Department of Philosophy

The Georgetown Philosophy Department is a diverse and vibrant philosophical community with twenty-eight full-time faculty members. We maintain a deliberately pluralistic approach to philosophy, and the research in our department draws from an unusually broad range of philosophical traditions (including—but not limited to—contemporary, historical, continental, analytic, Christian, secular, a priori, pragmatist, feminist, and empirical traditions).

Consistent with the educational mission of Georgetown University, each undergraduate takes two courses in philosophy (either "Introduction to Philosophy" or "Introduction to Ethics"; and, a second course chosen from an extensive range of philosophical topics). With these introductory courses, we provide a unique undergraduate experience that promotes Georgetown’s tradition as an American, Catholic, and Jesuit University, and our introductory offerings (collectively if not individually) address the distinctively philosophical dimensions of problems of God and transcendence, freedom and intersubjectivity, personal morality and the moral significance of social institutions, and the virtues that are required to live well in a pluralistic democratic society. With the further courses that are required for the undergraduate major, we hope to produce liberally educated women and men who possess basic cultural literacy, who are capable of articulate and logical reflection on the fundamental problems of human existence, and who can take their place as citizens capable of critically evaluating arguments which bear on public affairs.

The Department also offers a PhD in Philosophy that is designed to produce careful, sophisticated, and broadly educated teachers and scholars. Our goal is to train our students to readily understand intelligent viewpoints that differ from their own, to see the value of various approaches to philosophy, and to have the technical skills (logical, linguistic, exegetical, and phenomenological) that will allow them to solve complex problems and to make important contributions to Philosophy as an academic discipline.

Affiliations:

• The Kennedy Institute of Ethics is one of the world's premier bioethics institutes.

• The Center for Medieval Philosophy supports research designed to seek out the riches that have yet to be discovered in countless medieval thinkers.

• Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy is currently housed in the Philosophy department under the editorship of Henry S. Richardson.

• Kunos Press, also housed in the Department, publishes Eudaimonia: The Georgetown Philosophical Review, an undergraduate journal, and An Introduction to Logic, an introductory text book authored by Wayne Davis and the Georgetown Logic Group.

For specific inquiries, you may contact the following people: