The Philosophy Department seeks to cultivate a unique virtue in its students and faculty. This intellectual virtue we have called the Philosophical Habit of Mind. It consists, at least, of the following abilities:

  • An ability to situate oneself in the Western philosophical tradition of ethical and metaphysical questions and reasoning.
  • An ability to account to oneself and to others for the bases of one’s actions.
  • An ability to reckon with the consequences of one’s own and other’s practical reasoning in various contexts, both personal and political.
  • An ability to raise metaphysical questions in various concrete, lived, literary, and political contexts.
  • Distinguish and relate the architectonic questions of metaphysics from and to the specialized questions of the sciences and other disciplines.
  • An ability to discern the interconnection between various modes of ethical and political reflection and distinct metaphysical positions.
  • An ability to pose to oneself the questions raised by the claims of the Christian faith on one’s own ethical and metaphysical reasoning.
  • An ability to read new or contemporary works in the ongoing tradition of dialectical philosophy with all these abilities at one’s disposal.
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Moraga, CA 94556
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