The department offers majors and minors in both philosophy and religious studies. Advisers encourage students to acquire background in a special interest by taking courses in other disciplines. A philosopher of science, for example, needs to study biology, just as a student interested in aesthetics must learn about art, music, and literature. All senior philosophy majors must pass a comprehensive examination. The remaining one can be taken in religion.
Presents aims, methods, and content of philosophy through important figures and perennial problems.
Examines ways classical and contemporary philosophers have analyzed friendship so that students can develop and express their own understandings. Addresses 2,400 years of writings on imitation, significant form, expression, death of art, taste, psychic distance, beauty, and the aesthetic. Investigates perennial philosophical issues in conflicts of literary characters and ideas. Considers works of Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Barth, Ellison, Camus, and Flannery O'Connor. Explores moral grounds for state, place and value of freedom, nature and justification of property, and rights of individual to classical and contemporary thinkers.