College Prep II  |  Grade 9  |  Sem 1  |  0.5 credit

This course studies what it means to say that human beings are persons, i.e., beings endowed with freedom and an inner life capable of knowing and loving. Topics include: the union of body and soul; the powers of the rational soul and its finality; human passions and temperaments; and the inviolability of the human person which precludes being an object of use by another. From this study, the student will come to appreciate the profound dignity of every human person and the way in which respecting this dignity leads to personal happiness and fulfillment.

College Prep II  |  Grade 10  |  Sem 2  |  0.5 credit

Based on classical approaches to pursuing happiness and on reasoning derived from experience, this course introduces students to the study of voluntary human acts which lead to true human flourishing. The philosophical thought of the classical tradition is used as a guide to investigate the purpose of human life, the nature of human action, the determination of the goodness of acts, and the role of law, conscience, and virtue in achieving genuine human fulfillment. The role of virtue in the art of friendship will be explored in depth.

College Prep II  |  Grade 11  |  Sem 1  |  0.5 credit

In seeking to apply principles learned in Introduction to Ethics to contemporary questions, this course focuses primarily on issues that concern human life, the value of work and leisure, and other ethical applications related to truth, goodness, and beauty. Taking the dignity of human persons as its starting point, this course studies bioethical questions concerning the human person in all stages of life. Work and leisure are considered in relation to the pursuit of human flourishing as well as the shaping of culture. Study of the centrality of the good, the true, and the beautiful will include analysis of the use of social communications and the role of beauty in pursuit of true happiness.

College Prep II  |  Grade 12  |  Sem 2  |  0.5 credit

This course surveys the context and thought of foundational philosophers in the western philosophical tradition. In this course, the student will come to appreciate fundamental philosophical topics through the reading of primary source texts as well as accessible secondary material written by philosophers of our own day. Emphasis will be placed on the philosophical investigation of the human quest for knowledge of truth, especially how the desire to live well shaped thought and culture from ancient Greece to the medieval Christian world to the present.