Philosophy Department Boston College

08/24/2026

“Philosophy translated means 'love of wisdom.' Wisdom is more than the accumulation of knowledge. It means to have an orientation within the world. Philosophy is not a specific discipline. It weighs the claims of the different disciplines against one another. It is a very strong antidote to approaches that seek to avoid value judgments. We are trying to answer questions about which values are preferable.” - Vittorio G. Hösle, who was appointed to the Frederick J. Adelmann, S.J., Chair and Professor in the Philosophy Department Boston College | READ MORE: https://on.bc.edu/VHosle

08/24/2026

We are pleased to be a part of this symposium on Gadamer in North America. It will take place here at Boston College Friday, October 2, 2026 | Murray Room, Yawkey Athletic Center. Featured speakers from Boston College will be Richard Kearney, Giovanni Pietro Basile, S.J. and Hannes Kerber. https://tinyurl.com/8tk3ah5t

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century and the leading representative of philosophical hermeneutics. His landmark work Truth and Method (1960) reshaped debates across philosophy and the humanities by arguing that understanding is fundam...

07/28/2026

07/28/2026

Professor of Philosophy Peter Kreeft's Socrates Meets (Word on Fire) received first place honors in the category of Philosophical Studies and second place honors in the category of Religious Book Series. Kreeft’s eight-volume book series pits Socrates against history's most influential thinkers, including Machiavelli, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Freud.

CMA Book Awards honor authors, publishers, and editors who have made significant contributions to the Catholic literary landscape

06/25/2026

Congratulations to Dr. Sean Haefner on the successful defense of his dissertation, "Husserl’s Phenomenology of Vocation as Foundational for Ethics", on Thursday, June 11, 2026. Meeting in the Lonergan Center, his committee included dissertation supervisor Professor Dermot Moran (who attended virtually), Professor Andrew Barrette, and Professor Emeritus Patrick Byrne.

06/22/2026

The students in Professor Bloechl's course on the Ethics of Accompaniment have finished three weeks in Europe, during which they visited key sites of the Jesuit Refugee Services in Rome, and then worked with the staff of Jesuit Refugee Services in Malta for two and a half weeks. During that time, they participated in a number of classroom exercises, community outreach, hospital and soup kitchen visits, and a range of activities belonging to the 2026 World Refugee Week. They also helped paint rooms and renovate a basement chapel dating from the early 18th century. They were joined for their final week by Sr. Maryanne Loughry, a Boston College faculty member who has worked for JRS over twenty-five years. The students' experience in Rome and Malta comes after a fully academic course during the Spring semester.

06/17/2026

PhD candidate Stéphanie Krokida participated in the 2026 Husserl Circle Annual Meeting in Veracruz, Mexico last week. Her panel was entitled "Dynamic Monad: The Concrete, Changing Subject in Husserl's Late Writings".
https://www.husserlcircle.org/2026-meeting.html

06/14/2026

Boston College faculty, including Philosophy Professor Father Phillip Larrey, respond to papal encyclical on artificial intelligence.

Boston College faculty respond to papal encyclical on artificial intelligence

06/10/2026

Shane Ewegen (PhD '11) and Lydia Barry (PhD '23) co-edited a festschrift for Drew Hyland, published by Brill.
Shane and Lydia also co-wrote the introduction to the collected volume, and each contributed an essay to the collection.

"The Play of Philosophy: Thinking with Drew Hyland" published on 23 Feb 2026 by Brill.

06/10/2026

Helen de Cruz talks to Philosophy PhDs outside the academy who most definitely are not “slumming it”.