Graduate Course Design

The Graduate Institute of Philosophy seeks to enroll eight students each year in the two-year master program leading to the M.A. degree. The Institute provides students with solid philosophical training and increases students’ ability to gain depth in their areas of specialization so that students may advance their research in further years of subsequent study either in the US, Europe, or Japan.

The requirements for the M.A. are:

1. Completion of 32 credits, which must include:

·       Graduate Seminar I in the spring semester of the first year (2 credits)

·       Graduate Seminar II in the fall semester of the second year (2 credits)

·       One of the following courses on a particular philosopher, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Wittgenstein (3 credits)

·       Seven additional courses in philosophy (21 credits in total)

·       M.A. thesis (4 credits)  

2. Completion and defense of a M.A. thesis proposal
3. Completion and defense of a M.A. thesis 

   The institute also occasionally provides language courses such as “Selected Readings in     German philosophy” or courses entitled “Special Topics in ...,” for instance, “Special Topics in Theory of Meaning,” although these courses are not included in the above requirements.