Philosophy

• Famous philosophy majors include: Steve Martin, Harrison Ford, Alex Trebek, and Mary Higgins Clark.
• Many members of the Monty Python group are philosophers. There is a close connection between comedy and philosophy. Both deal with the absurd. Both look at ordinary things in radically new ways.
• St. Pope John Paul II taught philosophy for many years at the Catholic University of Lublin, before becoming bishop of Krakow and later Pope.
• St. Thomas Aquinas referred to Aristotle simply as “The Philosopher.”
• Philosophy is the only discipline which includes, as a subject within that discipline, what the nature of the discipline is. (“What is philosophy?” is a question in philosophy, but “What is physics?” is not a question in physics.)
• The great mathematician Kurt Goedel loved philosophy and took inspiration from philosophy for his famous “incompleteness proof.” His proof is a sophisticated development of the Liar Paradox: Is the statement “I am now lying” true or false? (It seems to be false, if it’s true, and true, if it’s false.)

As undergraduates, philosophy majors can work as research assistants or interns to professors, whether at the university, at centers of ethics and public policy, or at think tanks.

Top philosophy majors can go on to graduate studies and academic careers. Philosophy is considered excellent preparation for law school. Many students double-major in philosophy and something else: for example, students who double-major in a science often take pre-med courses and go on to medical school.

The writing skills required for philosophy can be applied in journalism and in effective written communications in business. The debating skills fostered by philosophy are valuable for discussions and deliberations in every area of life and business.

Philosophy is an excellent major for any field or career. There are countless lawyers, accountants, engineers, doctors, teachers, cabinet makers, builders, salesmen and (perhaps most important of all) homemakers, who have majored in philosophy and have said that no other path of study would have given them the same deep and broad education. Without a solid foundation in philosophy, it is difficult to be a good citizen, to understand the principles underlying our work, and to make wise choices in our personal lives. Philosophy is essential to the integration of faith and reason for a Christian.

Bl. John Henry Newman explained in his work, The Idea of a University, that the purpose of a university education is to develop the intellectual virtues. Perhaps no discipline fosters the intellectual virtues as well as philosophy: “The artist puts before him beauty of feature and form; the poet, beauty of mind; the preacher, the beauty of grace: then intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object as intelligible … as the cultivation of virtue, while, at the same time, it is absolutely distinct from it.”

We have an excellent undergraduate major which is soundly based on the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, while also conveying an understanding of modern movements such as analytic and continental philosophy. All of our faculty members are deeply conversant with the Catholic intellectual tradition while being specialists as well in some particular area.

Because students can work closely with us, in small seminars, reading groups, and directed study, you will get personal attention here. There are many opportunities to associate with our faculty and become friends of professors outside the class environment. You can take your studies as far as you wish, and our best students have gone on to study at some of the best graduate programs around the world, including the Catholic University of America, the University of Arizona, Cambridge University, and the University of St. Thomas.