Face-to-face , first and second term, 90 hours of theory.

First term
Wednesday from 10:45 to 12:45 at Ommegang Om10
Thursday from 09:30 to 10:30 at Ommegang Om10
Second term
Wednesday from 10:45 to 11:45 at Ommegang Om10
Thursday from 10:45 to 12:45 at Ommegang Om10

French.

This course aims at introducing students to general philosophy: its main goal is for them to develop their critical sense, to enhance their reasoning abilities and to improve their argumentative skills, by discovering the specificities of a philosophical questioning and analyzing various authors.

For lawyers, it is of crucial and direct interest to acquire a solid knowledge of general philosophy and, more specifically, of political philosophy, and philosophical anthropology.
Clear and direct links will be made with courses in ‘Sources and Principles of Law', ‘Constitutional Law' (through theories of State and Social Contract), as well as ‘Roman Law' (which, as Greek philosophers help us understand and question today's world, can help analyse contemporary law. In general and even though this course is not in philosophy of law specifically, links with law will be drawn on both the levels of our methodology and thematics.
Methodologically, we will study the conditions of a fair and precise judgement, and we will work on reading, commenting and interpreting pieces that can be highly sound and technical. This seems crucial for (future) lawyers, who are expected not to apply law mechanically but to be able to grasp the subtlety of rules, interpret those wisely and question their rationale.
On the merits, a wide range of legal branches are intertwined with general issues about Mankind, on the one hand, and requires to be conscious of diverse ways of reasoning and acting, on the other hand. Moreover, law is closely inter-related with politics ; law students as well as practitioners shall unquestionably improve their background by a philosophical reflection on concepts as society, community, or democracy.

This course aims therefore at introducing students to science in a bold sense, by improving their critical and conceptual skills such as:
- Understanding a philosophical piece and identifying its structure and elements.
- Sifting out and understanding the rise of a philosophical issue and the thinking process of an answer.
- Identifying and comparing different possible theories about a specific issue.
- Ascertaining the social, historical and cultural backgrounds for philosophical thoughts.
- Showing and adequate command of philosophical terms.
- Highlighting the various underlying world views and values of a specific reasoning, as well as the assumptions of an opinion -truth, freedom, etc.
- Fully comprehending the consequences of a thesis which are not always questioned.
- Telling apart the types of judgment -philosophical, legal, ethical, etc.
- Mobilising the philosophical concepts in order to build a personal opinion.

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During the first semester, we will focus on the broad question of justice and judgment. Starting from concrete situations rather than a theoretical question, our aim will be to identify different meanings of the "act of judging" ; then, by generalizing this conceptualization stage and the answers found on different (observable) "scenes of justice", we will analyze texts of several philosophers who have worked on these questions (in particular Tocqueville, Hume, Smith, Rawls, Sen and Nussbaum).

In spring term, the course will be divided in two main parts, that aim at providing thorough knowledge in philosophical anthropology and political philosophy. “What are human beings?” and “What is Politics/Policy?” will be the two issues that will guide us. Aristotle's and Descartes's texts will be studied in order to reflect on our human condition (Are we animals ? Am I my body or do I possess it ? Is it possible to make a scientific statement about the existence of God ? Is the human being the only living being asking himself such questions ?). Plato and Rousseau will help us understand what is different between Ancient direct democracy and Modern State (social Contract). We will also discuss many contemporary theories about new philosophical problems: post-humanism due to technical and scientific innovations; the crisis of representative democracy and the creation of citizen movements asking for more direct democracy, etc.

From this brief summary of our program, we can clearly see our position: the "content of philosophy" is based first and foremost on a broad heritage of thinkers, past and present, which must be understood in depth - as regards their formulation of philosophical questions as well as the answers they have given to those. The course therefore includes an encyclopedic part, covering the fields of ancient, modern and contemporary philosophy, in both the continental and Anglo-Saxon traditions.

By this way, students shall understand that any philosophical thinking, as original and innovative it can be, depends always on a specific socio-historical context, on events and/or problems on the basis of which it was developed or situated.

Our purpose therefore is to familiarize students with the apparent "strangeness" of philosophical questioning, which is due to its high degree of abstraction and the modes of reasoning it mobilizes. By this way, we shall make them aware of fact that the thoughts of philosophers relay questions proper to each individual (on the relationship to justice, death, others, time, the existence of God, etc.), and that it has contributed to the shaping of our own ways of thinking. Thus, we will try to highlight how the "problems" that past thinkers have encountered, as well as the concepts they have developed to solve them, can help us to build our own responses to the "problems" we know today

This course is given as a lecture, in large amphitheater.
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The written material for the course consists of the following two books:
- Sophie KLIMIS, Penser, délibérer, juger. Pour une philosophie de la justice en acte(s), De Boeck, Bruxelles, 2018.
- Sophie KLIMIS, L'énigme de l'humain et l'invention de la politique. Les racines grecques de la philosophie moderne et contemporaine, De Boeck, Bruxelles, 2014.

Help is offered in weekly « monitoring sessions » given by an assistant.
During the first semester, a forum is also open on moodle, where students can ask questions to the teacher.

As this course is designed to teach students to develop their critical and argumentative skills, the exam consists of open-ended questions that aim to evaluate the following skills :
- commentary and interpretation of an extract from a philosophical text, and ability to locate it within the more general framework of its author's thought;
- synthetic explanation of a key concept or reasoning;
- construction of a comparison between two authors;
- a more personal reflection, in the form of an essay.

The evaluation will be based on a written exam. The questions will focus on understanding the main articulations of the course and the philosophical texts on which it is based.
As the course is one-year long, a mark of 10/20 or more obtained in January will exempt students from presenting its first part again in June or September, and be worth half their final result.

A complete bibliography of the works studied in the course is available in the two reference books of the course. It is available to students on moodle, as well as the table of contents of the two books, which serve as a lesson plan.

The paper version of the reference books includes an individual code, which allows the reader to access an electronic version of the book, including "bonuses" (biographies of the authors studied and a glossary of ancient Greek terms).
Copies are sold by the “reprographie” at a special rate; Sophie Klimis transfers her copyrights to the social service of our university.