Degree of high school program in Philosophy

requirements

Students who have passed all the subjects of the Study program of the high school program in Philosophy in the School, or in Centers affiliated to it, will have direct access to the Degree test of the high school program

Those who, coming from other Centers, aspire to obtain this Degree, before accessing the Degree test , must attend programs of study at the School for at least one semester; the Study program during that semester will be determined by the Associate Dean of Students.

test mechanics

Choice of topic
Each student will be able to choose a topic among two drawn by lot and will have an average one hour to prepare his exhibition. This preparation must be done without financial aid of books or notes. As a result if he/she wishes, he/she can elaborate a brief staff script of the chosen topic , which he/she will be able to use in the exhibition.

exhibition
The candidate will present the topic before the corresponding panel for a period of 30 minutes, although the panel may interrupt the exhibition after 20 minutes if it considers the exhibition to be sufficient. The candidate will also submit to the questions that the members of the panel may consider appropriate to ask in order to fill in their judgment. 

Evaluation.

The court will rate "Pass" or "not Pass".

Download PDF syllabus

• topic 1. The beginnings of Greek Philosophy . Heraclitus and Parmenides. Socrates and the maieutics.

• Plato's Philosophy : metaphysics, gnoseology, ethics and politics.

• Aristotle's Philosophy : physics, metaphysics, gnoseology and ethics.

• topic 4. St. Augustine: theory of truth; the Enlightenment; proofs of the existence of God; the human compound; evil and freedom.

• topic 5. The synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas: gnoseological realism, metaphysics and ethics.

• topic 6. The Philosophy of Duns Scotus. The nominalism of William of Ockham.

• topic 7. Rationalism. Descartes: method and doubt, the cogito, God, the world. Malebranche: occasionalism. Leibniz: monadology.

• topic 8. Empiricism. Locke: theory of knowledge. Berkeley: critique of material substance, spiritual beings. Hume: theory of knowledge, critique of spiritual substance, cause and God.

• Kant's Transcendental Philosophy . The critique of pure reason. Kantian ethics. Kantian agnosticism.

• topic 10. Absolute idealism: Hegel, Fichte and Schelling. Materialism: the inversion and dissolution of idealism: Feuerbach and Marx.

• topic 11. Criticism of rationalism: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

• topic 12. Husserl's phenomenology. Heidegger's existentialism.

• topic 13. Sartre's existentialism. Gadamer's hermeneutics. Analytical Philosophy and logical positivism: Wittgenstein.

• topic 14. The nature of logic. Classical propositional logic. Developments in logic in the 20th century. Modal logic and trivalent logic.

• topic 15. Philosophy of language. The linguistic turn. Relationship between language, thought and reality. History of semiotics.

• topic 16. The Philosophy of Nature throughout history. Space and time. The problem of motion.

• topic 17. The notion of substance. Purpose. Mechanistic understanding of physical reality. Determinism and indeterminism. Relativity. 

• topic 18. The subject, evolution and life. Creation and origin of the universe.

• Nature and method of Anthropology. Man as a living being. The human soul and the substantial unity of man. knowledge. Human tendencies. The freedom. Man as a person.

• Anthropological currents of the 20th century: pragmatist anthropology, analytical anthropology, personalist anthropologies, dialogical and psychotherapeutic anthropologies, transcendental anthropologies.

• topic 21. Language and culture. Art. Death. Man as a social being. Existence and temporality. Religion and transcendence.

• topic 22. Aesthetics in Modernity: empiricism and Kant. Aesthetics in Romanticism and contemporary Philosophy . Current currents: Arthur Danto and the end of art.

• Metaphysics as the first science. The principle of non-contradiction. The entity and being. The transcendental entity. The first principles.

• topic 24. Transcendentals and modalities. Substance, essence and existence: classical and contemporary debates.

• topic 25. Thomistic metaphysics of the act of being. Being as an act of all perfections. Distinction between essence and act of being: limitation, multiplicity and similarity of entities. The structure of created entities. God and the act of being.

• topic 26. Causality. The knowledge of causality. Notions of cause, principle, condition and occasion. Material, formal, efficient and final cause. The connection between causes.

• topic 27. truth and knowledge. Nature of knowledge. sensible knowledge and intellectual knowledge . knowledge of others. knowledge and morality.

• topic 28. The intelligibility of the real. The notion of truth. Truth and entity. States of the human mind before the truth. Certainty and evidence. Doubt and opinion. Explanation of error.

• topic 29. Examination of skepticism. Forms and arguments of skepticism. First principles of knowledge. The objectivity of sensible knowledge .

• topic 30. Idealism and realism. The principle of immanence and idealism. Being in knowledge: concept and veritative being.

• topic 31. Spontaneous and philosophical knowledge of the existence of God. philosophical knowledge of God and revealed theology. The place of God in metaphysics. Atheism.

• topic 32. Ontologism. Agnosticism. A priori arguments. The ontological argument: formulations and criticisms.

• topic 33. A posteriori arguments. Thomistic ways and moral arguments. Contingency and necessity. Being and participation.

• topic 34. The essence of God: entitative attributes of God. Divine action. Providence and the problem of evil.

• topic 35. Ethics as a philosophical discipline . Theoretical science, prudence and internship science. The foundation of moral normativity and the natural moral law.

• topic 36. Theory of action, internship rationality and ethics. Ethics and political Philosophy . Ethics and legal theory.

• topic 37. The virtuous life. Importance and nature of the virtues. Growth in the moral virtues. The fundamental moral virtues.

• topic 38. Happiness and morality. Sources or criteria of the morality of action. Moral conscience as a subjective guide of the person. Moral evil.

• topic 39. Faith and reason: relationship and limits. Fideism and rationalism. development and historical stages of the relationship between faith and reason. Science, reason and faith.

• topic 40. Genesis of sociological thought. Historical and ideological context. Revolution and Restoration. The Enlightenment and its critics. Main traditions of social thought. Reflexivity and historicity of sociological thought. Sociology and social criticism.