The Philosophy Department at St. Francis College takes up this challenge. Students are asked to address fundamental questions confronting human beings in the historical record and today.
Answering our biggest questions isn’t easy. Philosophy is what happens when we take such questions seriously. The Department prides itself on its prestigious, decades-old history, its outstanding faculty, and their challenging courses.
Students receive a sound foundation for graduate study in philosophy but also in medicine, law, literature, history, and theology, indeed in any field or profession that demands developed analytical skills and promotes human transformation.
Philosophy Helps:
- Develop the aim of inquiring minds;
- Foster a spirit of historical sensitivity, sympathy, and wonder;
- Guide the pursuit of truth in a rational way;
- Sharpen intellectual ability; and
- Formulate principles for considered, meaningful action in service of self-constitution.
The program provides a sound foundation for graduate study in philosophy and for training in any field demanding developed analytical skills. Its purpose is to make available for students the methods, instruments, and sources needed to help them develop their intellectual lives. Only insofar as students achieve this has the College succeeded in its goal as a liberal arts college, namely, to form minds capable of responsible self-determination.
Goals & Objectives:
- To promote in students an understanding of the nature, purpose, and importance of the philosophical enterprise by inviting them to engage in it personally by raising and working to answer philosophical questions of their own.
- To respect reason as a definitive human characteristic and the truth as its primary pursuit. Students will sharpen their ability to think critically, to consider issues from multiple perspectives and in-depth, to relate parts to wholes. The program emphasizes the value of critical thinking as the best way to distinguish what is worth doing and what is not.
- To address a selection of the major philosophical questions, which are none other than the fundamental questions confronting human beings as such, through a historical study of the views of philosophers. Learning how to read a primary text from the history of philosophy, and to derive nourishment from it, constitutes an essential goal of the program.
