UST Department of Philosophy

The Bachelor of Arts Major in Philosophy program is administered through the Faculty of Arts and Letters.

Program Description

As a discipline that seeks the truth, and is a guide for life, the program aims to analyze the different aspects of reality, to see their interrelations, and to combine them into a systematic whole. The study of Philosophy involves not only of the objects under investigation, but also of the subject who investigates not only the thought, but also the thinker. Most importantly, the study teaches the students to think analytically and critically to enable them to give a deeper insight into the nature of man, of things, and of values to live by.

Career Opportunities

Law practice
Researchers
Lecturers
Critical Analyst of Philosophical Subjects

Course Offerings

General Education Courses (Level 11)

PHL 1101 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
Philosophical evaluation encompasses various areas of human thoughts. This course aims at initiating the student on a journey to intellectual inquiry. Evaluation of beauty or art, study of the ultimate reality, understanding a life worth living, knowledge of valid standard of truth or fallacy of reasoning, understanding concepts of ideal state, nature of man and the knowledge of God. The course intends to give the student highlights of these areas of human understanding from both the Western and Eastern traditions.

PHL 1102 LOGIC (Prerequisite: PHL 1101)
The most fundamental branch of philosophy which deals with science and art of valid inference. It reflects on the very nature of thinking itself. This course will have two versions; The traditional Aristotelico-Thomistic logic (or logic of classes) tailored for Liberal Arts program; and the modern mathematical (or symbolic) logic (or the logic of propositions) aimed for the Science program. The first version centers on the foundation of thinking; the three mental operations, their mental products, the judgment and reasoning. It also considers the pitfalls of reasoning such as formal fallacies and how to avoid the same in the pursuit of truth, and on Dialectics and rhetoric. The second version prepares the science students on the valid mathematical and symbolic inference. This course also discusses the various formal fallacies in reasoning.

PHL 1103 PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (Prerequisites: PHL 1101, PHL 1102)
This course aims at discovery and understanding of the Human Person. It presents the basic Christian understanding of the nature of human person. Then the course proceeds to investigate the Hindu View, the Chinese View, and the contemporary Phenomenological and Existential reflections on human person.

PHL 1104 ETHICAL SYSTEMS (Prerequisites: PHL 1101, PHL 1102, PHL 1103)
Surveys the various theories of right conduct and the good life- the life worth living, and the code or set of principles of which people live in rectitude. Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhist Middle Path, Platonism, Aristotle's Golden Mean, Hedonism, Cynicism, Stoicism, Christian Ethics, Spinoza, Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, Kantian Ethics, Subjectivism and Objectivism will be discussed.

Core Subjects (Level 21)

PHL 2101 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I: EAST
This course surveys the highlight of intellectual events of both East and West from the down of history to the First Century AD. From the West the course tackles the Sensualists, the Rationalist, the Pythagorean and the Atomists. The ancient philosophical troika- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are given greater emphasis. From the East, a brief survey into the Indian Vedantic Schools and the Heterodox Schools will be taken followed by the three major Ancient Chinese Philosophical traditions; the School of Literati, Daoist School and Mohist School.

PHL 2102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY II: WEST
This course is a continuation of the first and picks up from where the first course ends. It starts with Plotinus, St. Augustin, Avicena, Averoes, St. Thomas Aquinas. It gives emphasis on the Scholastic Philosophy. From the East, discussion on Nagarjuna, Sri Aurobindo, and Mahatma Gandhi also included are discussions on Neo-Confucianism and Neo-Daoism.

PHL 2103 METAPHYSICS
A vast and all-encompassing branch of philosophy it studies the ultimate nature of reality. This course introduces the student to some of the basic metaphysical problems that have persisted through the ages. The problem of permanence and change, the mind-body problem, the problem of free will and determinism, essence and existence, of potency and act, space-time, causality, identity and change, possibility and necessity, and particulars and universals. It surveys some of the great metaphysical theories.

