Philosophy. Study the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence.

What is history? A possible definition is: History is change over time. But what kind of change are we talking about?

Given that history is everything that has happened, what kind of selection processes are used to ‘make history’? Aristotle believes that what is important is not “the thing which has happened, but rather what might have happened…and may happen again”. In other words, history must understand the universal significance of events and be able to give knowledge of human nature and people’s predictable behaviour. Can history teach us in this way? And if so, will we ever ‘learn from history’?

During this course, we will consider what history is and study the ideas of some of the great philosophers as they come to grips with the meaning and methods of history. We will also consider biography and history in TV and film. For example, Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) self-consciously plays with ‘history’ altering certain ‘facts’ as a critical act about how we construct history. We will consider ‘The History Channel’: History has always been popular as a form of entertainment: what are the compromises which must be made to make it entertaining?

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• provide an overview of the origins and complexities of the philosophy of history
• consider the mechanisms involved in how history is recorded and dissemi