The Philosophy Major

As teachers of philosophy, we empower our students to express and defend their own philosophical ideas. At the same time, we bring these ideas into collision with those of past masters and contemporary thinkers. As a result, we recruit more and better philosophers for our society. These philosophers, having been confronted with a diversity of compelling viewpoints, will know how to understand opinions different from their own. They will know how to think critically about these various views. They will know how to address the difficult problems that this process of critique often raises. And these philosophers will also be acutely aware of how far every aspect of humanity, including the rational faculty, has fallen from the human ideal implicit in the image of God. A few of these philosophers will take philosophy as their life’s work. The rest will take philosophy to their life’s work. But wherever they may be, all of them will bring the critical tools of philosophy to bear on the most fundamental moral and intellectual questions that confront us.

Program Requirements

Requirements total 39 hours. This includes 30 hours of philosophy courses and 9 hours of supporting courses. Three of the required core hours (PH 180) meet general education requirements.

Core Courses (30 hrs)

Supporting Courses (9 hrs)

Supporting hours may be spread among various departments or concentrated in a single department. A student may, by written petition, request that other courses be accepted as fulfilling this requirement. No course may be used to satisfy both a general education requirement and the supporting courses requirement.

Course work taken in a foreign language may also be counted toward the “Supporting Courses” requirement.

Updated to 2008-09 Catalog