Philosophy, BA
Philosophy invites us to stand at the intersection of faith and reason, where life’s more important questions reside.
What is the good life? Why does God permit evil? What is beauty? The Philosophy major is designed for students who enjoy thinking deeply about being human. In our program, you’ll become acquainted with the essential topics, thinkers, and movements of philosophy. To start, our devoted faculty will usher you through 3,000 years of philosophical inquiry, from Plato to Plantinga and beyond. You will then have the opportunity to study how philosophy informs various disciplines, such as politics, art, or cinema.
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Curriculum
Earn an Philosophy, BA and a Single-Subject Teaching Credential at Saint Mary's in just four years through our Single Subject Teaching Credential Integrated Pathway!
The Philosophy Department seeks to cultivate a unique virtue in its students and faculty. We call this intellectual virtue the Philosophical Habit of Mind. It consists, at least, of the following abilities:
- An ability to situate oneself in the Western philosophical tradition of ethical and metaphysical questions and reasoning.
- An ability to account to oneself and to others for the basis of one’s actions.
- An ability to reckon with the consequences of one’s own and other’s practical reasoning in various contexts, both personal and political.
- An ability to raise metaphysical questions in various concrete, lived, literary, and political contexts.
- Distinguish and relate the architectonic questions of metaphysics from and to the specialized questions of the sciences and other disciplines.
- An ability to discern the interconnection between various modes of ethical and political reflection and distinct metaphysical positions.
- An ability to pose to oneself the questions raised by the claims of the Christian faith on one’s own ethical and metaphysical reasoning.
- An ability to read new or contemporary works in the ongoing tradition of dialectical philosophy with all these abilities at one’s disposal.