The Institute of Philosophy (Dutch: Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte) is the faculty of philosophy at the
KU Leuven
KU Leuven (or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. It conducts teaching, research, and services in computer science, engineering, natural sciences, theology, humanities, medicine, l ...
in the
Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct language ...
city of
Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic ...
. It was founded in 1968 when the ''Institut supérieur de Philosophie - Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte'' of the
Catholic University of Leuven (1835–1968)
University of Leuven or University of Louvain (french: Université de Louvain, link=no; nl, Universiteit Leuven, link=no) may refer to:
* Old University of Leuven (1425–1797)
* State University of Leuven (1817–1835)
* Catholic University of ...
was split into a
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
-speaking entity and a
French-speaking entity. Its main buildings are located in the center of
Leuven, Belgium
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic c ...
at the
Kardinaal Mercier Square, the founder of the original institute.
History
The ''Institut supérieur de Philosophie'' was founded by
Cardinal Mercier
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...
on 8 November 1889 with the intent to be a beacon of
Neo-Thomist
Neo-scholasticism (also known as neo-scholastic Thomism Accessed 27 March 2013 or neo-Thomism because of the great influence of the writings of Thomas Aquinas on the movement) is a revival and development of medieval scholasticism in Catholic the ...
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, although Philosophy and Theology have been taught at the
universities of Leuven since 1425. The institute initially taught programs in
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and started courses in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
in 1933. After the language split of 1968, the ''Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte'' became part of the newly independent
''Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven'', offering programmes in Dutch with little and at times no content taught in French, while the French-speaking ''
Institut supérieur de Philosophie'' of the ''
Université catholique de Louvain
The Université catholique de Louvain (also known as the Catholic University of Louvain, the English translation of its French name, and the University of Louvain, its official English name) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It ...
'' continued in the new city of
Louvain-la-Neuve
Louvain-la-Neuve (, French for ''New Leuven''; wa, Li Noû Lovén) is a planned town in the municipality of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Wallonia, Belgium, situated 30 km southeast of Brussels, in the province of Walloon Brabant. The town was ...
. In 1993, the institute became the faculty of philosophy.
Programs offered
The institute offers both taught and research degrees (B.A., M.A., MPhil and PhD) as well as pre-doc and post-doc programs, both in Dutch and English. Students can take classes in both languages if desired.
Departments
* Cultural Philosophy
* Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy
* Logic and Philosophy of Science
* Metaphysics and Modern Philosophy
* Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
* Phenomenology
Husserl-Archives Leuven
The Institute, together with its French-speaking counterpart in
Louvain-la-Neuve
Louvain-la-Neuve (, French for ''New Leuven''; wa, Li Noû Lovén) is a planned town in the municipality of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Wallonia, Belgium, situated 30 km southeast of Brussels, in the province of Walloon Brabant. The town was ...
, are well known as the home of the Husserl-Archives, the research center responsible for the publication of the philosophical work of
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
. After the death of the founder of
the phenomenological movement, fearing for the destruction of his ''
Nachlass
''Nachlass'' (, older spelling ''Nachlaß'') is a German word, used in academia to describe the collection of manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and so on left behind when a scholar dies. The word is a compound in German: ''nach'' means "after" ...
'' at the hands of the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
s, Father
Herman Van Breda
Herman Leo Van Breda (born Leo Marie Karel; 28 February 1911, in Lier, Belgium – 3 March 1974, in Leuven) was a Franciscan, philosopher and founder of the Husserl Archives at the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuve ...
(
Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...
), PhD student at the institute, saved Husserl's manuscripts, library and widow and smuggled them to
Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic ...
via diplomatic channels.
Research and publications
The Institute publishes a Dutch-language philosophy journal, called the ''Tijdschrift voor Filosofie'',
Ethische Perspectieven /
Ethical Perspectives
''Ethical Perspectives'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of philosophy, established in 1994 and published by Peeters Online Journals. It publishes articles in English, focusing on ethics and related fields. It is edited by Helder ...
and the Bibliographical Directory of Philosophy (published jointly with the
UCLouvain's
Institut supérieur de Philosophie). It also organizes several major publication efforts, including the
Husserliana The Husserliana is the complete works project of the philosopher Edmund Husserl (April 8, 1859 – April 27, 1938), which was made possible by Herman Van Breda after he saved the manuscripts of Husserl. The Husserliana is published by the Husserl A ...
(Husserl-Archives), the ''Aristoteles Latinus'' (De Wulf-Mansion centre), the Latin editions of
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
's works known to the medieval philosophers.
Numbers
* Ranks 24th in the QS World Philosophy Rankings (2014)
* More than 30
lecturer
Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...
s and
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
s
* 80 researchers in 5 departments
* more than 100
graduate students
Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree.
The organization and struc ...
* Circa 750 students (of which 50% international students)
Renowned emeriti
*
Armand Thiery
Armand refer to:
People
* Armand (name), list of people with this name
*Armand (photographer) (1901–1963), Armenian photographer
*Armand (singer) (1946–2015), Dutch protest singer
*Sean Armand (born 1991), American basketball player
*Armand, ...
*
Samuel IJsseling
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bibl ...
