Research at the Dominican University College
The faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the Dominican University College (D.U.C) have diverse research and wide-ranging research interests in the history of philosophy, metaphysics and modern philosophy. The DUC, with its traditional origins in the House of Studies of the Friar Preachers of St. Dominic, is particularly well situated and established to promote advanced research studies in the history of philosophy. The medieval tradition, with its overarching synthesis in the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, requires a solid grounding in the ancient philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists. The Department encourages and often conducts research in the original languages of the ancient authors. Faculty members are continually engaged in scholarly studies which demonstrate the relevance of ancient philosophy to understanding the modern world.
Equally, the classical traditions of early modern rationalism and empiricism provide important precedents for the understanding of modernity. Faculty members have engaged in the study of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. The other great precedent for modernity is German Idealism, wherein the philosophies of Kant and Hegel provided the foundation for modern inquiries into epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, politics and jurisprudence. The College not only encourages the specialized study of individual philosophers in these traditions, but also promotes the articulation of significant connections between various philosophers and schools of thought. Speculative inquiry into the meaning of the philosophical tradition as a whole is a mode of reflection widely promoted by faculty members.
On the thematic side, the College has a strong basis in the history of ethics, the history of political philosophy, the history of the philosophy of law and more recently the nascent discipline of the philosophy of economics. Thematic studies often cannot be separated from the close analysis of individual philosophers and texts in the tradition.
The Dominican University College is home base for Science et Esprit, which is a long established bilingual journal in philosophy and theology. Members of both faculties often publish their research endeavours in this journal as well as book reviews. The International Journal for Social Economics is now also situated at the D.U.C., with the Editor and Deputy Editor both members in the department of philosophy. This journal publishes a wide range of articles in social economics, economic justice and the intersection of philosophy, economics, civilization, knowledge and issues of social and communal interest.
