パーソナルステイトメントの書き方については、 次のような説明書きがついている。
"Describe your academic interests and reasons for applying. Research (MPhil/PhD etc.) applicants should state in which research areas or specific projects being offered by the department they are interested. LLM applicants should list the four subjects they wich to study. Applicants for other taught programs, in particular modular programmes, should indicate, where appropriate, the options/modules in which they are likely to be interested. Detail your career objectives and any relevant non-academic achievements as well as any publications. Outline any other relevant experience including attendance at specialist workshops or short courses."
入りたいところは、Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences が提供しているLegal and Political Theory MAという一年間のtaught course。 taught courseというのは、PhDコースなどと違って、 授業に出て単位を取らなきゃいけないプログラムのこと。 そこで上の説明書きの中で書くべきことは、次の四つ。
それぞれ日本語で簡単に書くなら、
My major is ethics and I have long been interested in Jeremy Bentham's moral and political thoughts, namely his utilitarianism and legal positivism. Since my undergraduate years I have examined his utilitarian thinking and, observing that most scholars in ethics (at least in Japan) study Bentham only as an utilitarian while often neglecting his legal positivism, I felt that for the better understanding of his utilitarianism, one must look into his criticism of natural rights theory (which I believe is the core of his positivistic thinking). Accordingly, I have decided to write my Ph.D thesis on the relationship between Bentham's utilitarianism and legal positivism, and in order to know more about Bentham's thoughts I thought it best to take classes in UCL, where the Bentham Project has been editing the new edition of Jeremy Bentham's collected works and where many distinguished Bentham scholars are.
Among the courses offered for MA in Legal and Political Theory, I am strongly interested in the following courses: 1. Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarian Tradition; 3. Contemporary Political Philosophy; 5. Jurisprudence and Legal Theory.
My career objectives are to obtain the doctrate degree at Kyoto University and to become a professor of ethics (most probably in Japan). I aim to acquire enough knowledge to teach the modern and contemporary moral and political thoughts of Britain and America. Here are the names of my recent papers related to Bentham study (all written in Japanese): `Bentham's Principle of Utility: concerning the alleged inconsistency between his theory of ethics and that of human nature' (my master's thesis); `Bentham on Virtue and Happiness' (presented at the 1999 conference of Japanese Society of Utilitarian Studies and published in Jissen Tetsugaku Kenkyu [Studies for Practical Philosophy]); `Bentham's Criticism of Natural Rights' (presented at the 1999 conference of Kansai Society for Ethics). I have also translated into Japanese Dr. Philip Schofield's `Legal Positivism and the Rejection of Contractarianism in early Utilitarian Thought' (published in Jissen Tetsugaku Kenkyu). I have attended the conference of the Japanese Society of Utilitarian Studies in 1998 and 1999, and had a presentation in 1999.