This course is mainly aimed at making students able to acquire basic knowledge of how to construct sentences, write paragraphs, essays and other kinds of writing and engage them in reading and writing communication. Students are expected to read at least two essays, selected by the Academic Committee of the Department, and then to employ their reading experience in their writing so that they can interconnect the two skills and add to their analytical and thinking ability.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed as an introductory survey of general logic that covers not only deduction and induction but also logic and language containing some topics in informal logic. The course is based on I. M. Copi’s classic text Introduction to Logic and divided into two parts – Part One: Deduction and Part Two: Induction – each carrying half of the total marks.

Course Credit: 4

This course will introduce the students with moral issues of everyday life-issues of right and wrong and good and evil that have puzzled and provoked thinkers for hundreds of years. It will deal with some important ethical theories including: the duty ethics of Kant, the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill; ethical relativism and the virtue ethics of Plato and Aristotle. It will address the issue—whether there are objective truths about how we ought to live, or ethics is ultimately a matter of subjective opinions and desires. The course is divided into two parts. Part A deals with ethical issues and Part B with different ethical theories.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed to provide the students with necessary knowledge and understanding of the nature and scope of psychology as a biological science. It deals with the methods, sub-field of psychology, psychological basis of behavior and the central nervous system, and investigates the nature of motivation, emotion, conflict and adjustment, mental health and re-adjustment techniques, attention, perception, learning, remembering and forgetting, intelligence and testing personality.

Course Credit: 4

This course covers the major figures of the history of Western thought in the 17th and 18th centuries. It will make a brief review of the developments in the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution which set the stage for the appearance of the modern world view, The course will focus on the chronological development of the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Particular attention will be given in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind.

Course Credit: 4

This course deals with the thoughts of the major political philosophers from Plato to Hegel. The students are expected to have a thorough knowledge about the nature of politics and the state formulated in classical works of ancient, medieval and modern political philosophers. The course explores the basic concepts of political philosophy such as, rights, freedom, sovereignty, power, constitution and rule of law with special reference to the political philosophy of Bangladesh. It will also focus on the eastern political thoughts such as the thoughts of Kautilya, Manu, Al-Farabi and al-Ghazali.

Course Credit: 4

This course consists of two sections of which the first one is an introduction to the basic concepts and principles while the second is an introduction to the economy of Bangladesh. The course is designed to provide the students with basic knowledge of economics, theory of consumer behavior and demand, theory of cost and supply, the present economic condition of Bangladesh.

Course Credit: 4

This course is an introduction to mathematical or symbolic logic. It has been designed to formalize the thinking process of the students to avoid making ordinary mistakes. This logic has two parts viz. sentential (propositional) logic and predicate (quantification) logic. Students will be required to have thorough knowledge in determining whether an argument is valid or invalid in both parts. The prescribed text for this course is Symbolic Logic written by IM Copi.

Course Credit: 4

This course examines in-depth one of the most important works in the history of Western philosophy, Plato’s Republic, and offers students the opportunity to engage the broad range of philosophical topics covered by the text, including ethics, politics, psychology, metaphysics, and aesthetics. It will address some of the important issues discussed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, issues like relation of Aristotle’s philosophy to his predecessors, notion of being, four causes in different sciences, form and matter, concept of substance, concepts of potentiality and actuality, and notion of God.

Course Credit: 4

This course deals with the elementary concepts and theories covering different areas of man and society. It will help the students understand the impact of social and cultural factors upon human behavior in such areas as family, socialization, stratification, social groups, marriage, religion, sociology of economics, social evolution and environment. The course aims at generating knowledge of sociological and anthropological key concepts as they apply to the interplay among societies, groups and individuals.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed to have a thorough knowledge on the origin and development of Muslim philosophy to evaluate the scope of philosophical investigations in Islam. It will explore the historical development of the main schools of thought in Islamic tradition. Special emphasis will be given on the nature, scope and sources of Muslim philosophy, causes of the rise of different schools of thought in Islam and their main doctrines. The course will help the students to understand the relation between Islam and the modern science, human rights in Islam and the rights and the status of women in Islam. The goal of this course is not to simply fill students’ minds with the information about Islam, but rather to teach them the historical context of Muslim philosophy along with different schools of thought in Islam.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed to provide the students with necessary knowledge and understanding of meaning, nature and fundamental concepts of Indian Philosophy. It is an introduction to the major philosophical schools of India focusing on their logical, epistemological, metaphysical and ethical views. The course consists of two parts: Part A will deal with Indian epistemology and logic; Part B with Indian metaphysics and ethics.

