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Philosophy

Associate Professor Phillip Sherman, Chair, Division of Humanities

Associate Professor Andrew Irvine, Coordinator

A liberal arts education is literally about the “arts of freedom.” To be truly free, requires one to question and to think for oneself. Philosophy, which literally means the “love of wisdom,” lies at the heart of a liberal arts education because it asks students to question, explore, and pursue truth wherever it may lead. In philosophy, rigor, honesty, and humility are requisite to exploring questions about reality and truth, justice and morality, life and death, language and culture, society and politics, and God and the meaning of existence. Students who major or minor in philosophy learn to think and write critically and to read and analyze texts carefully. Such skills are excellent preparations for professions in law, politics, business, education, ministry, and medicine. An overall aspiration for students of philosophy is that they experience and express the worth of an examined life.

Students successfully completing the program of study will have achieved the following learning outcomes:

  1. Understand basic principles of logic and evaluate and construct arguments.
  2. Explicate classic texts, figures, and themes from Western philosophical traditions.
  3. Understand and analyze the philosophical dimensions of ethics, politics and/or culture.
  4. Compare philosophical ideas cross-culturally.
  5. Formulate a question appropriate for philosophical inquiry and be able to discuss philosophical problems and perspectives relevant to that question.