PHL 2104 EPISTEMOLOGY
This course studies the origins, nature, and limitations of knowledge. This course aims at discovering the means by which human knowledge is acquired, the extent of this knowledge, and the standards or criteria by which we can judge the reliability of knowledge -claimed. This course will discuss the Greek Sophists, Plato's Theory, Descartes' Theory, Hume's Theory and also Intuitive Theories.

PHL 2105 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
This course examines the intellectual questions in considering and understanding religious views. It will investigate the problems connected with the theory of knowledge as applied to religious knowledge and concerning metaphysical problems involved in efforts to construct a satisfactory and consistent explanation of certain concepts employed in various religions. Discussion will focus on religious knowledge, revelation, natural and revealed religion. Major religions will be taken for analysis and evaluation.

PHL 2106 AESTHETICS
A historical survey of the philosophy of art from Greek, Roman, Renaissance, Modern, and Contemporary trends. Texts from Plato, Aristotle, Longings, St. Augustan, St. Thomas Aquinas, Bacon, Bubba, Dewey, Cross, Kant, Bosanquet, Tolstoi, Santayana are mediated with the use of hermeneutical method by Schlermacher, Dilthey, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, de Beuvoir and Levinas. The process of thinking and writing about art is emphasized. Articles are excerpted from contemporary newspapers and magazines are read and discussed.

PHL 2107 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
This course highlights philosophy as a social and political discourse; it examines the different social and political theories of philosophers from both East and West, such as, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Kautilya, Meng Zi, Lao Zi, Shang Yang, Han Fei Zi, St. Thomas Aquinas, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, GWF Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Leo Strauss, Isiah Berlin, Juergen Habermas, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick. Discussions will touch on various topics, such as, the ideal state, democracy, citizenship, the Artha??stra, anarchy, absolute monarchy, right to revolution, mandate of heaven, theory of alliance, power, law and statecraft, right and duty in a civil society, the social contract, modern liberalism, the problem of modernity, socialism, justice, and utopianism, inter alia.

PHL 2108 PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
This course endeavors to study what science is, its structure, methods, aims, scope and limitations, if any. It studies the nature of scientific theories, the logical structure of scientific laws and explanations, the ontological status of the entities it studies, the relation of science to culture and human values.

PHL 2109 CHRISTIAN ETHICAL THEORIES
Surveys the various Christian ethical theories, such as, Christian Realism, Narrative ethics, Liberation theology, fundamentalism, etc. It also a historical survey of how these theories evolved. The course will also attempt to critically examine the relevance of Christian ethics against the backdrop of present-day issues, such as, poverty, war, abortion, contraception, cloning, etc.

PHL 2110 INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
This course surveys the great philosophical traditions of India. The Orthodox Schools of the Vedantic tradition namely; Nyaya School, Vaisesika School, Samkya School, Yoga School, Mimamsa School, and the Vedanta School. Also to be discussed are the Heterodox Schools of Buddhism, Jainism and Charvaka School.

PHL 2111 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY
This course studies the great ancient Chinese Philosophy that developed during the Golden Age of Chinese Philosophy known as the Period of Hundred Schools. To be discussed in this course are the thoughts of Kong Zi, MoZi, Lao Zi, Sun Zi, Lie Zi, Yang Chu, Shang Yang, Zhuang Zi, Meng Zi, Hui Shih, Tsou Yen, Xun Zi, Kung Sun Lung, Han Fei Zi, and Li Si .

PHL 2112 JAPANESE AND TIBETAN PHILOSOPHY
This course studies the two other great philosophical traditions of the East. It examines the origin, development and influences of Shintoism and Zen Buddhism in ancient, medieval and modern Japan. The feudal philosophy of the Samurai is taken up. The course includes a comparative study between the emphasis and the role of the Kyoto School of philosophy and the Tokyo School of Philosophy. Side by side with this will be the study of Tibetan Philosophy with greater emphasis in Lamaism.

PHL 2113 PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY
This course examines the normative role of technology in modern life by investigating how our ideas of technology have emerged from within philosophical discourse. Technology will be discussed in the context of social relationships, political life, and moral behavior.

