Metaphysics Concentration

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that knowledge of the Good is the highest goal of a liberal education. The quest for this knowledge is twofold. On the one hand, it leads us through the world’s mysterious grandeur to its even more mysterious source. On the other, it leads us into the heart of our own lives, where we encounter the question of how to live well.

The Concentration in Metaphysics follows the first, more contemplative path. It culminates in the Philosophy Department’s senior-level course on Philosophy of God, which poses the question of an ultimate source and cause of being as a whole. The question of God inevitably raises the question of faith, and so the concentration also requires at least one upper-level course in Theology.

In rest of the concentration, students approach the question of first causes from a variety of directions. One possibility is to focus on the human encounter with being, in courses such as Philosophy of Language and Aesthetics. Another is to highlight the relation between reason and faith, through additional courses in Theology. Still other paths run through the physical sciences, the life sciences, and mathematics.

Sample Degree Plans

The Metaphysics Concentration can be tailored to the interests and needs of almost any student. The following are just a few examples; for a complete list of options, see the UD Bulletin. For questions, contact Dr. Christopher Mirus, the concentration director.

Philosophy

• PHI 4337               Philosophy of God
• THE 4333              Christian Anthropology
• PHI 3332               Aesthetics
• PHI 4331               Epistemology
• PHI 4335               Philosophy of Language

Theology

• PHI 4337                Philosophy of God
• PHI 4335                Philosophy of Language
• THE 3331               Systematic Theology I
• THE 4331               Triune God
• THE 4333               Christian Anthropology

Mathematics

• PHI 4337                 Philosophy of God
• PHI 3332                 Aesthetics*
• THE 3331                Systematic Theology I
• MAT 3321                Linear Point Set Theory
• MAT 3322                History & Philosophy of Mathematics*

*A Computer Science major might replace Aesthetics and History & Philosophy of Mathematics with Philosophy of Language and Theory of Computation.

Physical Science

• PHI 4337                Philosophy of God
• PHI 4333                Philosophy of Science
• THE 4346               Faith and Science
• PHY 3320               Quantum Physics*
• PHY 4366               Astrophysics and Cosmology*

*A Chemistry major might substitute replace Quantum Physics and Astrophysics and Cosmology with Physical Chemistry I and Biochemistry I. 

Biology

In the following plan, a Chemistry major might replace Quantum Physics and Astrophysics and Cosmology with Physical Chemistry I and Biochemistry I.

• PHI 4337                Philosophy of God
• PHI 4333                Philosophy of Science
• THE 4346               Faith and Science
• BIO 3347                Evolutionary Biology
• BIO 4328                Molecular Biology

Many Paths, One End

The Catholic intellectual tradition affirms the distinctive roles of theology, mathematics, and natural science in shaping and contextualizing the philosophic contemplation of being, or metaphysics. Within philosophy itself, moreover, reflection on human experience provides an essential context for the study of being as such. The Concentration in Metaphysics incorporates all these perspectives.

• Philosophy explores the human encounter with being in language, art, and so forth. Here phenomenology, which discerns the essential structures of human experience, plays an important role.
• Theology brings the light of faith to bear on the whole of reality and its origins, the relation of human beings to the whole and its origins, and the study of origins that occurs within natural science.
• Mathematics serves the investigation of being by awakening and reflecting on the human capacity for precise abstract reasoning, which goes beyond the limits of our senses. The science of computation, meanwhile, prepares the mind to appreciate the significance of the human encounter with being.
• Natural science, finally, plays a variety of roles:

• • By investigating the material constituents, historical origins, and causal structure of the natural world, it prepares the mind to reason about first principles.
  •  By presupposing and illuminating the integrity of living beings as self-sustaining, self-regulating wholes, it directs the mind from the principles of matter to the higher levels of being that these principles serve.
  • Through the study of human and animal behavior and the material conditions of this behavior in the brain, it prepares the mind to appreciate the significance of the human encounter with being.

For more information about the Metaphysics Concentration, contact Dr. Christopher Mirus, the concentration director.