Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology · Courses
PHIL
9 courses with the subject PHIL, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
PHIL 1054Introduction to Ethics3
This course is an introduction to moral philosophy and provides a reasonably detailed examination of the central issues of moral philosophy: questions and theories about right and wrong, good and evil, and virtue and vice. The course will consider several historically important theoretical approaches to ethics: consequentialist ethics, deontological ethics, natural ethics, virtue ethics, the ethics of care, and ethics of religion. Students will be challenged to present reasons for and against their moral judgements.
This course introduces students to philosophical reflection and to its history through the presentation and discussion of the writings of major thinkers from ancient periods. The course is designed to show how fundamental and enduring questions about the universe and about the nature of human beings recur in ancient time and contexts. Students will 77
The two‐semester course introduces students to philosophical reflection and to its history through the presentation and discussion of the writing of major thinkers from ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. The course is designed to show how fundamental and enduring questions about the nature of human beings recur in different historical contexts. Students in the first semester will be introduced to and familiarized with the Greek inception of philosophy beginning with the Pre‐Socratics, the systematization and development of philosophical thought by Plato and Aristotle, and finally, the synthesis of – but also the tension between – Greek reason and Christian faith as it occurred in late Antiquity and was developed in the Middle Ages.
Existentialism is a modern movement in philosophy that puts great emphasis on individual free choice and the voluntary acceptance or creation of one's values. The key ideas of existentialism is the desire of “making something of yourself”, which represents a journey involving freedom, responsibility, anxiety, despair, risk, death, choice, authenticity, and the joy of embracing life. This course examines writings of the 19th century philosophers: Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, whose texts inspired the mid-20th century philosophical cultural movement of existentialism (Sarte, Camus) as well as some contemporary philosophers in Western and non-Western tradition. The course ends with Christian critique and enhancement of existentialism.
Moral philosophy is the study of moral reasoning and moral justification by way of such concepts as obligation, duty, good, justice, or virtue. This course focuses on putting moral theory in practice, what many call applied ethics. Topics covered may include abortion, euthanasia, environmental ethics, and sexual morality, as well as recent proposals for a global ethics, and the theories and practice of interreligious dialogue as a possible means to arrive at cross‐cultural ethical perspectives.
With the term ‘Axial Age’, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers refers to the period between from about 8th to the 3rd century BC when the intellectual, philosophical, and religious systems came to shape subsequent human society and culture. A variety of religions and doctrines, still in practice today, simultaneously appeared: Chinese 86
This course critically examines secularity as a contemporary manifestation of the interplay between faith and reason, drawing extensively on the insights of Charles Taylor. Secularity is conceptualized in two predominant forms: the subtraction theory, which posits that religion has been removed from society, and the anthropological perspective, wherein faith is merely one option among many, subject to individual choice. Central to this exploration are the nature of human reason, the essence of faith, and the manner in which their interaction engenders secularity through diverse modes of reasoning. This analysis incorporates considerations of exclusive humanism, individualism, and closed-world structures. By critically evaluating faith and reason, the course offers a new philosophical and theological interpretation and a deeper understanding of humanity
This course introduces students to a comparative study of Eastern and Western Christian philosophy, emphasizing the dialogue between the Orthodox intellectual heritage and the Latin-Western tradition. Going beyond a purely historical overview, the course explores fundamental philosophical questions—such as being, personhood, knowledge, freedom, and the meaning of modernity—through in-depth engagement 87
