News

An innovative Notre Dame course, God and the Good Life, is not only transforming the way students are introduced to philosophy — it is changing their perspectives, trajectories, and lives. Nearly 1,200 students have enrolled in the course since philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan launched it two years ago, and for many, it has become a defining experience in their undergraduate education. It's also drawn an array of prominent guest speakers —...

What is the philosophy major like at Notre Dame? “I really feel like we're engaging seriously with philosophy. It actually can become very personal, reflecting on human nature and what is an ethical life, and what is justice,” said philosophy major Natasha Reifenberg. Philosophy majors pursue their passions while developing skills such as critical thinking, data analysis, evidence-based arguments, and information synthesis.

Author: Paul Weithman   Gary Gutting was best known for his work on French philosophy, for co-founding and co-editing Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and for his many thoughtful contributions to The Stone.  But he was a philosopher of remarkable range, an accomplished teacher at all levels, and a departmental administrator of force and vision.  …

Associate Professor Curtis Franks caught the attention of Notre Dame magazine this issue. Find out why he, and other philosophy professors, chose their out-of-the-box faculty photos for our website.   …

This summer, Notre Dame is organizing a Study Abroad program in Ethiopia, led by Professor Alexander Jech. The program is centered on the course PHIL 24550 / PHIL 44468 Bridging Theory and Practice: Philosophical and Pragmatic Perspectives on Development. We interviewed him about the program and how it came into being:…

“A lot of people ask me, ‘Philosophy — do you even use that in business?’ And I actually do all the time, especially in the world of Silicon Valley,” said Dan Peate ’00. Peate is the founder of the technology companies DRIAV and Hixme, and is the managing director of Peate Ventures LLC, a venture capital fund. He credits his success in business to the skills he gained in asking foundational...

Professor Fred Rush will give the 2019 Monroe Beardsley Lecture at the meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in Philadelphia. The lecture will take place at the Barnes Foundation and will be on the subject: ‘Time and Film’. It will be held at the Courtyard Marriott, Center City, Philadelphia, PA from April 4-6, 2019. For more information, visit their website…

Notre Dame philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan has received an $806,000 grant from the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand her popular God and the Good Life course and adapt it into a curricular model used by faculty across the country. The three-year award will allow Sullivan to build a network of professors interested in developing or refining their own courses that teach philosophy as a way of life. It...

Curtis Franks has been selected as the Graduate School's 2018 Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) Award recipient. This award recognizes a DGS who has had a significant impact on his or her graduate program, in areas such as teaching, research, recruitment, culture, and operations.  We are lucky to have him as our DGS! …

Robert Audi, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the 2018 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). He is the seventh living Notre Dame philosophy faculty member to be honored and is to be inducted at an October ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Professor Michael Waddell, director of the master of autism studies program at Saint Mary’s, called for a more complete understanding of autistic identities — acknowledging both the struggles and gifts of individuals with autism — during a presentation Wednesday. In the lecture, Waddell read from his personal work exploring autism in relation to the Catholic faith and said he plans to publish a book on the subject in the future.…

One week into her senior year, Natasha Reifenberg headed to an academic health conference in El Salvador, presenting a policy brief based in research she had been involved in for the last two years. An opportunity usually reserved for distinguished academics, the trip was just one of many highlights in an outstanding undergraduate career that includes internships at the Global Fund for Women and United Nations Development Program and independent research...

The introductory philosophy course, God and the Good Life (GGL), got a face life last week! Prof. Meghan Sullivan (along with Kate Finley, Christine Grandy, and Kate Garry, respectively) has been working hard to develop this new website that captures the essence of GGL. As Dr. Sullivan puts it: "We have a new and significantly more awesome website for God and the Good Life! More interactive essays! More media! More TRUTH...

The legacy of Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga will continue on for years thanks to support from the John Templeton Foundation. He was named the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate this spring — joining the ranks of previous winners Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Charles Taylor, Jean Vanier, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama — and his work will now be chronicled in a series of 10 short, animated videos, which will present...

Therese Cory, an assistant professor of philosophy, has been awarded a Philip L. Quinn Fellowship by the National Humanities Center, a private institute of advanced study in North Carolina. Cory is one of 34 fellows chosen from among 630 applicants and the fourth Arts and Letters faculty member to receive an NHC fellowship since 2010. It will allow her to spend the year working on her book manuscript, Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Intellect:...

Observations form the basis for our most important scientific experiments, as well as some of our most important human experiences. But 20th century physics taught us that the structure of observations is full of surprises. For example, the strange world of quantum theory taught us that putative quantities like "the position and the momentum of a particle at a given time" are in fact unobservable. This is not just a...

Meghan Sullivan (Professor of Philosophy) has teamed up with Stephen Grimm (Professor of Philosophy at Fordham and a Notre Dame Ph.D. graduate) and Stephen Angle (Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan) to lead an NEH Summer Institute on teaching philosophy as a way of life.  The Institute — ``Reviving Philosophy as a Way of Life’’ — will gather faculty from across the country who are interested in developing courses that explore the...

Grad Student, Kate Finley, has won a Center for Social Concerns Course Development grant.

Congratulations to Nicholas Teh for winning one of four research groups with grants from the Global Gateway Faculty Research Awards (GGFRA) for his work at the London Global Gateway titled “New Directions in Space, Time, and Matter: A Research Initiative by the University of Notre Dame-University of London Philosophy of Science Consortium.”

Grad Student, Alex Stern, has received a very prestigious and competitive yearlong Post-doctoral Research Fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to work at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, beginning fall 2017.