PH500 FAITH AND REASON (MAM/MTS Core)

Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. This course will provide an introduction to metaphysics, centering on Thomas’s achievement in enunciating the real distinction. It will also give an overview of modern Western philosophical critiques of metaphysics, focusing on Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche. It will also examine Pope St. John Paul II’s contribution to the relation of faith and reason. An important goal of the course will be to equip students to research and write academic papers. This course is a hybrid course of both in-person classes and online meetings using the Canvas learning platform.

Booklist:

Thomas Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia, Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies

• ISBN-10: 0888442505
• ISBN-13: 978-0888442505

Rene Descartes’s On Method (Cress translation), Hackett

• ISBN-10: 0872204200
• ISBN-13: 978-0872204201

Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic (Ellington translation), Hackett

• ISBN-10: 0872205932
• ISBN-13: 978-0872205932

Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Kaufmann translation), Modern Library

• ISBN-10: 0679783393
• ISBN-13: 978-0679783398

Alasdair MacIntryre’s God, Philosophy, Universities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)

• ISBN-10: 0742544303
• ISBN-13: 978-074254430

Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers, 8th edition, Univ of Chicago Press

• ISBN-10: 0226816389
• ISBN-13: 978-0226816388

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, 4th edition, Longmans

• ISBN-10: 020530902X
• ISBN-13: 978-0205309023

Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren's How to Read a Book, revised ed., Touchstone

• ISBN-13: 004-2516291251
• ISBN-10: 0671212095