Objectives

Philosophy is a reflective and critical discipline whose aim is to explore fundamental ideas which underlie and penetrate human existence and constitute the deep background of all human endeavors: ideas such as Meaning and Truth, Knowledge and Being, Objectivity and Bias, Good and Evil, Value and Disvalue. Philosophic inquiry into these and related notions is governed by the complementary ideals of analytic precision and comprehensive synthesis, and so it aims to raise these basic notions from their everyday obscurity, to articulate them with logical precision and rigor, and to bind them together into an overarching vision of the nature and purpose of human life.

Accordingly, the Department of Philosophy offers basic courses in Critical Thinking, Human Nature, Ethics, and Contemporary Moral Problems in the core curriculum and a wide variety of courses complementary to studies in a broad range of fields. For convenience, courses are grouped into eight content areas: