Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [Philosophy] From University of Hawaii at Manoa

Philosophy (PHIL) is an open inquiry that involves the disciplined examination of our most comprehensive goals, standards, and criteria. For example: how should we conduct ourselves in our relations with one another? (ethics); what standards should we use to assess our institutions? (social and political theory); how may we achieve knowledge and understanding of the world around us? (epistemology, philosophy of science); what are the most general structures of thought and reality? (philosophy of logic and language, metaphysics); and what place does art have, or what place should it have, in human life? (aesthetics). In pursuing these questions, philosophy is often led to confront issues about the ultimate nature of reality and value or to consider possible limitations on our ability to answer or even to ask such questions. Philosophy proceeds with its task in part through contributing to ongoing discussions and debates within disciplines and traditions and also by cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural comparisons.

The Department of Philosophy's faculty has expertise in an unusually diverse range of philosophic traditions. The faculty includes specialists in Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Buddhist, and Islamic thought, as well as in many of the important Western traditions. The department as a whole has long been recognized internationally for its comparative work between philosophic traditions.