A Critical Approach To Understanding Who We Are
What is truth? What is beauty? What does it mean to be human? What are the limits and possibilities of our knowledge? How can we distinguish right from wrong? Is everything just a matter of opinion? What is evil? What is the infinite? Those are some of the questions that Philosophy majors explore.
The philosophy program at St. Francis College prides itself on a decades-old, glorious history, an outstanding faculty, and a carefully thought-out instruction sequence with rigorous, intellectually stimulating courses at all levels. Students in this program receive a sound foundation for graduate study in philosophy and for training in any field that demands developed analytical skills, such as law, literary criticism or theology, but also medicine, engineering, economics or business management. Its purpose is to make available to students conceptual instruments and sources with which they can begin to effect for themselves the structuring of their experiences. In so doing the program contributes to the College’s success in its primary mission as a liberal arts college: forming minds capable of responsible self-determination.
The program’s objectives are to develop in students an understanding of the nature and purpose of the philosophical enterprise, and to invite them to engage personally in the activity of philosophizing; to foster in students a spirit of wonder and questioning, as well as a respect for truth and its rational pursuit; to sharpen students’ critical thinking abilities and help them formulate principles for meaningful action; to address some of the fundamental questions confronting human beings as such, through a study of the views of philosophers from a variety of traditions. Learning to read a primary text of the history of philosophy, and to derive nourishment from it for one’s own thought, constitutes an essential goal of the program.
Discover the Philosophy and Religious Studies department at St. Francis College today.