Philosophy

Programs

Courses

PHI 1000: Knowledge, Reality, Self

Program
Credits 3

Philosophical responses to the questions of how we can know, what is real, and what is the nature of human existence that explore the dialogue between Catholic, Christian, secular and skeptical perspectives on these questions.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Effective Term
201130

PHI 1990: Topics

Program
Credits 1

One-credit course on variable topics; course meets for a minimum of 14 hours.

Last Offered
Spring 2021
Effective Term
202130

PHI 2010: Logic & Critical Thinking

Program
Credits 3

The study of logic and critical thinking. Topics include: argument identification and analysis; formal and informal logic; fallacies; inductive argument; the role of argumentative structures in various philosophical traditions.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2020: Symbolic Logic

Program
Credits 3

Propostional and first-order predicate logic; logical structure of arguments; symbolic languages; correct and incorrect inferences; fallacies; truth-tables; natural deduction.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
201720

PHI 2115: Ethics for Health Care Prof

Program
Credits 3

Rights and duties of the patient/client and the members of the health care team, death and dying, genetic engineering and manipulation.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Effective Term
200020

PHI 2117: The Good Doctor

Program
Credits 3

The art and science, learning and dispositional attitudes necessary for the moral practice of medicine by a good doctor. Themes for the course drawn from philosophical resources, sociological theory, data and first-person medical narratives.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Effective Term
201430

PHI 2121: Environmental Ethics

Program
Credits 3

The relation of the physical and biological environment to ethical values. Priorities among environmental, economic and political values as a basis for ethical decisions.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2155: Engineering Ethics

Program
Credits 3

Engineering ethics through case studies focusing on professional responsibility, the role of technology in society and a holistic evaluation of the purpose of science and engineering.

Last Offered
Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
Effective Term
201730

PHI 2160: The Ethics of War

Program
Credits 3

Just war theory, total war, nuclear deterrence and nuclear war, disarmament, genocide, war crimes and atrocities, terrorism, non-violent resistance, and pacifism.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2020, Spring 2019
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2180: Computer Ethics

Program
Credits 3

Codes of professional ethics, unauthorized access, ownership of software, and the social responsibility of computing professionals.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
200020

PHI 2190: Freedom

Program
Credits 3

Human freedom analyzed from a metaphysical and political perspective; readings from classical and contemporary sources on such topics as determinism, slavery, rights, authority and dissent.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Spring 2018
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2400: Social & Political Phil

Program
Credits 3

Social and political philosophers and the influence of their theories on the philosophical foundation of modern culture and society; emphasis on such conceptions as society, the state, justice and equality, and the social and political nature of persons.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Effective Term
199520

PHI 2410: Philosophy of Sex & Love

Program
Credits 3

Embodiment, the nature of sexuality, the types of love, sexual ethics, marriage, sexual differences, and sexual discrimination.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2420: Philosophy of Women

Program
Credits 3

Nature and status of women from ancient times to the present, with consideration of the more general context of self-identity; contemporary feminist theories; feminism as a political movement.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2450: Catholic Social Thought

Program
Credits 3

Catholic Social Thought from Rerum Navarum to the present. Its Aristotelean-Thomistic grounding. The Church's challenge to analyses of contemporary social, political, and economic systems.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
200130

PHI 2470: Irish Thought and Literature

Program
Credits 3

An examination of main thinkers in the Irish tradition; the relation of reason (science) and religion; the importance of poetry; themes to be explored include (e)migrant thought, exile and home, English as colonizers, langage and voice, laughter and comedy.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2020
Effective Term
201920

PHI 2480: Africana Philosophy

Program
Credits 3

Survey of theoretical writings and discourses by authors from Africa and the African diaspora at large, especially African-American and West-Indian authors.

Last Offered
Fall 2021, Spring 2020
Effective Term
202030

PHI 2490: Latin Amer & African Amer Phil

Program
Credits 3

Colonialism and anti-colonial struggles, slavery and abolition, the Black and Latinx radical traditions, intersectionality and materialist critique, race/gender/sexuality/class relations, mass incarceration and detention, media and culture, liberation struggles.

Last Offered
Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2021
Effective Term
202130

PHI 2500: Philosophy of Exchange

Program
Credits 3

Monetary exchange in philosophical perspective: money as a means and as an end; higher and lower forms of exchange; sacrificial economies; the politics of scarcity; sacred economics.

Last Offered
Spring 2021, Fall 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2005
Effective Term
201720

PHI 2550: Technology & Society

Program
Credits 3

Case studies of specific technologies (such as television, automobiles, health technology) and critical examination of ethical Philosophical and policy issues that these technologies raise.

Last Offered
Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2020
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2700: Philosophy of Science

Program
Credits 3

Philosophical implications of specific laws and theories; Newton's laws, energy, evolution, relativity, atomic theory. Methodological problems of observation, discovery, testing; scientific realism, revolutions in scientific thought.

