What is Philosophy?
Philosophy is a tradition of rational inquiry into the most basic principles of existence.
There are various ways of defining this inquiry. Etymologically, the Greek term philosophia means "love of wisdom." But what is wisdom? Representing an older metaphysical tradition,
Leibniz said that the very first question philosophy should ask is, "Why is there
something rather than nothing?" Philosophy thus understood is concerned with the source
and nature of being; this is what philosophy fundamentally meant for Plato, Aristotle,
and Aquinas. Turning away from this metaphysical tradition, Immanuel Kant later tried
to capture the tasks of philosophy in the three famous questions, "What can I know?
What ought I to do? What can I hope?" The nature of philosophy is itself part of the
Philosophy overlaps with many other disciplines: the question of knowledge, for example,
has implications that touch on psychology and neuroscience. In dealing with ethical
questions, the philosopher may need to be in dialogue with medicine (medical ethics),
biology (environmental ethics), or economics (business ethics). Philosophy of language
partially overlaps with linguistics, while the philosophy of religion is related to
religious studies. What always distinguishes the philosophical approach, however,
is its focus on fundamental principles not reducible to natural science or empirical
data. Furthermore, although philosophy is a theoretical discipline that is engaged
in a disinterested quest for knowledge, most philosophers, from Plato to the present,
have also considered philosophy as an existential quest for the true and the good.
Philosophers, one could say, do not only want to understand the world; they want to
lead a life which reflects this understanding.
Philosophy vs. Theology
In asking questions concerning the foundations of human existence, philosophy is not
unlike theology. It is not surprising, therefore, that many Western philosophersespecially
in the patristic and medieval periodswere also or even primarily theologians. There
are, however, important differences between the two disciplines: although many of
the questions that philosophy and theology ask are the same, they arrive at their
answers by different means. Whereas theology draws on Scripture and Tradition as its
principal sources, philosophy relies on reason and human experience. Philosophical
inquiry is therefore accessible to believers and non-believers alike.
Philosophy at the University of Dallas
Philosophic studies at the University of Dallas have three features that set the UD
philosophy program apart from many others. First, UD philosophy students read the
great philosophers themselves, not textbook summaries. The core courses and the historical
courses, in particular, focus on the study of some of the most influential texts of
the Western philosophical tradition, from Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Augustine's Confessions, and Thomas Aquinas's On Being and Essence to Descartes' Meditations, Kant's Prolegomena, and Heidegger's Being and Time. Second, majors in the UD philosophy program receive a solid grounding in the history
of Western philosophy. In this fashion, they acquire an understanding of not merely
an isolated thinker or theory, but of the unfolding of the philosophic tradition as
a whole. Third, as a philosophy department at a Catholic university, the UD philosophy
program encourages dialogue with theological texts and ideas.
The department houses the editorial offices of the Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations series, which publishes medieval Latin texts with accompanying English translations.
It also organizes an annual Aquinas Lecture, which has attracted outstanding philosophers
from the U.S. and abroad.