Cyril McDonnell

Heidegger's  controversial philosophical development of Husserl's idea of phenomenology. The origins and unfolding of 'hermeneutic' and 'scientific' methods of enquiry in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century phenomenology (especially, by Brentano, Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas). Brentano's revaluation of the scholastic concept(s) of intentionality in his new science of 'descriptive psychology' and the influences of the 'English empiricists' (Hume, J.S. Mill) on his 'new lines of thinking' on 'the intentionality of consciousness'. Post-Kantian philosophies of consciousness, in particular, by Fichte on moral consciousness, and of religious consciousness, in particular, by Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Levinas and Desmond. Topics in (special) ethics, in particular, the question of the proper relation of morality to law; the concept and moral justification of punishment; the history and development of the concept of (legal and moral) rights. Philosophy of education, especially, the concepts of teaching and learning and the nature of the 'causal relationship' between teaching and learning.