Last Offered
Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2006
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2760: Philosophy & Literature

Program
Credits 3

Philosophical ideas in selected literary works; examination of the relation of literature to philosophy; fiction and truth, modes of communication.

Last Offered
Fall 2022, Summer 2022, Fall 2020, Summer 2015
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2900: Philosophy of Religion

Program
Credits 3

The meaning of God, the experience of the Divine, nature of revelation, negative theology, the absence of God.

Last Offered
Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2019, Spring 2019
Effective Term
200620

PHI 2930: Indian Philosophy

Program
Credits 3

Introduction to basic traditions of Indian philosophy; exploration of debates between these traditions on fundamental issues of epistemology metaphysics, and philosophy of religion.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2020
Effective Term
202030

PHI 2940: Indian & Tibetan Buddhist Phil

Program
Credits 3

An exploration of fundamental problems, traditions, and themes in Buddhist philosophy as developed in India and Tibet.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021
Effective Term
202030

PHI 2993: Internship

Program
Credits 3

Departmentally related and academically creditable field work experience. See department chair for more information. Permission of Department Chair required.

Last Offered
Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Summer 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
199520

PHI 2996: Internship

Program
Credits 6

Departmentally related and academically creditable field work experience. See department chair for more information.

Last Offered
Summer 2025, Summer 2024, Summer 2023, Summer 2022
Effective Term
199520

PHI 3000: Research Seminar Phil Majors

Program
Credits 3

Research methods and information literacy in Philosophy leading to practiced philosophical writing based on instructor feedback and/or peer review.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2004
Effective Term
202420

PHI 3020: History of Ancient Philosophy

Program
Credits 3

Plato, Aristotle and selected pre-Socratic and Hellenistic philosophers in the context of ancient and classical Greek civilization.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 3030: History of Medieval Philosophy

Program
Credits 3

Philosophical movements from the early Middle Ages to the rise of modern philosophy; the influence of later Medieval speculation upon thinkers of the modern period; readings from Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and others.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 3040: Hist of Early Mod Philosophy

Program
Credits 3

The systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and the empiricists - Locke, berkeley, and Hume; Kant; selections read and evaluated.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 3100: Augustine & Antiquity

Program
Credits 3

Life and thought of Saint Augustine; the problem of certitude, the problem of evil, the nature of history, human knowledge and God, the soul-body relations, and political philosophy.

Last Offered
Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2018, Spring 2009
Effective Term
200720

PHI 3160: History of Islamic Phil

Program
Credits 3

Islamic thought, concentrating particularly on Islamic medieval theology and philosophy.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
Effective Term
199520

PHI 3720: Marx & Marxism

Program
Credits 3

Marx on the theories of human nature, freedom and history; related developments in Marxist thought.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2020, Spring 2014
Effective Term
200620

PHI 4125: Bioethics

Program
Credits 3

Advanced issues in clinical and research ethics: neuro-enhancement, radical life-extension, phase 1 trials on the non-consenting, ethics of life and death, and ethics of pandemics.

Last Offered
Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2015
Effective Term
201430

PHI 4140: Phil of Contemporary Music

Program
Credits 3

Critical listening to rock pop, jazz, rap, funk, punk, dance, and ambient music; relation of music to noise; theories of Hanslick, Nietzsche, Adorno, Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, and Cage.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 4150: Philosophy & Film

Program
Credits 3

Analysis of selected classics and current films from the perspective of basic philosophical concepts and questions.

Last Offered
Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 4300: Death and Dignity

Program
Credits 3

An account of the most influential philosophical interpretations of death, and an exploration of the fact of dying as a political and social phenomenon grounded on historical examples.

Last Offered
Spring 2021, Spring 2000
Effective Term
202130

PHI 4600: Psychoanalysis & Philosophy

Program
Credits 3

Philosophical implications of Freudian theory as it relates to the individual and culture; the role of the unconscious; interpretation, structure of the ego, human sexuality and the foundations of civilization.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
Effective Term
200620

PHI 4610: Philosophy of Mind

Program
Credits 3

The nature of mind, soul, consciousness; the mind-brain relationship; classical and contemporary philosophical approaches; the nature of person identity and moral responsibility.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Effective Term
200620

PHI 4825: Existentialism

Program
Credits 3

The active, feeling and living human being as the starting point for thinking about existence as more than brute facts and rational truths. Alienation, absurdity, emptiness and dread but also the freedom, authenticity, commitment and creativity as human responses to the apparent meaninglessness of life.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Effective Term
201430

PHI 5000: Adv Sem for Phil Majors

Program
Credits 3

Special topic in philosophy or current interest to faculty and students. Course is open to Philosophy majors and minors and graduate students with the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Effective Term
200720

PHI 6000: Senior Thesis

Program
Credits 3

Inquiry in depth into one major philosophical problem or into the thought of one major philosopher; practice in the use of research and bibliographical techniques. techniques.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
202320