BA in Philosophy

Chair of the Department: Julien Murphy, 47 Exeter St., Portland Professors:  George Caffentzis, William Gavin, Robert Louden, Julien Murphy; Associate Professors: Jeremiah Conway, Kathleen Wininger, Jason Read; Professors Emeritus: Francis Schwanauer, Joseph Grange

The place of philosophy at the center of any educational endeavor is as true today as it ever was. The perennial questions that philosophy addresses, such as “Who am I as a human being?, How should I act?, What can I know?, What are my obligations to others?, How should society be organized?” are fundamental issues with which education must wrestle and into which it must provide insight. Philosophy is a reasoned pursuit of fundamental truths. It is a systematic investigation of the key assumptions that underlie our thinking and which ordinarily are taken for granted. Much of what is learned in philosophy can be applied in virtually any endeavor. This is both because philosophy touches upon so many subjects and, especially, because many of its methods and analyses are usable in any field. The study of philosophy is beneficial in terms of achieving the following:

General Problem-Solving Ability The study of philosophy enhances one’s problem-solving capacities in a way no other activity does. It helps one to analyze concepts, definitions, arguments, and problems. It contributes to one’s capacity to organize ideas and issues, to deal with questions of value, and to extract what is essential from masses of information.

Communication Skills Philosophy provides some of the basic tools of self-expression, namely, skills in presenting ideas through well-constructed, systematic arguments. One learns to build and defend one’s own views, to appreciate competing positions.

Writing Skills Writing is an important part of most philosophy courses. Philosophy teaches interpretive writing through its examination of challenging texts, comparative writing through emphasis on fairness to alternative positions, argumentative writing through developing students’ abilities to establish their own views, and descriptive writing through detailed portrayal of concrete examples, the anchors to which generalizations must be tied.

The Understanding of Other Disciplines Many important questions about a discipline, such as the nature of its concepts and its relation to other disciplines, do not belong to that discipline, are not usually pursued within a discipline, and are philosophical in nature. Philosophy of science, for instance, is needed to supplement the understanding of the natural and social sciences which one derives from scientific work itself. Philosophy of art, social and political philosophy, the philosophy of religion are of similar value in understanding the respective fields of art, sociology, politics, and religion.