You will need to complete the: (1)course requirements; (2) seminar requirements; and (3) thesis (and oral examination for the PhD).

1. Courses

MPhil candidates MUST register to earn the requisite six (6) course credits from two (2) of the following
Core Course:
PHIL6010: Philosophical Methodologies
And one of the following electives:
PHIL6015: Major Figures in Philosophy
PHIL6020: Issues and Trends in Caribbean Philosophy
PHIL6025: African Philosophy and Sagacity
PhD candidates shall complete nine (9) course credits: the core course and any two elective courses.

2. Seminars

Each MPhil candidate will present at least two (2) open seminars. The first seminar presentation should normally be the student’s research proposal. MPhil candidates must present a second seminar and PhD candidates a total of three (3) seminars before the completion of the thesis.
 

3. Thesis and oral examination

Each candidate must present a thesis of the appropriate size: 50,000 words for the MPhil and a maximum of 80,000 words for the PhD. A PhD candidate will also be required to submit to a viva voce (an oral examination) on the thesis submitted.
See Course Descriptions »
 
PHIL6010: Philosophical Methodologies
The quality of a well-argued philosophical work largely depends on the appropriate methodology adopted. This course seeks to make students aware of the variety of methods that have characterized philosophical enquiry, and the variety of ways in which the subject has been presented, and to encourage reflection on how philosophy should be practised. It will involve wide-ranging readings and exploration of currently available tools.
 
PHIL6015: Major Figures in Philosophy
This course seeks to enable students to acquire a comprehensive grasp of the work of one of the major contributors to the philosophical tradition that was itself a comprehensive response to contemporary intellectual problems. It is anticipated that the individual philosopher will be identified by mutual consent of students and the teaching team from among, but not limited to, the following: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, Marx, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Du Bois, Garvey, Sartre, Odera Oruka, Wiredu,
Hountondji, C. L. R. James, Lewis Gordon, Charles Mills.
 
PHIL6020: African Philosophy and Sagacity
The starting point of the course is that despite the apparent distinction between philosophical reasoning and sagacious reasoning—the latter often regarded as largely habitual and retrograde whilst the former as theoretical and dynamic—the two coincide cognitively. In the main, besides comparing and contrasting the two modes of reasoning, this course seeks to facilitate students’ understanding of the relevance of sagacious reasoning in present-day world, the supposition being that philosophy combined with sagacity would better equip them to resolve some of the issues that have and continue to bedevil humanity, especially in the social, cultural and religious domains within Africa and its Diaspora.
 
PHIL6020: Issues and Trends in Caribbean Philosophy
The starting point of the course is the supposition that one cannot divorce thought from action, theory from praxis. The course is therefore concerned with the role philosophy (as thought and theory) has played among the Caribbean people in their efforts to understand, represent, interpret, and shape their reality. The course focuses on the existential-philosophical tradition in the Caribbean. For this reason, this course pursues the historically based philosophical explorations of, and reflections on, Caribbean conceptions of being, existence, knowledge, ethics,
aesthetics, sexuality, etc. The course addresses the question of the existence (historio-genesis) of Caribbean philosophy as thematised by Caribbean scholar Paget Henry, and the influences and external existential challenges on it by Occidental, Oriental and African philosophies.