What Counts for Which Area Requirement?

In addition to specific course requirements, the department requires majors and minors to gain breadth in the discipline by asking them to select from a range of courses in each of three subject areas. Majors must take one course from each of the areas of Values, Metaphysics & Epistemology, and Diversity. Minors are required to take one courses in each of two areas, Values and Metaphysics & Epistemology, and at least one course in the history of philosophy.

Please note:

Some courses can “double count,” but this does not decrease the total number of courses you must take to complete the major.
Many courses in the “Philosophers in Focus” series, [382-393] have changing content and will sometimes count for one of these areas. That information will typically be available in the course brochures.
Please ask your advisor about any course if you are not sure.

Values

A range of courses broadly committed to exploring ethics, meta-ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.

211 – Moral Philosophy
215 – Feminist Philosophies
218 – Philosophy of Law
220 – Seminar on Philosophy and Gender (note: 220 is a 2-credit course and so must be taken for two semesters to count towards the “V”)
234 – Philosophy and Art
235 – Stoic Way of Life
236 – Critical Social Thought
237 – Taking Philosophy Public
240 – Freedom, Resentment, and the Other
243 – Environmental Ethics
244 – Vegan Studies
297 – Bioethics
222 – Philosophy of Sex and Gender
311 – Philosophical Approaches to Global Justice
314 – Karl Marx and Marxist Philosophical Thought
328 – Radical Ecologies
337 – Philosophy of Humor
357 – Beauty and Truth: The German Age of Aesthetics
380 – Material Ethics
398 – Film and the Emotions*

Metaphysics and Epistemology

A range of courses broadly committed to exploring theories of knowledge and the nature of reality.

212 – Puzzles and Paradoxes
216 – Philosophy and Nature
217 – Feminism and Science
239 – Epistemology
253 – Skepticism East and West
258 – Advanced Logic
264 – Indian Philosophy*
274 – Philosophy of Religion
297 – Philosophy of Technology
297A – Philosophy of Mind
297B – Philosophy of Scientific Revolutions
298 – Philosophy of Biology
298 – Cognitive Science of Religion*
316 – Metaphysics
317 – Philosophy of Science
338 – Philosophy of Language
353 – Contemporary Analytic Philosophy
378 – Being, Difference, and Power
380 – Recent Continental Realisms
380D – Philosophy of Emotion
389 – Philosophers in Focus: Wittgenstein
398b – Dissolving Boundaries in American and Daoist Thought

Diversity

A range of courses broadly committed to non-canonical philosophy, whether that is non-Western philosophy or philosophy about or by traditionally underrepresented groups in the discipline.

213 – Philosophical Inquiries into Race
215 – Feminist Philosophies
217 – Feminism and Science
220 – Seminar on Philosophy and Gender (note: 220 is a 2-credit course and so must be taken for two semesters to count towards the “D”)
245 – Africana Philosophy
253 – Skepticism East and West
255 – Philosophy of Dance
264 – Indian Philosophy*
265 – Chinese Philosophy
266 – Buddhist Philosophy
222 – Philosophy of Sex and Gender
311 – Philosophical Approaches to Global Justice
380 – Material Ethics
398a – Nature/Sex/Power: New Materialisms*
398b – Dissolving Boundaries in American and Daoist Thought

History

Courses that focus primarily, though not exclusively, on philosophical movements of a particular period in the history of philosophy.

231 – History of Ancient Greek Philosophy
232 – History of Modern Philosophy
314 – Karl Marx and Marxist Philosophical Thought
352 – American Philosophy
353 – Contemporary Analytic Philosophy
355 – Kant and German Idealism
357 – Beauty and Truth: The German Age of Aesthetics
359 – Nineteenth Century Philosophy
373 – History of Medieval Philosophy
374 – Existentialism
378 – Being, Difference, and Power

*Indicates a course taught by visiting faculty and/or not a part of regular offerings