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Welcome to the website of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, an independent teaching and research school housed in the School of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne.

The MSCP is an institution dedicated to scholarly, extensive and engaged readings of key figures and texts in the history of modern European thought and contemporary discourse. Our aim is to bring this work to bear on significant events as they occur in our contemporary context, reflecting on them philosophically. Regular teaching sessions, research activities and conferences are all elements in our attempt to ask questions of our broad socio-cultural context, and our place in it today.

Click here for an introduction to the MSCP, its origins and background blip

The members of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy are people committed to the dissemination of Continental thought, and the promotion of its study, from across Australia and in some cases overseas.

Our Members Page provides a list of MSCP members along with information about their research interests and current projects.

MSCP Members can access the admin site here blip

The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy has as one of its central focuses the teaching of the many traditions of continental European philosophy, and its roots in the more general history of Western philosophy. The courses that the MSCP runs do not involve any assessment, or any demonstrated prior knowledge in the topic in question. They require only an interest in engaging in a careful and rigorous fashion with the material under discussion.

MSCP teaching sessions are run in the two vacation breaks in the university calendar, in January/February and in June/July. A list of courses previously run by the MSCP is available here.

The current Summer School 2009 program can be found here blip

The MSCP website includes a number of textual resources, including

blip conference proceedings;
blip the proceedings of the intensive research days, published online as resources on specific philosophical points of debate or contemporary concern;
blip occasional translations.

Collected here under the title of Propositions are also the texts of a series of debates had in writing by members of the MSCP on a variety of topics, a collection which will grow over time.

All of the texts published on these websites remain the sole copyright of their authors. Our online texts are found here blip

A list of links to external philosophical resources on the Web can be found here.

This page provides visitors to the MSCP website with links to philosophy texts, online philosophy encycopaedias and other philosophical organisations and institutions operating in Melbourne.

Online philosophy texts are available in the public domain for most publications prior to the 20th Century. For the most part these texts are in the mother tongue of the philosopher in question, as translations have come about later, and those which do exist are usually regarded as outdated. Nevertheless, sites such as wikisource provide texts of the great thinkers in history to assist in an engagement with philosophy today.

We are always keen to add links to this page. Please email admin@mscp.org.au with any suggestions blip
Postal Address:
The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
Old Law Quad
University of Melbourne VIC 3010
AUSTRALIA

The MSCP Office (staffed part-time):
Room 146 of the Old Law Quadrangle,
Phone (03) 8344 3889
Fax (03) 8344 4280 (address to the MSCP)

The MSCP is a not-for-profit organisation, and our ABN is 16 828 471 413.

With questions about events, enrolments or general enquiries, please email admin@mscp.org.au. To contact the Convenor of the MSCP, please email convenor@mscp.org.au. If you have a technical problem with this website or the MSCP mailing list, please contact the website administrator at webadmin@mscp.org.au 

To keep up to date with MSCP events, but also other events concerned with Continental philosophy in Melbourne, please subscribe to our mailing list by clicking here. Aside from certain important MSCP announcements or late-breaking news, the mailing list will deliver a digest of current news once a week.

The MSCP does not distribute your contact details to anyone, and your email address will only be used for the purposes of distributing information about Continental philosophy blip

 

GLOBAL WARMING Science, Politics, Ethics 2008

EVENING SCHOOL COURSE SCHEDULE

Semester 1:   Images of Nature: A Philosophical Introduction to an Environmental Ethics
Global Warming: The Science and its Implications
Semester 2:   Global Warming: An Economic Perspective
Summer 2009: Global Warming: Science and Politics in Troubled Times

OTHER DETAILS

Digital Registration Form (excel format) - can be submitted via e-mail or printed and mailed

School Handout - A4 pdf

OUTLINE

These four sets of seminars are open to anyone who considers environmental issues such as climate change matters of vital concern and who is looking for substantial information, food for thought and strategies for action. Each set will be made up of 12 two-hour seminars on Tuesdays or Wednesdays 6:30 – 8:30pm at the Trades Hall, Lygon Street, Carlton. Second semester commences on September 2, 2008. Course costs (semester 2): $175 for students/unwaged; $250 for waged.

