Professor Quassim Cassam has designed a website on professional virtues in modern medicine (Professional Virtues in Modern Medicine) which has been adopted as a training module by the Royal College of General Practitioners. There are many difficult questions about the nature of general practice, and thinking about and exploring generalist virtues has helped GPs to clarify the idea of it. Professor Cassam has also organised annual training days for trainee GPs, in addition to delivering several conferences and workshops for groups over 40 General Practitioners.

Professor Cassam says: “I've always been interested in medicine, and this led me to think about the virtues of a good GP. My work has two aims: to identify the key virtues of excellent general practice and help GPs to cultivate these virtues. Most GPs have little or no philosophical training, and it is a major challenge to convince them that philosophy has anything to contribute to their professional toolkit. GPs face enormous challenges, and anything that helps them to improve is worth doing. Most GPs who have attended the training days and workshops have given me positive feedback. For many, it is important to have time set aside for reflection on their professional practice. I approached the work with humility – I hope! I'm always hugely impressed by trainee GPs and would be delighted to have contributed to their thinking about what it is to be a good GP. The beauty of this work is that GPs and philosophers have so much to learn from each other. I couldn't imagine a better environment in which to continue develop such a project, with its direct philosophical impact, than here at Warwick”.

 Web link: https://warwick.ac.uk/research/ref/stories/philosophical-thinking-to-help-gps/

 Read more from Professor QuassimLink opens in a new window [Link to full case study] 

Peter Poellner, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, has a new book published by Oxford University Press. In Value in Modernity, The Philosophy of Existential Modernism in Nietzsche, Scheler, Sartre, and Musil (OUP, April 2022), Professor Poellner presents an original and innovative reconstruction of a strand of philosophical modernism previously overlooked, and explores new interpretations of Nietzsche and Sartre and their ethical thought. Professor Poellner’s text also offers the first in depth interpretation in English of the philosophical centre of Musil’s The Man Without Qualities.

Value in Modernity - Peter Poellner - Oxford University Press (oup.com)

Professor Stephen Houlgate was a guest on an edition of ‘In Our Time’ with Melvyn Bragg, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 26^th May 2022. The topic for discussion was Hegel's Philosophy of History. Other speakers were Sally Sedgwick (Boston University) and Robert Stern (University of Sheffield).

A link to the programme is here: In Our Time - Hegel's Philosophy of History - BBC Sounds

The Humanities Council and the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University have appointed Professor Andrew Huddleston as a Long-Term Visiting Fellow. During his Fellowship, which will commence in the Autumn of 2022, Professor Huddleston will be teaching a graduate seminar as well as continuing to undertake research on his book about the religious aspirations of art during the period from Early German Romanticism through Modernism.

Professor Huddleston is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Post-Kantian European Philosophy, and specialises particularly in 19th and 20th century European Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Ethics.

https://humanities.princeton.edu/2022/05/13/council-announces-2022-23-long-term-and-short-term-visitors/

The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce an impressive set of results for the REF 2021 assessment of Research Excellence. 48% of our research outputs (e.g., books, book chapters, and articles) were assessed as 4* (world leading); 45% of our overall submission was also assessed as 4* (so, that includes research outputs, research impact (non-academic change/effect/benefit based on our research), and our research environment). Altogether, this is an excellent outcome for the Philosophy Department, and an achievement that the Department plans to build on in the future.

 The UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) is an internationally recognised system for assessing the quality of research carried out in UK Higher Education Institutions.