Students earning the MA in Philosophy will be able:
- to demonstrate advanced familiarity with the history and major topics of Western philosophy, including logic, epistemology, cosmology, anthropology, ethics, metaphysics, and natural theology, particularly but not exclusively as these are (a) treated in the broadly Catholic and Thomistic philosophical tradition, and (b) fields of inquiry where faith and reason may be mutually enriching;
- to demonstrate a coherent and detailed knowledge of their philosophical concentration, its developing methodologies, its current literature, its history, its major theoretical constructs, and its classical and current problems and insights;
- to demonstrate the ability to conduct research in the academic field of philosophy;
- to present, in a practical and popular way, philosophical doctrines that are particularly useful or even essential to giving an account of the doctrines of Catholic faith, whether by ordinary speech and writing or via new media of social communication, including such topics as the nature of truth, the nature of the human person, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God; and
- to describe and explain the role of the Western philosophical tradition in the development and explication of Christian doctrine in Christian antiquity, the Middle Ages and in modern and postmodern contexts.