Philosophy MA Comprehensive Examination Requirements

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The MA Comprehensive Examination

  1. The MA Comprehensive Examination is taken at the end of the semester in which the student takes the Comprehensive Examination Course. Students must obtain written permission from the Director of the Center in order to schedule the MA Comprehensive Examination in a semester other than the fourth semester of MA study.
  2. The candidate takes the two parts of the six-hour written examination either on the same day or on two consecutive days. The first part of the examination will cover ancient and medieval; the second part will cover early modern, late modern, and recent Thomistic material. Students must take the oral examination within one week of the written examination.
  3. The MA Comprehensive Examination is organized by the faculty member designated as the Faculty Coordinator. The Faculty Coordinator is responsible for the MA Comprehensive Course for that academic year. The Faculty Coordinator will solicit written questions from all Center faculty and at least two Center faculty members must grade each question. In consultation with the Director of the Center, the Faculty Coordinator will average the grades on the written test. Students must pass the written test with a minimum grade of “B-” in order to proceed to the oral examination. If a student fails the written examination, she/he must retake the exam within six months.
  4. The oral component of the examination lasts one hour and is set by three faculty examiners chosen by the Faculty Coordinator in consultation with the Director of the Center. The three examiners determine the grade for the oral examination. If the candidate passes the oral with a minimum grade of “B-”, the three examiners compare the written and oral grades and then by vote determine an overall grade for the MA Comprehensive Examination. This grade is entered as the grade for the MA Comprehensive Course. If a student fails the oral examination, he must retake it within six months.

Book List for the MA Comprehensive Examination

For this examination the student must choose twelve (12) books from the following menu of options:

Ancient Greek Philosophy (3 works must be chosen, the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics are mandatory)

Required
  • Plato, Republic
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Additional Text
  • Aristotle, Physics or On the Soul

Medieval /Latin Philosophy (3 authors must be chosen, one must be Aquinas)

  • Augustine, Confessions or City of God (selections) or Free Choice of the Will and On Christian Teaching
  • Anselm, Proslogion
  • Aquinas: Metaphysics: De ente et essentia and Summa theologiae Ia, qq.1-7, 12-13, 44-46; Person: Summa theologiae Ia, qq. 75-87; Ethics: Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, qq. 1-20 or Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, qq.55-67, 90-100
  • Scotus: Selections
  • Suarez: Metaphysical Disputations (selections)
  • Poinsot: Treatise on Signs or De primo cognito

Early Modern Philosophy (2 authors must be chosen, one must be Kant)

  • Descartes, Meditations
  • Spinoza, Ethics I, II
  • Hobbes, Leviathan (selections)
  • Locke, Second Treatise on Government or Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
  • Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding or Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
  • Kant, Prolegomenon to Any Future Metaphysics or Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals or one of the three Critiques.

Late Modern Philosophy (2 authors must be chosen, one from A and one from B)

Group A
  • Hegel, Philosophy of Right or Phenomenology of Spirit
  • Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
  • Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling or Either/Or
  • Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology or Being and Time or On the Essence of Truth
  • Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences or Ideas or Cartesian Meditations
  • Gadamer, Truth and Method
  • Marx, Communist Manifesto and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
  • Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Group B
  • Peirce, “A New List of Categories” and “A Neglected Argument for the Existence of God”
  • Frege, “Sense and Reference” and Russell, “On Denoting” and Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Chapter 16: “Descriptions.” (Frege and Russell are counted as one author.)
  • Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Part I.
  • Kripke, Naming and Necessity and “Identity and Necessity”

Recent Thomistic Philosophy (2 authors must be chosen)

  • Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge or Integral Humanism or An Introduction to the Basic Problems of Moral Philosophy or Existence and the Existent and Preface to Metaphysics
  • Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience or Being and Some Philosophers or Christian Philosophy
  • Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics
  • Finnis, Moral, Political, and Legal Theory
  • Lonergan, Insight
  • MacIntyre, After Virtue or Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
  • Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government