Philosophy

Department Head: Paul Gregory; gregoryp@wlu.edu; 540458-8182

Academic Division: The College

The Department of Philosophy engages students with fundamental questions of existence, knowledge, and value, to encourage students to examine critically a variety of beliefs, attitudes, and social structures, and to foster creative thoughtfulness and self-reflection.

Studying philosophy teaches students to read and write critically, to analyze concepts and problems carefully, and to express solutions and arguments clearly and forcefully. Thus, studying philosophy prepares students for many different career paths: business, law, medicine, teaching, and post-graduate research in the humanities and sciences.

Philosophy majors are admitted to law school and medical school at a higher rate than any other major. Philosophy majors also outperform most other majors on the LSAT, GMAT and GRE. Their mid-career salaries are the highest in the humanities, and even higher than those of accounting, business management, and marketing majors.

Pierre S. duPont Foundation

HONORS: An Honors Program in philosophy is offered for qualified students.

Offerings

Philosophy major leading to BA degree

Philosophy minor

NOTE: The philosophy courses are numbered according to the following schemes. With a few exceptions, all PHIL classes are open to all students and satisfy FDR HU.

Level	Subject
100, Introductory	00-09, general surveys
200, Intermediate	10-39, History of Philosophy or Major Figures
300, Adanced	40-69, Ethics, Value Theory, and Political Philsosphy
400, Dir. Indiv. Study, Thesis	70-89, Metaphysics and Epistemology (except 170 and 180)
	90-99, Special Topics (95=HMF, 96=EVT, 97=ME)

Faculty

First date is the year in which the faculty member began service as regular faculty at the University. Second date is the year of appointment to the present rank.

Melina Constantine Bell, Ph.D.—(2005)-2011
Professor of Philosophy and Law
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

William C. Dudley, Ph.D.—(2017)-2017
Professor of Philosophy
President of Washington and Lee University
Ph.D., Northwestern University

Nathaniel Goldberg, Ph. D.—(2008)-2011
Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., Georgetown University

Paul Gregory, Ph.D.—(2002)-2019
Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., University of Illinois

Li Kang, Ph.D.—(2019)-2019
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., Syracuse University

Angela Sun, Ph.D.—(2022)-2022
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., University of Michigan