The Pursuit of Wisdom

Philosophy is committed to the Socratic motto that "the unexamined life is not worth living".   The examination of one's life and the pursuit of wisdom begin with a question.   As such, philosophy's ultimate purpose is disciplined reflection on life's "big" questions, universal questions about the meaning of Being that have occupied human beings since the dawn of history.  These questions, simply put, are "Who are we?" and "Where are we?"  Or, what is the ultimate nature of the universe we live in and what does it mean to be human in it?  These animating questions immediately generate the more detailed questions of metaphysics (What is ultimately real?  Why should there be anything at all?), which includes philosophy of religion (Is there a mind at the foundation of things and is it accessible to us?), and the questions of ethics (What belongs to living a good life and what values are worthy of our allegiance?) and aesthetics (What is the nature of beauty and the basis of artistic discrimination?).  Answers to these questions are interconnected, and many answers are possible.  And different answers have different implications for moral philosophy (How should we conduct ourselves in relation to other persons?) and social and political philosophy (how should we organize our lives together?).  Moreover, the persistent pursuit of these questions reveals a constellation of other questions.  For example, how are answers to such questions justified?  This, in turn, leads to reflection on the scope, methods, and limits of human knowledge, which form the subject-matter of epistemology and philosophy of science (What, if anything, can we know, and how can we know it?), which also raise questions about the nature of thought and language that make up the disciplines of logic, semantics, and linguistic analysis.  Philosophy, accordingly, may be thought of as the exploration of this WEB of questions.

Philosophy 2201  Introduction to Philosophy
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Basic themes, problems, vocabulary, and representative figures of philosophy.

Philosophy 2251  Introduction to Ethics and Contemporary Moral Issues
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Ethical traditions of western culture and their application of historic perspectives to contemporary moral issues in medicine, business, and environmental relations.

Philosophy 3110  Ancient Philosophy
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Ancient philosophy with emphasis on the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, and Neo-Platonism.

Philosophy 3120  Medieval Philosophy and the Rise of Humanism
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Medieval philosophy and the rise of humanistic studies in the Renaissance, with emphasis on Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Occam, Erasmus, Bacon, Machiavelli, and Montaigne.

Philosophy 3130  Continental Rationalism and British Empiricism
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
The modern rationalist tradition and its rival empirical tradition, with emphasis on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; and on Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

Philosophy 3140  Kant and the 19th Century
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Nineteenth century philosophy with emphasis on Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, James, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.

Philosophy 3150  Twentieth Century Philosophy
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Twentieth century schools and trends in philosophy as exhibited by such figures as Heidegger, Whitehead, Moore, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Ayer.

Philosophy 3200  Technology, Society, and Human Values
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
A philosophical exploration of the formative impact of technology on the character of modern culture and human values.  The study of competing descriptions and definitions of technology as well as questions regarding the effective human control of technology, the moral neutrality of technology, and the effects of technology on conceptual paradigms, language, politics, economics, science, education, art, and religion.

Philosophy 3330  Philosophy of Religion
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101 and at least on philosophy course
Major problems arising in the encounter between philosophy and religious belief (reason and faith).  Emphasis on the validity and nature of religious belief, the problem of evil, as well as the meaning and status of religious language.

Philosophy 3340  Symbolic Logic
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101 and at least one philosophy course
Formal logic and the techniques of symbolism used for analyzing the validity of formal deductive systems.  Emphasis on the analysis of truth functions, quantification theory, and the theory of relations.

Philosophy 4000  Special Topics
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101
Offered on demand.  Focuses either on a topic such as existentialism, aesthetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy and literature, or on one great ancient, medieval, or modern philosopher such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Sartre or Wittgenstein.

Philosophy 4900  Independent Study
Prerequisite: ENGL 1101 and a 3000 level philosophy course
Offered on demand.  The student, with the advice and permission of the supervising professor, selects the topic and submits a prospectus for department approval before the semester in which the course is to be taken.  Transient students may take this course only with the permission of the department head.