Major Subjects (Level 31)

PHL 3101 NATURALISM
This course explains a philosophy that interprets how phenomena are taken as the sole basis of natural law. This course will also try to explain the philosophy of materialism, evolutionary naturalism, Bergsonian vitalism, and Herbert Spencer's evolutionism.

PHL 3102 SCHOLASTICISM
This course studies the church's fathers of the medieval ages who tried to understand and explain Christian doctrines in the light of ancient Greek Philosophy. This course will focus on the development of the three great scholastic troikas, namely; St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

PHL 3103 RATIONALISM AND EMPIRICISM
This course is designed to survey the two dominant philosophical movements that emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries: Rationalism and Empiricism. Discussions will be based on the works of Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, GW Leibniz, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. Special attention is given to their contrasting views on reality, knowledge, human nature, and morality.

PHL 3104 THEORIZING ENLIGHTENMENT AND MODERNITY
This course tackles the issue of how the notion of Enlightenment began and how it finds its various articulations in Modern thinking. The course will cover the major philosophers of the 18the century and 19th century. An in depth analysis on the thoughts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Baron de Montequieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Alexis de Tocqueville, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhouer, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

PHL 3105 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
This course is concerned about questions surrounding the nature of language. The philosophical study of language or sometimes referred to as the "linguistic turn" could be gleaned from two contrasting philosophical traditions: Analytic Philosophy and Continental Philosophy. Analytic philosophy of language is a tradition initiated by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, which finds it contemporary articulations in the works of the Logical Positivists, such as, A. J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap, down to the more recent thoughts of W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke. Meanwhile, Continental Philosophy of Language could be dated as far back as the early German Romantics, most especially the works of Hamann, Herder, Humbolt, and Schleiermacher who thought that language is constitutive of thinking, thus of philosophy. This preoccupation with the relation between language and philosophy reemerges in the works of Nietzsche, Dilthey, de Sausure, Heidegger, Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, and Derrida.

PHL 3106 PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM
This course tackles two major philosophical movements of 20th century European Philosophy: Phenomenology and Existentialism. The course is divided into two major parts, one surveys the works of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emmanuel Levinas; the second part surveys the tradition initiated by Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, down to Jean-Paul Sartre. The course highlights the attempt of these two movements to reassess and revise the method of philosophical inquiry in order to salvage it from the abstraction of traditional philosophy via the re-emergence of the role of human experience in philosophical reflection.

PHL 3107 FROM STRUCTURALISM TO POSTSTRUCTURALISM
This course is a survey of the intellectual trajectory from Ferdinand de Sausure, J.L. Austin, Roland Barthes, down to Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida.

PHL 3108 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
This course examines the rise and development of a distinct American philosophy, beginning from 19th century transcendentalism, pragmatism, and liberalism. Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are going to be examined, then the works of the pragmatists, such as, C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Recent American philosophers are also going to be tackled, such as, Richard Rorty, Noam Chomsky, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Cornel West.

PHL 3109 FROM HERMENEUTICS TO DECONSTRUCTION
A philosophy of interpretation first used by the rabbinical scholars, it is given new vigor with the intellectual movement led by intellectuals like Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricouer. The basic presuppositions of the hermeneutical philosophers re-emerge and further problematized in the thoughts of Adorno, Habermas, Foucault, Rorty, and Derrida.

PHL 3110 DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
An examination of the tradition initiated by Karl Marx: Marxism. The course is an introduction to the important works of Marx and emphasizes Marx's critique of capitalist economy and social alienation. The course is also a survey of the intellectual tradition ensuing from Marxist socio-political critique-looking at how the ideas of Marx have been used, abused, and revised by later orthodox Marxists and unorthodox Marxists.

PHL 3111 GERMAN AND FRENCH CRITICAL THEORY
The point of depature of Critical Theory as a socio-political discourse is the philosophy of Karl Marx. This course surveys the neo-Marxist traditions which emerged in Germany during and after the Second World War, in the body of a group of schorlars from the Institute for Social Research known as the Frankfurt School (Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Juergen Habermas, and Axel Honneth), and in France through Marxist oriented social critics, such as, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan. Central to the works of the critical theorists is the relentless critique of socio-political pathologies, such as, social domination, instrumental reason, the culture industry, apparatuses of policing and control, as well as implications of the tyrrany of linguistic normative practices.

