Philosophy aims to examine the fundamental assumptions that inform people's thinking and lives, and in the process to show how they can do so for themselves. This involves looking at the arguments for or against various positions, examining their historical, cultural and intellectual contexts, and critically appraising and evaluating those arguments. Precisely because of its fundamental nature, philosophy has its roots right back to the ancient Greeks and other ancient civilisations, and has been a long-standing part of the university. Areas of research and teaching Research and teaching in Philosophy and Religion at Newcastle are undertaken in a number of areas: 1 Reality and Knowledge – metaphysics, the study of the most general features of reality, such as existence, time, the relationship between mind and body, objects and their properties, events, processes, and causation; and epistemology, what it is to know anything, and how (if at all) we can acquire this knowledge. 2 Ethics and Politics - how should we live as individuals and how we should organize our societies? This involves questions such as: What are the proper limits to state power? Is Democracy is best system of government? Or at a more personal level, is pleasure the only thing that is good in itself? What is the right way of distributing benefits and burdens? 3 Religion – the critical examination of the history, literature, beliefs and ideas of the major religious traditions of the world, and their bearing on questions of knowledge, reality, ethics and politics. The Philosophy and Religion staff address these areas in their research and teaching through a range of approaches, including the Anglo-American analytic tradition, Continental philosophy, comparative philosophy and textual-hermeneutic analysis. What you can Research Research proposals are invited in the following areas: Metaphysics Philosophy of science Philosophy of medicine Philosophy of the good life Moral epistemology Contractarianism Rational choice theory Ethics and politics Ethics and economics Sartre and Existentialism Foucault and Post-structuralism Philosophy and film Chinese philosophy Comparative philosophy Philosophical hermeneutics Continental philosophy of religion Religion and deliberative democracy