48 Philosophy Course Programs

Do you have a passion to become an independent philosophical researcher or are you eager to know more about the relationship between religion, ethics and history? Our semester courses aim to encourage students to be more conscious, to be creative and critical in their thinking and to consider their own fundamental beliefs and values. If you are already studying in these fields then why not consider studying a semester abroad with a variety of courses in History, Religion or Philosophy at UCT’s Faculty of Humanities. Join the Semester Study Abroad Programme today! Choose from a variety of bachelor and master’s courses, across a wide range of disciplines for international credit transfer.

The main objective of the Seasonal School ROBOPHIL is to provide a compact and focused training on the philosophical, social, political, and technical aspects of the systemic transformations linked to robotics and artificial intelligence, analysed from a perspective that takes into account different philosophical profiles and the multiple dimensions of agency, both individual and collective.

This program offers a full semester (30 ECTS credits) taught in English and is an opportunity for international students to acquire cross-curricular training in humanities and to develop their cultural competence.

Departments of the other Claremont Colleges and CGU are designed to cultivate critical thinking and to introduce the student to the history of philosophy, its traditional problems and subject areas and its connections with related subjects. In addition to preparing students for graduate work in philosophy, philosophy courses are a natural complement to the study of a wide variety of other subjects and can be relevant to preparation for careers in law, medicine and a number of fields involving the natural and social sciences and the humanities.

The Philosophy Minor at KPU provides students with a general education in Western Philosophy that can be a valuable supplement to majors or minors in most other academic disciplines. Philosophy minors must complete courses in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, and are encouraged to take courses in logic and the history of philosophy as well. The minor program is designed to facilitate the development of critical reasoning and writing skills, both in general and with regard to specialized research in the discipline.

Philosophy and Religious Studies are different majors but share a concern with the fundamentals of human existence.

In the Franklin College Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, students learn how to ask life’s most important questions while exploring their own values and the values of other cultures. We specialize in helping others seek out and understand lives of meaning. Philosophy majors can debate with the best of them. Perhaps more than any other academic discipline, philosophy trains students to develop thought-provoking, reasonable, arguments while also helping students recognize the faults in others’ positions. Philosophy students are particularly skilled at seeing social issues from a variety of different perspectives as they develop their lines of argumentation. A truly a valuable skill for any career.

The philosophy option provides students with a broad education in philosophy that is designed to complement the scientific curriculum at Caltech. Students who pursue the philosophy option will be expected to learn about some of the major figures and movements in the history of philosophy, as well as to gain familiarity with contemporary philosophical debates. The philosophy option also aims to provide students with new perspectives on the material they learn in their science courses, and to enable them to bring their technical skills and scientific learning to traditional problems in philosophy.

The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant once suggested three questions human beings can ask, “What can I know?” “What must I do?” and “What may I hope?” Philosophy majors argue over many things, among them what questions we ought to pose, and that suggests a further question, “What should we ask?” The ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates lived by asking questions, so he exemplified this questioning spirit we cultivate in philosophy majors and philosophy classes. Socrates told the Athenians that the unexamined life was not worth living, suggesting that everyone can be a philosophy major by examining life and ourselves, not just the world before us. Philosophy courses at Wabash tie a desire to know, a desire for answers to our questions, to the development of character. For a full offering of philosophy courses, check out our curriculum.

Philosophy bends the mind and sharpens the wits while confronting life’s deepest questions. When you study philosophy at DePauw, you will learn to analyze complex material, think critically, distinguish good from bad reasoning and develop and defend your own ideas. Participate in class discussions that fuel curiosity. When taken in conjunction with appropriate courses in other disciplines, a philosophy major or minor prepares students for professional fields such as law, medicine, business, journalism and government.

Philosophy is a fundamental discipline for all branches of knowledge. Units of study at Campion College are designed to bring to fruition the root meaning of philosophy – namely, the love of wisdom. In an age of specialised knowledge and the separation of disciplines, philosophy at Campion affirms the need for intellectual order and the systematisation and synthesis of knowledge. It provides a common ground for various studies and a basis for intelligible conversation across different fields.

Philosophy is best described as the attempt to think clearly and deeply about the fundamental questions that arise for us as human beings. What is the nature of knowledge (epistemology)? How are we to distinguish between what really is and what only seems to be (metaphysics)? What is the right thing to do (ethics)? Is there any meaning to existence? To study the history of philosophy is to study the best, most enduring answers given to these questions in the past. Because every other field of study adopts some stance toward these questions, though often implicitly, philosophical issues arise in the natural and social sciences, history, linguistics, literature, art, and so on. Special courses in philosophy deal with each of these.

Philosophy also has a collective, widespread role in virtually all areas of human inquiry. Every discipline — physics, history, political science, the arts, and so on — is founded on a philosophy. The practice of philosophy includes making explicit and evaluating these foundational ideas, as well as constructing models about how these disciplines can or should be interrelated.

William James said philosophy is “the habit of always seeing an alternative.” By creating alternatives, philosophy holds out the promise of shaping a better world. This lies at the heart of our mission. We teach students to reflect on the meaning and significance of their own experiences by posing questions they may not yet have the means to answer. In fact, the work of philosophy is not so much to produce definitive answers as it is to question given answers, to interrogate our basic assumptions and habits of thought. The Philosophy Program at Goucher College cultivates this critical standpoint by emphasizing both the history of philosophy and the practice of philosophizing.

The Department of Philosophy at Colorado College embraces diversity in philosophical inquiry, emphasizing historical, contemporary, comparative, and critical approaches in an effort to make available to students the breadth and richness of philosophical thinking. The philosophy major requires a minimum of 12 units. Majors with emphases, requiring a minimum of 14 units, allow students to gain advanced expertise in one of the subfields or areas of interest in philosophy. The Department of Philosophy recommends that students declare the major by the end of their sophomore year.