Introduction

Brief History

The Graduate Institute of Philosophy at National Tsing Hua University, founded in August 1994, is one of the nation’s finest institutes of philosophy. Its faculty is at the forefront of philosophical research in a wide variety of issues of the analytic and the continental tradition. The Institute offers a master's and a doctorate program that provides students with solid philosophical training and exposes them to the advanced research of different approaches in philosophy.

Course Profile

Courses are designed to give students a well-rounded philosophical training within an integrated curriculum that encourages interdisciplinary study. With characteristics and foresight, they focus mainly on Western philosophy, but are flexible to accommodate the research specialties of our faculty members and the interests of the students. Courses offered cover a wide range of subject areas, including: philosophy of mind, epistemology, pragmatism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, ancient Greek philosophy, and East Asian philosophy. From the first year, students are required to attend Seminar I and II, which are designed to motivate students to engage in philosophical discussion, to open to different traditions and schools, as well as to narrow down student’s academic interests for degree thesis-writing. To foster the understanding of classics, the students are also encouraged to take one of the courses focusing on a particular philosopher, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

Faculty

Faculty members are specialized in continental or analytic philosophy with particular strength in philosophy of mind, epistemology, pragmatism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of Kant, aesthetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of Kyoto school, Chinese philosophy, and ancient Greek philosophy as well.

Areas of Development

The institute’s most distinctive strength is its broad coverage of the philosophical researches in different approaches. With the studies of Western philosophy as major focus, it seeks to foster outstanding research on the fundamental issues in philosophy and inter-disciplinary topics. The fundamental studies focus on the basic problems and the contemporary approaches of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, and inter-disciplinary researches include phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of mind, and so forth.