PHL 3112 POSTMODERNISM
An intensive treatment of the major thinkers, texts, movements and problems of Post Modernism. This course gives an immersion in the pluralized culture surrounded by a multiplicity and relativization of style, knowledge, stories that throw into doubt the claims of any universal discourse. As an intellectual movement, Heraclitus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Karl Popper, and Paul Feyerabend are to be taken.

PHL 3113 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
This course examines the role of history and historicity in human thought. It surveys the different theories of history culled from the works of thinkers, such as, Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder, G.W.F. Hegel, Henri Bergson, R. G. Collingwood, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault.

Seminar Courses (Level 41)

The Seminar Course program is specially designed course aimed at exposing the students to professional learning program. Each seminar course tackles timeless and timely subjects individually designed/organized by the Seminar Director. The Director organizes not less than five but not more than seven lectures to be given by various speakers. Each speaker meets the class for two three-hour sessions. The speaker gives 3 to 4 hours lecture input and the rest of the time is devoted to workshop-discussion-evaluation.

The students are required to present 1-2 pages background paper to the Seminar Director before the start of a new speaker. At the end of the course the students are required to submit 2 four-page reaction papers to any of the two lecturers.

Rating System for Seminar Program

Attendance 30%
Background Papers 40%
Speaker's Evaluation 20%
Reaction papers 10%

Students come in corporate attire, with free-flowing coffee, and some light snacks to be organized by the students. Each speaker may organize the class into groups for workshop and evaluation after the 3-4 hours lecture input. Speaker is required to submit the attendance and evaluation to the Seminar Director after the second session. The Seminar Director collates the grade and submits the over-all grade.

PHLSEM 4101 SEMINAR ON PLATO
A survey of the different dialogues of Plato.

PHLSEM 4102 SEMINAR ON ST.THOMAS AQUINAS
A survey of the Thomistic system, and elaboration of Aquinas' metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, ethics, and theology.

PHLSEM 4103 SEMINAR ON SPECIAL QUESTIONS IN ETHICS
A survey of current issues in moral philosophy: theoretical, meta-ethical, and applied.

PHLSEM 4104 SEMINAR ON FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY
Seminar in Filipino Philosophy - This seminar course does not presuppose the existence of Filipino Philosophy, rather it is aimed at philosophical investigation on the existence, or development of it. As such, it is offered to allow students to search rather than to discuss a specific course on Filipino thought. The course therefore is a survey of the corpus of writings of published Filipino Philosophers. Survey should include readings of the works of the following; Romualdo Abulad, Claro Ceniza , Alfredo Co, Manuel Dy, Jr., Leonardo Estioko, Leovino Garcia, Vitaliano Gorospe,Rainier Ibana, Leonardo Mercado, Josephine Pasricha, Emerita Quito, Quintin Terrenal, Florentino Timbreza, Tomas G. Rosario, Jr., Armando Bonifacio, Manuel Pinon, Antonio Pinon, Quintin Terrenal, Ranhilio Aquino

PHLSEM 4105 SEMINAR ON 21ST CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
A survey of emerging trends in philosophy.

Research Courses (Level 51)

PHLRES 5101 PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH I: TECHNICAL RESEARCH IN PHILOSOPHY (Third Year, 2nd Semester)
Training in philosophical research with the aim of teaching philosophy majors the rudiments of writing a thesis in philosophy.

PHLRES 5102 PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH II: THESIS PROPOSAL WRITING (Fourth Year, 1st Semester)
Training in philosophical research with the aim of requiring students to submit full-blown thesis proposals at the end of the semester.

PHLRES 5103 PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH III: THESIS WRITING AND DEFENSE (Fourth Year, 2nd Semester)
Regular thesis consulations with appointed adviser, then an oral defense at the end of the semester.

Foreign Language Requirement

PHLFL FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN PHILOSOPHY

3 units of Latin/French/German, depending on availability.