Philosophy Curriculum

This course introduces students to the science of logic, the fundamental prerequisite to the study of philosophy. The chief part of the semester is devoted to the three acts of the intellect, apprehension, assertion, and deduction. Students consider the nature of the intellect’s act in grasping concepts and naming them, and the distinction of univocal and equivocal speech that follows upon this, treating at some length the equivocity of being and its highest genera through a study of Aristotle’s Categories. Next, the act of assertion or predication is considered, and then the formation and use of syllogisms and deductive reasoning. In the last part of the semester, students study the application of these concepts to the principles of demonstration and reasoning and to the pursuit of knowledge through the philosophical act.

This subject is often called the “general science of nature” because it investigates and establishes the general presuppositions of the three major sciences of biology, physics, and chemistry, which study material beings from more particular vantages. In this course, students study ens mobile (mobile being)—that is, material things insofar as they change, which is the most obvious truth about them. We differentiate between substantial and accidental change, reason to the ultimate principles that explain change, grasp the distinction between potency and act, relate nature, art, and chance to one another, compare absolute and hypothetical necessity, probe the four kinds of causes (formal, material, efficient, and final), and seek out the definition of motion.

The focus of this course is living material beings, especially their pinnacle, man. What is the definition of life and what are the activities of living? How are living things different from nonliving creatures and machines? What is a human being? How does man differ from other animals? Related topics include the external and internal sense powers, the passions, the rational powers of intellect and will, the unity of body and soul, and the immortality of the human soul.

Having considered the nature of man in PHL 201, we move on in PHL 301 to a consideration of the proper action of man that follows upon his nature. Ethics is the study of human acts as they are ordered to the full flourishing of man on the natural level. Since happiness (under one name or another) is the ultimate end sought by all, ethics deals perforce with the question: What is happiness and how does one attain it? This inquiry necessarily leads to related topics, such as mistaken notions of happiness, the moral and intellectual virtues and their corresponding vices, justice, friendship, and the natural moral law.

Politics is the study of man as a “social animal” who forms political bodies—cities or states—ordered to the common good (or, when corrupted, to private goods at the expense of truly common goods). Politics deals with questions such as: What are family, society, and state, and how do they stand vis-à-vis one another? What are the various forms of government and their relative strengths and weaknesses? What constitutes good or bad rulership and citizenship? To help us answer these questions, we will study a number of historically influential and philosophically paradigmatic approaches to answering these questions—those of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

Metaphysics is the study of being as being. The metaphysician seeks to know the ultimate principles of everything that exists, exploring such topics as the analogy of being and the sciences of being, the derivation of the many from the one, the principle of non-contradiction, the primacy of substance, the division of being by act and potency, and the distinction between existence and essence, seeking above all to know the First Cause from which all finite being emanates, and something of this Cause’s attributes. In addition to metaphysics’ scientific, timeless character, it has had a long and complicated historical development—ancient, scholastic, modern, and post-modern—theunderstanding of which is vitally important for retrieving and reassessing the classical tradition in modern times.