We are one of the largest and most pluralistic faculties in the Northwest with more than 20 tenured and tenure-track faculty members and nearly 30 full-time faculty. Gonzaga University’s Master of Arts in Philosophy affords you the opportunity to engage in coursework and research on an extremely wide and diverse range of topics. A hallmark of the graduate experience at Gonzaga is close work with faculty members throughout the department. In keeping with our Jesuit mission, our graduate students explore the significance of philosophy for fundamental questions of human meaning and value.
History of Western Philosophy
Students seeking to concentrate in the history of Western philosophy may choose from courses on every major period of the Western tradition, as well as historically significant philosophical movements. Our faculty includes specialists in ancient Greek, medieval, modern, and contemporary philosophy, as well as specialists in all major movements of Twentieth Century philosophy — analytic philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, process philosophy, Neo-Scholasticism, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, and Feminism. Research in all these areas is supported by one of the best history of philosophy library collections in the Northwest.
Social and Practical Philosophy
Our program offers a range of opportunities for course work and research in the growing field of social and practical philosophy. The faculty has specialists in traditional fields of social and practical philosophy, like applied, business, environmental, and medical ethics, as well as new fields such as the ethics of climate change, eating, and technology. The department also regularly offers courses in allied disciplines such as social and international ethics, intersectional feminism, queer theory, race studies, and political philosophy. The department has greatly increased library holdings in these areas over the past decade, and grants students ample research opportunities.
Gonzaga's Master of Arts in Philosophy program includes the following:
- 30-credit program hours with a thesis or non-thesis option.
- Comprehensive written examination on a reading list of key texts in the history of philosophy with a follow-up oral examination;
- Logic requirement, which can be satisfied either by coursework or a competence examination.