SUMMER SCHOOL 2009

Global Warming: Science and Politics in Troubled Times

Lecturer: Dr Cameron Shingleton (MSCP)
Venue: Trades Hall, Carlton
Times: Mondays, 6.30 - 8.30, March 16 - June 1 (12 weeks)
Prices: $140 (student/unwaged), $180 (waged)

Few people would dispute that the issue of climate change raises serious questions for political life, both in democratic and non-democratic societies and for global civilisation at large. Global Warming: Science and Politics in Troubled Times attempts to articulate some of those questions by looking at the political contexts in which science is practised. It examines in detail the difficulties besetting the relationship between scientific prediction and public policy, the presentation of scientific issues in the media and the broader dilemmas that follow from the fact that, in the absence of a sudden dawning of universal enlightenment, mass societies can and do take the pronouncements of scientific experts on faith. The problems will be posed in a local context as well as in the abstract: how can we account for the general unwillingness in a mass democracy such as Australia to address the issue of global warming with the seriousness scientific analysis seems to require?

Click here for a more detailed course outline.

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SEMESTER 2 2008 - September 2 - November 16

Global Warming: An Economic Perspective

Lecturer: Dr Jim Crosthwaite
Location: Trades Hall, Lygon Street, Carlton
Time: Tuesdays 6:30 – 8:30pm

Global Warming: An Economic Perspective seeks to answer two questions – how can the phenomena of man-made climate change be understood from an economic perspective and what sorts of changes in economic mindset, policy and individual practice need to be brought about to help galvanise urgent action? The seminars are aimed at anyone who accepts the proposition that there is no economy without a living environment, but who nonetheless feels disoriented by the welter of political proposals on offer within mainstream and non-mainstream debate.

Click here for a more detailed course outline.

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SEMESTER 1 2008

Images of Nature: A Philosophical Introduction to an Environmental Ethics

Lecturer: Dr Cameron Shingleton
Location: Trades Hall, Lygon Street, Carlton
Time: Tuesdays 6:30 – 8:30pm

A Philosophical Introduction to An Environmental Ethics presents a thorough survey of the origins, development and fragmentation of ethical life with a view to addressing the environmental dilemmas of the present. In dealing with the history of ethics it will touch on the images of nature at the core of several Western and non-Western bodies of thought, from Buddhism to Stoicism to Spinoza’s pantheism. In addressing the present, which confronts dual ethical and environmental difficulties of sizeable proportions, the question will be: how might past thought and practice be invented anew so as to give shape to meaningful contemporary forms of existence? The course is designed to give a sense of the way history and philosophy can be points of orientation in facing the acute environmental difficulties of the present. It is aimed at all who feel that a pragmatic response to environmental issues can be complemented by a re-vitalised cultural sense of human beings’ place within nature.

Click here for a more detailed course outline.

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Global Warming: The Science and its Implications

Lecturer: Phillip Sutton
Location: Trades Hall, Lygon Street, Carlton
Time: Wednesdays 6:30 – 8:30pm

Did you know that, based on recent observational data, it is quite likely that the Arctic ice cap will have completely melted by 2012, leaving the Arctic Ocean fully free of ice in summer? This course is designed for non-specialists wanting to develop a detailed sense of how the climate system works and an effective grasp on the scientific controversies surrounding climate science – the debates between the sceptics, the IPCC consensus science and the beyond-IPCC science. The course also looks at what decision-making systems should be applied and what goals should be set for action to address the full gamut of climate-related maladies. How do ethics and risk management strategies apply? And finally, if the threat of climate change is as serious as much climate science suggests, how should this be handled?

Click here for a more detailed course outline.

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