King's College London

This Religion, Philosophy and Ethics BA brings together the varied study of religion and philosophy with ethics to develop your understanding of the theological and conceptual side of religion.

You’ll explore how important questions at the heart of philosophy and religion have been considered through the ages and across the world. For example, you’ll think about big questions such as the nature of good and evil, the fear of death, human freedom and liberty and the like, as well as considering ethico-political concepts such as authenticity, conformity and oppression.

You will be able to study several major religions, including Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity in order to appreciate the distinct intellectual debates within each tradition. You’ll also be taught philosophy and ethics in a way that introduces conversations with religious questions and helps you understand how religious and secular philosophers have thought about religion over time.

This wide-ranging curriculum, including a list of varied modules, will give you the opportunity to study ethical and religious concepts philosophically in the context of literature, film and history.

This Religion, Philosophy and Ethics BA is an interdisciplinary degree that draws on world-leading expertise in theology and philosophy to teach you not just the intricacies of specific religions but also the wider philosophical and ethical questions that come from them.

You’ll learn from specialists who focus on topics like Buddhist philosophy or Islamic philosophy, among others, to gain an unrivalled insight into the philosophical aspects of different religions. These global philosophy scholars will share their expertise on how philosophy intersects with different religions, offering teaching across a wide-ranging list of optional modules.

The first year of your Religion, Philosophy and Ethics BA will give you a solid understanding of how each subject has developed through the years and a grounding in contemporary debates.

Two required modules will give you an essential foundational understanding of major religious traditions and interactions and introduce you to key sacred texts. You’ll also have a chance to explore the intersections between these traditions and colonialism.

You’ll also develop your understanding of ethics over two modules. One will set out the big, abstract ethical questions in philosophy and theology, for example, those concerning the nature of good and evil, death and so on, while another presents an historical view of ethics and traces its evolution over the years.

The second year of your Religion, Philosophy and Ethics degree is shaped by you through the selection of required and optional modules. For the required modules, you could choose to learn more about the relationship between ethics, values and identity, or you could focus on learning more about various perspectives on God, on the body, or on the philosophies of different religions.

The other two-thirds of your curriculum is built from the optional modules that you elect to study. This interdisciplinary list could see you explore a range of topics, such as theology and the arts or peace and violence. You’ll be able to shape your own specialism by focusing your optional modules on the areas of ethics, religion and philosophy that most interest you.

Your final year is structured similarly: you’ll be able to choose some required modules and optional modules. The required modules of the Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics BA will take your existing knowledge to greater depth by looking at topics such as the search for meaning or contemporary ethical controversies. The list of optional modules will be equally as broad and likely to touch on issues like race, gender and religion, or peoples, migration and belonging, or radicalism and religion, and beyond.

You’ll also be able to choose whether your degree in religion, philosophy and ethics culminates in the production of your own research project in the form of a dissertation. If you choose not to work on a dissertation, you’ll pick up two optional modules instead.

During your time at King’s, you’ll also get the opportunity to engage with a number of extracurricular opportunities. For example, you could join the highly active Theology and Religious Studies Society, which has previously invited education activist Malala Yousafzai to speak and has organised events like museum tours and movie screenings.

There are a number of benefits to studying in central London, too. As well as being able to visit a variety of museums and cultural institutions on your doorstep, you can also access a range of places of worship, including mosques, synagogues, temples and more.