In the absence of an authentic advising schedule, the Dead Philosophers Society has put together a recommended sequence for students within the Holy Apostles philosophy program. While it is tempting to jump right into metaphysics, be advised that logic and ancient and medieval philosophy are practically pre-requisites to a successful understanding of what we mean when we say subsistent being. By following the sequence of categories recommended by Aristotle and St. Thomas below, you’ll have a good introduction to philosophy and a more meaningful time studying it than if you bounce throughout the course offerings with no rhyme or, perish the thought, reason.
The way the categories work below is simple – take a selection of courses from section 1 before doing so from section 2, and so on, as courses in the first sections are prior in knowledge than those in the subsequent ones. If you need an explicit path, here’s a route – philosophy for theologians, logic, ancient and medieval, natural law, philosophy of nature, philosophy of human nature, modern, intro to moral, medical, or sexual, political, and metaphysics. Feel free, of course, to expand beyond this list with the other courses in each of the sections. One caveat: don’t let logic scare you. If you can get through that class, the rest will be easier all the way up to metaphysics.
- Logic (Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior Analytics), including Epistemology (Posterior Analytics)
- PHTH 600 – Philosophy for Theologians
- PHL 625 – Logic (this first or second in this section, preceded only by Philosophy for Theologians)
- PHL 730 – Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
- PHL 652 – Natural Law: What it is and Why We Need It
- PHL 620 – Epistemology
- PHL 700 – Introduction to Thomas Aquinas
- PHL 708 – The Liberal Arts: Their History and Philosophy
- Natural Philosophy (Physics), including Philosophical Psychology (De Anima)
- PHL 725 – Philosophy of Nature (this first in this section)
- PHL 722 – Philosophy of Human Nature ( take before or concurrent with PHL 720)
- PHL 705 – Introduction to Modern Philosophy (You’ll have a better time with this course if it’s taken after PHL 722)
- PHL 710 – Science and Belief
- PHL 715 – Galileo: Science and Religion
- Ethics (Nicomachean Ethics), including Politics (Politics)
- PHL 720 – Introduction to Moral Philosophy (this first in this section)
- PHTH 608 – The Gospel of Life and the Culture of Death
- PHTH 616 – Authentic Virtue/Christian Personalism
- PHL 712 – Political Philosophy
- STM 626 – Intro to Sexual Ethics
- STM 640 - Intro to Medical Ethics (waiting for course number)
- Metaphysics including Natural Theology
- PHL 640 – Metaphysics
- PHL 645 – Newman and Kierkegaard
- PHTH 617 – Theology & Science
- PHL 648 – Analytic Philosophy
- PHTH 615 – Dante’s Divine Comedy
