Major Requirements

COURSEWORK

Students are required to complete the courses listed below and seven additional electives.

Courses

Electives

Three of these courses must be at the 300-level, and students must meet the following distribution requirements: one course in the history of philosophy, one course in diversity in philosophy, one course on philosophical questions of self and community, and one course on philosophical questions of mind and world. Students must also take at least one philosophy course designated as experiential learning.

History of Philosophy

Courses in the History of Philosophy directly study the views and arguments that have shaped the discipline over thousands of years, through engagement with primary philosophical texts.

Diversity in Philosophy

Although diverse perspectives are represented across our courses, Diversity in Philosophy courses focus on philosophical topics, authors and texts that have traditionally been marginalized within the Western philosophical tradition due to a lack of socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, gender, and intersectional diversity in academic philosophy.

Self and Community

Self and Community courses examine questions that arise when we consider how to live a good life and how to relate to human beings, non-human animals, and other aspects of the world around us.  

Mind and World

Mind and World courses apply the methods of philosophy to examine questions that arise when considering the fundamental nature of the world and our place in it. Courses that meet this requirement explore the conceptual foundations of our theories of the world or explore the nature of our knowledge of or representations of the world.

Experiential Learning

Experiential Learning can be understood as learning through reflection on doing. Within philosophy, experiential learning may take many forms, but primarily:

(a) Work with community partners or meaningful engagement with a real-world context, where student experiences in these spaces are central to, and necessary for, course objectives.

(b) Courses which centrally revolve around a pedagogical approach other than classroom lecture and/or discussion, specifically courses in which students are provided with structured, active experiences and/or creative opportunities, and students learn philosophical sensitivity and analytic abilities through the engagement, itself, and by reflecting on these experiences.