Recent News

Join Us for Philosophy over the Summer!

Old Main at Penn State

The Philosophy Department is happy to announce a rich and exciting offering of summer courses. Whether you are trying to complete a minor, get ahead in the major, or just want to learn more about the human condition, the power of argument, or the nature of love and sex, we invite you to do philosophy with us over the summer.

You can take courses on the web or in a face to face format; and we have many options from which to choose: 

  • Did you ever wonder about the existence of God or the nature of reality? Take PHIL001, Basic Problems of Philosophy.
  • Want to win every argument you have with your friends and family? Consider PHIL010, Critical Thinking. 
  • Need to fulfill the Quantification General Education Requirement? Take PHIL012, Symbolic Logic. 
  • Thinking of Love and Sex over the summer? We are too ... in PHIL014, Philosophy of Love and Sex. 
  • Interested in a career in leadership? Take PHIL119, Ethical Leadership.
  • Considering Law School? Philosophy students have historically done very well on the LSATs. Take PHIL015, Introduction to Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics.
  • Wonder about the ethics of healthcare? Take PHIL432, Medical and Health Care Ethics.

For more information about these courses, visit our schedule of summer classes: http://laus.la.psu.edu/summer/phil

Workshop on Cosmology and Time

What is the status of time in modern cosmology? Is time real, or is it a convenient illusion? Should the arrow of time be part of physics or should it be explained away? Are all the laws of physics time-reversal invariant? Should we treat time as a parameter or as an observable? What exactly do we measure when we measure time? When scientists try to unify Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics in their cosmological models of the universe, how does that unification affect the scientific account of time? What is the relation of time to spacetime? Is time (or spacetime) continuous or discrete?

The orientation of this workshop is retrospective and philosophical. The discussion about time that spans the twentieth century, and continues to the present day among cosmologists and philosophers, forces the articulation of important issues concerning the nature of time.

http://gravity.psu.edu/events/cosmology-time/

Inaugural issue of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race

We are pleased to announce the appearance of the inaugural issue of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race.  The online version is available on both JSTOR  and Project Muse’s sites.  

JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/critphilrace.1.1.issue-1
MUSE: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/critical_philosophy_of_race/toc/por.1.1.html

Congratulations to the editors, our own Robert Bernasconi, Kathryn Gines and Paul Taylor. And thanks to the Rock Ethics Institute for its support of the creation of the journal.

Brady Bowman Wins 2012 JHP Article Prize

Brady Bowman has been awarded the Journal of the History of Philosophy’s Article Prize for 2012 for his article: “Spinozist Pantheism and the Truth of ‘Sense Certainty’: What the Eleusinian Mysteries Tell us about Hegel’s Phenomenology." The department congratulates Brady for this prestigious award, and is happy to note that he will be teaching at 400-level course on Spinoza in the fall of 2013 so our undergraduate and graduate students alike will have an opportunity to learn from him first hand about Spinoza.

Camisha Russell Awarded Newcombe Fellowship

Camisha Russell, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, is the recipient of a 2012-13 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship granted by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The Newcombe Fellowship is the nation’s largest and most prestigious such award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values. Ms. Russell’s dissertation, The Assisted Reproduction of Race: Thinking through Race as a Reproductive Technology, explores the complex relationship between race and assisted reproductive technologies. Congratulations Camisha!

All News Stories

About us

Sparks Building, home of the Department of Philosophy.The Department of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University is characterized by a focus on, and commitment to, the history of philosophy conceived as a basis for pursuing philosophy in an international context. The program includes special emphases on both contemporary Continental philosophy (including phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, social theory, and postmodernism) and classical American philosophy (including transcendentalism, naturalism, semiotics, pragmatism, and contemporary cultural issues).  The department is strongly committed to both undergraduate and graduate education. The curricula of both the undergraduate and graduate programs are structured so as to foster and promote genuine dialogue across international borders and philosophical traditions, both established and emerging. The program is organized to facilitate the ability to engage meaningfully a variety of philosophical approaches—including feminist theory, analytic philosophy, critical race theory and social/political philosophy—and a range of systematic fields—including aesthetics, ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science.  Our faculty maintain strong professional relationships in Europe and Latin America. Members of the faculty work in close collaboration with students to ensure the depth and breadth of their philosophical education.

Contact Us