Philosophy at Earlham:
An Overview for Interested Students
Philosophy Department, Earlham College

You can find us on the third floor of Carpenter Hall, east wing. Our convenor this year is Ferit Güven.

If you're reading this hand-out in print, then try viewing it on the web. All the links will be active. The URL is http://www.earlham.edu/~phil/overview.htm. If you're reading it on the web, consider printing it out as a reference. 

Why study philosophy?

Because it asks fundamental questions. Because it explores how to live a good life. Because it takes seriously the questions that arise in life and tries to answer them. Because it exposes and questions assumptions. Because it helps you find your own answers and your own standards for answers. Because it calls on both your creativity and your rigor. Because it uses all your interests and everything you know, from art and literature, history and social science, to mathematics and natural science. Because it makes you articulate in speaking and writing, clear in thinking and reasoning, and able to draw connections among ideas of all kinds. Because you have decisions to make, evidence to weigh, opinions to assess, mysteries to contemplate, a world to understand, a life to live.

Philosophy courses to get you started

Our philosophy faculty

Our departmental orientation

If our department has an orientation, it is toward the history of philosophy. Our program is respected by graduate schools for the mastery our graduates have shown of the history of philosophy. We emphasize the reading of primary texts from Greek antiquity to the present in order to show that ancient philosophy is not obsolete and contemporary philosophy is not rootless. Our students learn to converse with the major figures of the Western tradition, as well as to respond them critically. In the process they learn the vocabulary, the methods, the questions, and the standards of the discipline, as well as its implications and limits.

Our philosophy major

Philosophy majors must take two (any-level) elective courses and one upper-level elective course (numbered 300 and above), a four-course sequence in the history of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to the 19th century, one senior seminar, and two independent studies: Comprehensive Independent Study, in which they prepare for the comprehensive exams, and Thesis Independent Study, in which they a write a senior thesis. That makes ten courses. In addition, the department requires that the majors fulfill an ethics and a contemporary philosophy requirement. These are not additional courses, but rather content requirements that can be fulfilled in other courses.

For more detail, see our web hand-outs on the major and comps.

Our philosophy minor

Philosophy minors must take the first three courses of our four-course sequence in the history of philosophy, one any-level elective course and two upper-level elective courses (numbered 300 or above). In addition, the department requires that one of these upper level courses includes an ethical content. This is not an additional course requirement, but a content requirement. This amounts to six courses.

For more detail, see our web hand-out on the minor.

Suggestions

For more information

Last revised October 12, 2009.

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