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In the Western tradition, philosophy represents a radical effort to understand reality. Philosophy casts an astonished, questioning gaze on the world around it and on mankind. The philosopher rejects the easy "obvious" and asks why things are the way they are. Rather than a discipline juxtaposed with others, philosophy as a critical approach thus constitutes an attitude and a spirit that apply in all registers, particularly intellectual, of human activity.
"What then is philosophy today (...) if it is not the critical work of thought on itself? And if it does not consist, instead of legitimizing what we already know, in undertaking to know how and to what extent it would be possible to think otherwise?" (Michel Foucault)
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Find out more about the department
Organization
The department brings together several academics, each specializing in a specific area of teaching, an assistant in charge of student supervision, as well as PhD students and post-doctoral researchers. All members of the department work closely together. The department is equipped with a library and two seminar rooms in which most specialty courses take place.
The seminar rooms and the offices of professors and assistants are located on the 5th floor of the Philosophy and Humanities Building.
A alumni association is present within the department.
Library
The library is specially organized for the department's students, to facilitate their access to the main philosophical texts and their commentaries (mainly in French ). It also contains a good stock of secondary literature on subjects that are the subject of teaching (social and political philosophy, logic, aesthetics, anthropology, etc.), always in French. A special part of the library is also devoted to working tools (encyclopedias, philosophy textbooks and dictionaries).
In practice
- Where? The department's library is located on the 5th floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters building (access rue Grafé 1).
- Who? It is accessible free of charge to all students of the faculty and to any outside reader who so wishes.
- When? On weekdays, the library is generally open from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, except during the time when the reading room is occupied for a class.
- the loan terms are posted inside the library.
The library catalog can be consulted on site. All the books in the department's library are listed in the general computerized catalog of the university libraries (BUMP and CDDR) under the Philo FUNDP- Département.
