Program Design

Fields of Study

ICS offers masters and doctoral programs in interdisciplinary philosophy. These programs emphasize the social and cultural implications of academic work, and explore connections between philosophy and other fields of study. Here, the term “field” refers to an area of study that has a deep disciplinary focus as well as a broad awareness of interdisciplinary connections. One might think of such fields as overlapping neighbourhoods that are home to a particular academic discipline that both informs and is enriched by neighbouring disciplines, and which altogether paint a picture of the multidimensional meaning of existence.

Our programs therefore have an innovative design. Unlike graduate programs that emphasize the distinct subdisciplines of philosophy, our programs gather courses into seven interdisciplinary fields of study. Each field of study serves as a thematic guide or concentration, within which students are invited to find their own distinct pathways of study.

The fields of study that currently receive special attention in ICS course offerings are:

Aesthetics, Hermeneutics, and Philosophy of Discourse

Courses exploring the arts, culture, language, rhetoric, and interreligious dialogue.

Anthropology and Ethics

Courses exploring community, ecology, embodiment, gender, and social critique.

History and Historiography of Philosophy

Courses exploring medieval, modern, and contemporary thought, with special attention to Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Arendt, as well as to feminist philosophy, French phenomenology and deconstruction, Reformational philosophy, and Critical Theory.

Knowledge, Truth, and Learning

Courses exploring education and schooling, epistemology and metaphysics, and faith and philosophy.

Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology

Courses exploring faith and reason, secularization, religious traditions and practices in the public sphere, and the use and development of religious language.

Social and Political Thought

Courses exploring civil society, cultural pluralism, democracy, empire, feminism, globalization, and faith and politics.

Theology and Biblical Studies

Courses exploring theological aesthetics and hermeneutics, Christology and eschatology, spirituality and worship, and faith and culture.

Faculty in Their Fields

At present, Senior Members at ICS approach the above fields of study from many angles and have expertise in: theology, philosophy (in the disciplinary sense), aesthetics and art history, religious studies, the history of ideas, biblical studies, and philosophical historiography. Visit our faculty pages to see fuller, firsthand accounts of Senior Members' academic interests and specializations.