The Philosophy Department
A house was built by Socrates,
That failed the public taste to please.
One thought the inside, not to tell a lie,
Unworthy of the wise man's dignity.
Another blamed the front; and one and all
Agreed the rooms were very much too small.
"What! such a house for our great sage,
The pride and wonder of the age!"
"Would Heaven," said he, quite weary of the Babel,
"Was only able.
Small as it is, to fill it with true friends."
And here the story ends.
Just reason had good Socrates
To find his house too large for these.
Each man you meet as friend, your hand will claim;
Fool, if you trust the proffers that such bring.
There's nothing commoner than Friendship's name;
There's nothing rarer than the thing.
Philosophy seeks to answer fundamental questions such as: What does morality require of us? What is the nature and extent of knowledge? Is life meaningful? Some philosophical issues go back to antiquity, such as whether we have free will. Others speak to relatively new issues, such as the nature and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Some philosophical questions, whether ancient or modern, seem simple to answer when you first consider them. But, once you start doing some philosophy, you realize that there is much more going on beneath the surface. This is part of what makes philosophy both fun and valuable as a pursuit.
The Philosophy Department was established at Virginia Tech in 1983. Located on the fourth and fifth floors of War Memorial Hall, the department covers the full range of subject areas in analytic philosophy, including logic and philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics and epistemology, value theory, and the history of philosophy, including ancient and modern. From the start the department has had interdisciplinary connections with other programs, especially STS (Science and Technology Studies), and later it added connections with PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics).
The department offers an undergraduate major in Philosophy as well as an MA degree. And the PPE undergraduate major, while administered by the Kellogg Center for PPE at Virginia Tech, is categorized as a Philosophy degree. We typically have around fifty undergraduate majors and around ten students enrolled in the MA program at any given time. Click here to contact administrative officers: the Chair, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, the Director of Graduate Studies, the department Business Coordinator.