About
The mission of EMU’s Philosophy Program is to nurture habits of thinking, writing, and communicating that prepare students to respond well to the complex realities of professional, social, and personal life. Our pluralistic, socially engaged faculty guides students in critically analyzing prevailing values, norms, and institutions. We empower students to imagine and create flourishing lives and communities.
The systematic critical examination of conventional thought is a defining feature of the work we do as philosophers. The faculty and lecturers of the Philosophy section at EMU take this work to include the systematic critical examination of unjust practices and social institutions that produce inequalities among groups defined by gender, race and ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, age, religion, and citizenship/immigration status. We are committed in our research, classrooms, and hiring and retention practices to promoting respect for, and the proactive inclusion of, unjustly marginalized perspectives and underrepresented philosophical traditions.
The majority of the Philosophy faculty have a social justice component to their research and teaching. Courses that examine and critique prevailing norms, values, and institutions are central in the Philosophy Major, Minor, and M.A. All of our courses challenge students to read critically, think critically, and write clearly. Such skills are essential for our students and graduates to respond well to the complex realities of life, as professionals in the workplace, as members of a democratic society, and as individuals.
The Philosophy Program is pluralistic in that a wide assortment of philosophical methods — analytic, continental, Chinese — are represented. A primary commitment of the Philosophy faculty at Eastern is attention to problems of social justice in an increasingly globalized world. The research and teaching specializations of the EMU Philosophy faculty include the critical examination of injustice and inequality related to gender, race, class, sexuality, immigration, food production and consumption, and climate change and the global environment.