Program Description

The Philosophy Program represents a rich spectrum of intellectual traditions, with an emphasis on the history of Western thought from ancient Greece to the modern world. Students are also strongly encouraged to include non-Western traditions in their coursework. The philosophy major is designed for:

1. students who seek the most comprehensive and rigorous preparation for careers that demand articulate intellectual flexibility and discipline (e.g., law, medicine, government, business, education, and journalism)
2. students who wish to pursue a professional career in philosophy and who plan to do postgraduate work in the field
3. students who who want, regardless of career objective, a liberal arts education and need a discipline to make sense of the welter of elective possibilities

Because of the art-related character of many programs at Purchase College, the Philosophy Program also offers courses for arts students and others that investigate the foundations of the arts. Coursework in the Philosophy Program frequently includes small seminars and intensive writing. Students may pursue topics of special interest through tutorials and directed independent studies.

Program Faculty

Requirements for the Major

• History of Philosophy I & II
• One elective course in the history of philosophy
• One philosophy seminar on a major figure or issue
• At least two additional philosophy courses
• Junior Seminar in Philosophy
• Senior Colloquium in Philosophy
• Senior Seminar in Philosophy
• Senior Project in Philosophy

Representative Courses

Ideas of Good and Evil
Ideas of Human Nature
Knowledge and Imagination
Existentialism
Methods of Reasoning
Classical Buddhist Philosophy
Gender and Power
Philosophy of Art: From Plato to Postmodernism
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of the Environment
Pragmatism and the Quest for Certainty
From Hegel to Nietzsche
Chinese Philosophy
Foucault, Habermas, Derrida
Philosophy and Literature
Philosophy and Film
Theories of Sexuality
Philosophy of Mind
Seminars on Plato, Aristotle, James and Dewey, Heidegger/Arendt,
   Kant, Nietzsche, and Hegel

Representative Alumni

• Warren Frisina ’76, PhD, University of Chicago; dean of the Honors College and associate professor of religion, Hofstra University; author of The Unity of Knowledge and Action: Toward a Nonrepresentational Theory of Knowledge
• Amy Koritz ’79, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; associate professor of English, Tulane University; author, Culture Makers: Urban Performance and Literature in the 1920s (2008) and Gendering Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature in Early Twentieth-Century British Culture (2005)
• Ezra LeBank ’05, assistant professor, University of Montana; artistic director, Lynx Company
• Philip Moustakis ’92, JD, New York University School of Law; attorney, New York State Department of Law

For more information, visit the Philosophy site in Academic Programs.

Updated May 7, 2009