Senior Stretch: Philosophy Day

Julie Arliss

Plato remains one of the most influential thinkers in Western philosophy, shaping ideas about reality, knowledge, ethics, and the pursuit of truth. His exploration of justice, truth, and the nature of reality challenges us to look beyond surface appearances and question the world around us. This talk will introduce Plato’s key concepts, including the Theory of Forms, his famous Allegory of the Cave, and his ideas on justice, the soul, and the ideal society. Understanding Plato’s philosophy nurtures critical thinking, challenges assumptions, and encourages engagement with life’s most profound questions. By learning to think deeply and independently, students embark on their own philosophical journeys, inspired by Plato’s enduring insights.

Dr Christopher O’Neill

For centuries the name ‘Machiavelli’ has been a byword for cunning, ruthlessness, and political manipulation. Shakespeare cast him as a villain, and history remembers him as the man who advised rulers it is “better to be feared than loved.” Yet Machiavelli was far more than a writer of political strategy. He was a diplomat, a comic playwright, a passionate correspondent, and — in his own day — as famous for his views on love and marriage as for his insights into power. To study Machiavelli is to confront a thinker who looked human nature in the eye, without illusion, and asked awkward questions we still struggle with today.

Through his letters, comedies, and the legal records of his time, we can peek “through the bedroom keyholes” of Renaissance Florence. What we find is both fascinating and unsettling: love, marriage, and gender were viewed in ways that challenge many of our modern assumptions.

This session will invite students to grapple with the philosophical puzzle: what do these Renaissance perspectives reveal about love and marriage today? Is Machiavelli’s no-nonsense take on human behaviour a cynical dismissal of romance, or a clear-eyed recognition of human nature? And how far have our ideas about love, marriage, and gender really moved on?

By turns funny, sharp, and sometimes shocking, this inquiry opens up a world both distant and disarmingly familiar — a chance to test our own ideas against the provocative insights of the Renaissance.

Julie Arliss

Why does courage inspire us so deeply? Why do philosophers argue that without it, no other virtue is truly possible?

From the earliest thinkers to modern psychology, courage has been seen as something essential to human life — the strength that allows every other good quality to stand. Yet its meaning is far from simple. Is courage about bold action, or patient endurance? Is it forged in extraordinary moments, or discovered in the choices we make every day?

In this session, students will be shown how ideas about courage have evolved from Aristotle’s account of it as the foundation of the moral life, through Aquinas’ focus on steadfastness, and into modern perspectives that explore resilience and personal growth. More importantly, they will be equipped with the tools to think for themselves about what courage is and why it matters.

This session will invite students to grapple with the timeless question What is courage? and to test how it speaks to their own lives. They will be challenged to think laterally, question deeply, and push beyond surface-level answers. Together, we will explore how courage has been understood in different traditions, and what that reveals about fear, freedom, and human flourishing. Most of all, students will be encouraged to reflect not only on how to understand courage, but on how to become a person of courage.

Dr Christopher O’Neill

Why does music move us so powerfully? Why does a single song awaken a memory thought long lost, or transform our mood in an instant? Philosophers since Plato have debated the place of music in human life. Is it mere entertainment, or something closer to a form of knowledge, shaping the soul itself? This talk will ask: what does music reveal about who we are?

Drawing on research from evolutionary psychology, this talk will explore how music has helped our species survive, and how music has been used across history for healing and ritual. Neuroscience now reveals how music affects the brain — releasing dopamine highs, reawakening memory in Alzheimer’s patients, and helping stroke survivors learn to speak again. From its effects on disorders of memory, mood and movement, we’ll look at what modern research tells us about the healing power of music today.

Learn what the research says about music in our everyday life – how the music we choose can sharpen our focus, soothe our stress, and improve our mental health. What does that say about the hidden connections between emotion, reason, and our shared ancestral human culture? Are we, in some sense, made for music? This session will invite you to reflect on music not merely as a soundtrack to our lives, but as a philosophical puzzle: a scientific marvel, a profound source of meaning, and one of the most powerful forms of healing we possess.

Be honest — what really makes people tick? Is it love that inspires kindness, loyalty and creativity, or is it fear of failure, rejection, or embarrassment that actually drives us on? Think of exams, deadlines, parents, teachers… are we motivated more by passion or by panic? In this lively end-of-day debate, students are invited to step up, share their views, and lock horns over which force truly rules the human heart — love or fear. Expect sparks, laughter, and some surprisingly sharp philosophy.