Majors & minors courses

The courses below are, for the most part, restricted to Philosophy majors and minors. You can learn more about the various majors and minors we offer on our Majors and Minors page. If you are a non-major interested in taking one of the courses below, you should sign up for an appointment with Professor Jech, the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Fall 2026 Courses

Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
30301 01 (15617)
Trubowitz
2-3:15 MW

This course will concentrate on major figures and persistent themes. A balance will be sought between scope and depth, the latter ensured by a close reading of selected texts.

Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
30301 02 (15618)
Dumont
3:30-4:45 TTH

This course will concentrate on major figures and persistent themes. A balance will be sought between scope and depth, the latter ensured by a close reading of selected texts.

History of Modern Philosophy
30302 01 (14805)
Newlands
2-3:15 TTH

This course examines the sweeping transformations of philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries by exploring some of the leading philosophers of that era. Topics include innocations in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophical theology, and the natural sciences, many of which continue to shape the agenda in contemporary philosophy.

Formal Logic 
30313 01 (14808)
Bays
11-12:15 TTH

An introduction to the fundamentals and techniques of logic for majors.

Philosophy Gateway Seminar
30304 01 (14917)
Teh
11-12:15 TTH

This course is an introduction to philosophical engagement with the arts, in particular music and painting. The first half of the course will be about the philosophy of music (taking the Bach keyboard suites---Partitas, English Suites and French Suites---as a focal set of examples), and the second half of the course will be about the philosophy of painting (taking as focal a set of Renaissance and Baroque paintings which are easily accessible from ND's London and Rome Gateways). In the philosophy of music portion, we will inquire into the peculiar causality, intelligibility and value of music, as well as the roots of music in dance and song. Why do we speak of musical "movement", and what exactly is the "content" of a piece of music? Can music be said to represent or is it merely expressive? And what is the relationship--if any--between musical judgment/appreciation and our ethical, political and religious formation? In the philosophy of painting portion, we will discuss analogous questions concerning depiction. Readings will include excerpts from works by Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Adorno, Wittgenstein, Anscombe, Podro, Maritain, Gilson, Wolheim and Scruton. 

Philosophy Gateway Seminar: Ethics across borders: War, Justice, and Other Global Issues
30304 02 (14916)
Isserow
2-3:15 MW

Gateway Seminar for new and prospective majors and minors in Philosophy.

The Examined Life
30305 01 (14806)
J.Christy
2-3:15 MW

Admission to the course only by instructor permission; limited to successful alumni of PHIL 10111 God and the Good Life. This course has three components. (i) Students will receive training to be a peer dialogue facilitator for God and the Good Life, learning how to lead GGL students in probative dialogue and self-reflection. (ii) Students will do intenstive reading and discussion of approaches to living "the philosophical life". We will study the genre of philosophical apologies. We will look at radical proposals for living philosophically.  (iii)Students will design and lead a practical philosophy immersion experience for seminar-mates. The expectation is that students in this course will serve at least one semester as a GGL fellow. Participation in this course is by invitation. 

Proust and the Philosophers
43210 (19786)
Watson
3:30-6:15 TH

Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche Du Temps Perdue (In Search of Lost Time) has been called the most important novel of the twentieth century. Previous to its final inception, its author was uncertain of the work’s status. “Must I make of it a novel, a philosophical study, am I a novelist?” (Notebook of 1908). Recent research has revealed the extent to which Proust himself was substantially trained in philosophy (for example, the metaphysics of Schopenhauer or the aesthetics of Hegel and Schelling). Perhaps even more significant is the extent of the influence of The Search on philosophers after it. Among others, Proust’s work played an essential role in the arguments of Adorno or Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, Kristeva and Deleuze, or Nussbaum, Pippin, and Taylor. This seminar will begin by reading extensive parts of this multivolume work in translation and considering the philosophical positions it transforms. We will then examine Proust’s influence in a number of areas of philosophy. This in turn will allow us to confront the relationship between philosophy and literature more particularly. Requirements: Midterm, Research Paper, Seminar Presentation.