Course Credit: 4

This course is planned to engage participants with classical social thoughts. It will explore the legendary social thinkers’ contributions, their limitations and impact on theoretical debates in social philosophy. Students are required to have comprehensive knowledge of the main thoughts of Ibn Khaldun, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, Max Weber and Talcott Parsons.

Course Credit: 4

Students will be required to have a thorough knowledge of the problems discussed in the following texts. I. Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, tr. by T. K. Abott, London: 1949. J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, Indianapolis: Hackett Publisher, 1979.

Course Credit: 4

This course is concerned with the views of two classical philosophers—Hume and Kant. It is designed to provide the students with necessary knowledge of their major theories and basic concepts as well as their contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and society. Students are expected to have a thorough knowledge of the texts. The course is divided into two Parts: first part deals with Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature and second with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed to provide the students with a clear idea about the ancient and medieval period of the philosophy of the Bangalee. It is divided into two parts. Part one includes: secular and theological trends of Bangla philosophical thoughts in the ancient and medieval period, reason and logic in ancient Bengal, contributions of the Hindu and Buddhist thinkers with special reference to Shanta Rakshit, Shantidev, Shila Bhadra and Atish Dipankara. Part two deals with Charyapada, Joydev, Vidyapati and Chandidas, Vaisnabism and mysticism in Medieval Bengal.

Course Credit: 4

This course, as a field of linguistic philosophy, is concerned with the idea of mind as an existing entity. It deals with the debate concerning Descartes’ dualist theory of mind and body where he recognizes the existence of mind as a separate mental entity different from the existence of body as a physical entity. The debate involved here is regarding two questions: (a) how a physical (physiological) process can result in a mental event; and (b) the difficulty in explaining how a mental event can result in a physical event. Another important question is that since the brain is an enormously complex system of brain cells, where and how does the conscious thinking take place? The entire issue will be discussed in the context of the two views forwarded by Shaffer and Ryle.

Course Credit: 4

This course explores the theory and practice of education from philosophical perspective. This course is designed to provide the students with necessary knowledge and understanding of the nature, meaning and aim of education, philosophical foundation of education, necessity of education, education and social order, education and culture, education and religion and value of education. It will critically treat the development of educational thoughts and ideas with reference to the main trends of philosophy like Idealism, Materialism, Naturalism, pragmatism and Existentialism.

Course Credit: 4

This course covers the main philosophical trends and movements of late 19th and early 20th century Western philosophy. It is divided into two parts. First part deals with the main trends of Post-Hegelian Western philosophy including British and Italian idealism, dialectical materialism, intuitionism, existentialism, pragmatism, neo-realism, and post-modernism. Second part concerns the rise and development of Anglo-American Analytic philosophy. Philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Schlick, Carnap and Ayer’s contributions to analytic philosophy will be addressed in this part.

Course Credit: 4

This course covers the main philosophical trends and thoughts of major religions of the world. Students are required to have a thorough knowledge of the problems discussed in the prescribed three texts under three groups. John Hick, The Philosophy of Religion, London: Prentice-Hall, 1973. R. H. Thouless, An Introduction to Psychology of Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed to acquaint the students with the nature and main issues of philosophy of science. It includes the nature of science, differences between science and pseudo science, nature of scientific truth, development of methodology. Students will be introduced with the twentieth century’s philosophical debates such as realism vs. anti-realism, constructive empiricism vs. scientific realism. It will explore different contemporary arguments in philosophy of science ‘No miracles’ argument, inference to the Best explanation and pessimistic induction. this course is to make the students acquainted with the nature and the main issues of philosophy of science.

Course Credit: 4

This course deals with the practical questions about individual conduct and public policy raised by contemporary social, political and economical developments. It will examine a range of issues in applied philosophy, including justice, power, autonomy, self-respect, law, human rights and issues related to business and professional ethics. Some other ways will be explored where philosophy should matter to everyone for the coming ages.

Course Credit: 4

This course will focus on a series of related philosophical issues in the theory of knowledge (epistemology). Topics will include knowledge, justification, the reliability of perception, and the challenge of scepticism.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed as a step-by-step guide to research methodology suitable for students in philosophy as well as other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences intending to carry out quantitative or qualitative research.

Course Credit: 4

This course is designed to provide the students with a comprehensive understanding of environmental problems from ethical point of view. It comprises destruction of global ecosystem, species extinction, resource depletion, global warming, deforestations, cultural environmentalism and the like. Special attention will be given in addressing the issues such as environmental justice, ecological justice, nuclear issues and future generations etc.

Course Credit: 4

Aesthetics, or the philosophy of art, is a theoretical endeavor to explicate the essence of art by defining its nature, its specific function, and the grounds for its recognition and appreciation. The course outlines strategies purporting to answer the most basic questions about the status, origin and purpose of art as articulated by classic and modern thinkers.