An examination of some key theoretical issues concerning faith and reason. Among these issues are: the nature of faith, the nature of intellectual inquiry, the role of affection in intellectual inquiry, the main competing accounts of intellectual inquiry and of the philosophical life. Among the authors to be read are St. Thomas Aquinas (opening sections of the Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles, parts of the treatise on faith from  Summa Theologiae 2-2), Plato (Phaedo and small section of the Republic), Descartes (first three parts of Discourse on Method), Locke (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Part IV, chaps 18-19), Kant ("What is Enlightenment?"), Hume (first and last parts of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion), Mill (chapters 2 and 3 of On Liberty), Nietzsche (excerpts from Beyond Good and Evil), Chesterton (chapters 2-4 of Orthodoxy), and Pope John Paul II, encyclical Fides et Ratio. 

         Requirements: A class presentation and a 15-20 page term paper.