History of Ethics
43305 (17442)
Audi
11-12:15 TTH

An advanced survey analyzing primary sources in the history of moral philosophy.

Feminist Philosophy & Philosophy of Gender
43318 (19788)
Rea
12:30-1:45 MW

The past decade has seen a resurgence of philosophical interest in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of gender. This course will examine some of the latest developments in the area, including philosophical analyses of sexism, misogyny, gender equality, objectification, and intersectionality. There will be a few areas of special focus, including the metaphysics of gender, feminist philosophy of language, and intersections of gender with other social identities.

The Justice Seminar
43404 (14810)
Weithman
3:30-4:45 TTH

This course undertakes a critical examination of major theories of justice, focusing on both contemporary sources (usually including John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Kenneth Arrow's seminal papers on social choice theory and recent papers in behavioral economics) and classic works of political theory and practice (usually including Aristotle's Politics and the Lincoln-Douglas debates). The seminar requires substantial student participation in the forms of seminar presentations and discussion. This class is the core course for the College’s interdisciplinary minor in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. It also counts as Integration Course and can be used to satisfy the University requirement in Philosophy. Must be enrolled in PPE to take this course. 

Social Contract Theory from Rawls to Hobbes
43428 (19789)
Cohen
12:30-1:45 TTH
 
This course aims to introduce students to central questions in political philosophy, through engagement with the work of several significant political philosophers: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls. The topics with which we will be most deeply concerned include the legitimacy of the state; the limits of the state’s authority; the basis of rights of resistance or rebellion; the relevance of consent to political authority; the nature and value of freedom; and the relationship between politics and human nature. We will also attempt to relate the views of these philosophers to contemporary issues.
History of Metaphysics
43501 (17219)
McDaniel
12:30-1:45 TTH
 
This course will cover four important topics in metaphysics: Time, Material Constitution, Modality, and Existence. Each quarter of the semester will focus on one of these topics. We'll begin by discussing some philosophical questions and puzzles about time, including whether time passes, and whether the past and the future are unreal. Next, we'll cover questions about parts and wholes, and the relation between a thing and the matter that makes it up. We'll then discuss the metaphysics of possibility and necessity, and essence and accident. Finally, we will turn to questions about the nature of existence, including the question of whether everything exists.
Philosophy of Religion
43805 (19791)
Cutter
11-12:15 TTH

This course will examine principal questions in the philosophy of religion relating to the nature and existence of God, religious beliefs, religious experience, divine hidden-ness, religious pluralism and exclusivism, immortality, the relationship between God and ethics, and other questions.

Aquinas on God
43806 (19792)
O'Callaghan
12:30-1:45 MW
 
A close examination of several philosophical themes and arguments within the first thirteen questions of the first part of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, as well as related texts elsewhere in his work, and related discussions in other authors as the occasion arises. The course will focus upon certain topics to the exclusion of others. One task of philosophy is to figure out what its subject matter is. So we will begin with an initial discussion of the nature of philosophy. Other topics of particular interest in the thirteen questions are the relationship between what Aquinas calls Sacra Doctrina and the exercise of reason apart from Sacra Doctrina in relationship to the nature of philosophy; the demonstration of the existence of a god, the simplicity of a god, the perfections that pertain to a god, our knowledge of God, and how we speak about God.
Intermediate Logic
43907 (15044)
Blanchette
12:30-1:45 TTH
 
This course is an introduction to the metatheory of first-order logic, the most important system of formal logic for both philosophical and mathematical purposes. We will study the ways in which the language of first-order logic is used in the analysis of mathematical structures, and the ways in which that language is used to express rigorous formal proofs. We then assess the adequacy of that system for both mathematical and philosophical purposes, an assessment that includes the proof of the completeness, compactness, and Löwenheim-Skolem theorems for first-order logic. As part of the preparatory work, we study the fundamentals of axiomatic set theory.

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