Philosophy PhD Comprehensive Examination Requirements

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The PhD Comprehensive Examination

  1. All course work must be completed before the PhD Comprehensive Examination is taken.
  2. Students preparing for the PhD Comprehensive Examination should register for PHIL 5605: Doctoral Exam the first semester after completing course work and PHIL 5606 for all succeeding semesters until their dissertation topic has been approved.
  3. The PhD Comprehensive Examination is taken during the regular semester following completion of course work. Written permission from the Director of the Center must be obtained to schedule the PhD Comprehensive Examination at a different time.
  4. The PhD Comprehensive Examination is organized by the Director of the Center or his or her appointee.
  5. The PhD Comprehensive consists of two parts: a twelve-hour written examination, divided into two parts: six hours on ancient and medieval philosophy, six hours on early modern, late modern, and recent Thomistic materials. The candidate will take the written examination on two or three different days within two weeks of each other.
  6. Questions will be solicited from all faculty in the Center for the written examination. At least two faculty members will grade each question. In consultation with a senior member of the Center, the Director will average the grades on the written test. Students must pass the written test with a minimum grade of “B” to proceed to the oral examination. If failed, the written exam may be retaken once, but must be retaken within one year of the date of the original exam.
  7. The oral examination lasts one hour and must be taken within two weeks of the final part of the written examination. The oral examination is set by three faculty examiners chosen by the Director. The three examiners determine the grade for the oral exam. If the candidate passes the oral with a minimum grade of “B”, the grades on the written and oral portions are compared and the overall grade is determined by vote. If a student fails the oral examination she/he must retake it within one year.

Book List for the PhD Comprehensive Examination

For this examination the student must choose twenty-four (24) books from the following menu of options:

Ancient Greek Philosophy (6 works must be chosen)

  • Plato (Choose 2 works; the Republic is mandatory)
    • Republic (mandatory) and Symposium or Gorgias or Timaeus or Phaedo
  • Aristotle (Choose 3 works. Either Nicomachean Ethics or Politics is mandatory)
    • Nicomachean Ethics or Politics (mandatory) and
    • Physics or On the Soul or Posterior Analytics or Metaphysics

A sixth work may be chosen from the following:

  • Plotinus, Enneads (Selections translated in Elmer O’Brien, The Essential Plotinus)
  • Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines
  • Cicero, De Officiis

Medieval/Latin Philosophy (6 works must be chosen)

  • Augustine (1 work must be chosen)
    • Confessions or Free Choice of the Will and On Christian Teaching
  • Aquinas (3 works must be chosen. 1 from each group below):
    • Group 1:
      • De ente et essentia and Summa theologiae Ia, qq. 1-7, 12-13, 44-46
      • Commentary on Metaphysics (selections)
    • Group 2:
      • Summa theologiae Ia,qq.75-87
      • Commentary on De anima (Books II-III)
    • Group 3:
      • Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, qq. 1-5, 55-67, 90-100
      • Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, qq. 1-20
      • Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (selections)

2 works must be chosen from the following menu of options:

  • Scotus, Selections
  • Suarez, Metaphysical Disputations (selections)
  • Ockham, Selections
  • Avicenna, Metaphysics of the Healing

Early Modern Philosophy (5 texts must be chosen; one must be by Kant)

  • Descartes, Meditations
  • Leibniz, Monadology or New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
  • Hobbes, Leviathan (Parts I-III)
  • Locke, Second Treatise on Government or Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Selections: from the Hackett edition, books 1, 2, and 4, omitting book 3)
  • Berkeley, Three Dialogues
  • Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding or Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals or Dialogue on Natural Religion
  • Kant, Prolegomenon to Any Future Metaphysics or Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals

Late Modern Philosophy (4 works must be chosen, 2 from A and 2 from B)

  • Group A
    • Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
    • Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
    • Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
    • Heidegger, Being and Time
    • Husserl, Cartesian Meditations
  • Group B
    • Frege, “Sense and Reference” and Russell, "The Theory of Descriptions" and “On Denoting” and Kripke, Naming and Necessity and “Identity and Necessity” (Frege and Russell and Kripke are counted as one author.)
    • Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Part I.
    • Anscombe and Geach, "Modern Moral Philosophy" and God and the Soul (Anscombe and Geach are counted as one author).
    • Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and "On What There Is"
    • Rawls, Theory of Justice, Ch. 1

Recent Thomistic Philosophy (3 authors must be chosen, Maritain, Gilson and one other)

  • Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge or Existence and the Existent and Preface to Metaphysics or Integral Humanism
  • Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience or Being and Some Philosophers
  • Finnis, Moral, Political, and Legal Theory
  • MacIntyre, After Virtue or Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
  • De Koninck and Eschmann, "On the Primacy of the Common Good" and "In the Defense of St. Thomas" and "In Defense of Jacques Maritan" 
  • Wallace, Modeling of Nature (Part I, all, except 2.10, 4.10; Part II: 6.1-6.8; 7.1-7.5; 8.1-8.6)