*
Alphonse De Waelhens
*
Herman Parret
*
André Léonard
André — sometimes transliterated as Andre — is the French and Portuguese form of the name Andrew, and is now also used in the English-speaking world. It used in France, Quebec, Canada and other French-speaking countries. It is a variation o ...
*
Herman Van Rompuy
Herman Achille, Count Van Rompuy (; born 31 October 1947) is a Belgian politician, who served as the prime minister of Belgium from 2008 to 2009 and then as the first permanent president of the European Council from 2009 to 2014.
A politicia ...
*
Rudolf Bernet
*
William Desmond
Guest researchers and lecturers
Internationally renowned professors who have lectured at the institute:
*
Étienne Gilson
Étienne Henri Gilson (; 13 June 1884 – 19 September 1978) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy. A scholar of medieval philosophy, he originally specialised in the thought of Descartes; he also philosophized in the tradition o ...
*
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...
*
Paul Ricœur
Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (; ; 27 February 1913 – 20 May 2005) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic ...
*
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to me ...
*
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
*
Jan Patočka
Jan Patočka (; 1 June 1907 – 13 March 1977) was a Czech philosopher. Having studied in Prague, Paris, Berlin, and Freiburg, he was one of the last pupils of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Freiburg he also developed a lifelong philos ...
*
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
*
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
*
Charles Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...
*
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
*
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
*
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
*
P. F. Strawson
Peter Frederick Strawson (; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that, he ...
*
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the ...
*
Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.
Editor from 1982 t ...
*
Donald Davidson
*
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosoph ...
*
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic phi ...
*
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' ...
*
Ian Hacking
Ian MacDougall Hacking (born February 18, 1936) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been ...
*
John Milbank
Alasdair John Milbank (born 23 October 1952) is an English Anglican theologian and is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he is President of the Centre of Theology and ...
*
Don Cupitt
Don Cupitt (born 22 May 1934) is an English philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian theology. He has been an Anglican priest and a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, though is better known as a popular writer, broadcaster and comm ...
Notable former students
*
Hans Lindahl
Hans Lindahl (born October 15, 1954) is a Swedish comic book artist, best known for his work on the series ''The Phantom''. His work on the ''Phantom'' has been published in countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, England, Australia an ...
, professor and former student
*
Bruce Ellis Benson
Bruce Ellis Benson (born 1960) is a professor of philosophy at Wheaton College in Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro Eas ...
, professor, Wheaton College, USA
*
Babette Babich
Babette E. Babich (born 14 November 1956, in New York City) is an American philosopher who writes from a continental perspective on aesthetics, philosophy of science and technology in addition to critical and cultural theory.
Career
Including r ...
(professor), professor of philosophy at Fordham University
*
Thomas D. Carroll, priest and former student (PhD, and PhL)
*
Marin Gillis, professor and former student
*
Marc Sebrecht Marc or MARC may refer to:
People
* Marc (given name), people with the first name
* Marc (surname), people with the family name
Acronyms
* MARC standards, a data format used for library cataloging,
* MARC Train, a regional commuter rail system o ...
, professor and former student
*
Joseph J. Kockelmans, professor, Pennsylvania State University, USA
*
Renee Kohler-Ryan, senior lecturer, The University of Notre Dame, Sydney, Australia
*
Wha-Chul Son, professor, Handong Global University, Korea
*
John Hymers
John Hymers (1803–1887) was an English mathematician and cleric, and, together with his brother Robert, founder of Hymers College, Hull.
Life
Hymers was born 20 July 1803 at Ormesby in Yorkshire; his father was a farmer, and his mother was dau ...
, associate professor, La Salle University, Philadelphia, USA
*
Tanya Loughead, Professor of Philosophy, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA
*
Richard Chung Kee Lee assistant professor, Hong Kong Baptist University
*
Damian C. Ilodigwe Damian ( la, links=no, Damianus) may refer to:
* Damian (given name)
* Damian (surname)
* Damian Subdistrict, in Longquanyi District, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
See also
* Damiani, an Italian surname
* Damiano (disambiguation)
* Damien (disambiguation ...
lecturer in Philosophy, SS Peter & Paul Major Seminary, Ibadan, Nigeria
*
Nikolaj Zunic Nikolaj is a Danish given name, derived from the name Nicholas. Many different ways of spelling the name have been approved in Denmark.
It may refer to:
* Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard, Danish artist
* Nicolaj Agger, Danish professional football pla ...
associate professor, St. Jerome's University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
*
Jeffrey Bloechl
Jeffrey may refer to:
* Jeffrey (name), including a list of people with the name
*Jeffrey (1995 film), ''Jeffrey'' (1995 film), a 1995 film by Paul Rudnick, based on Rudnick's play of the same name
*Jeffrey (2016 film), ''Jeffrey'' (2016 film), a 2 ...
, associate professor, Boston College, USA
*
Stephan Lake,
associate professor, Trinity Christian College, IL, USA
*
Jovino G. Miroy, associate professor, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines
*
Michael Newman, professor of art writing, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
*
Stuart Rennie,
associate professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
*
Jeb Bishop
Jeb Bishop (born 1962) is an American jazz trombone player.
He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Jesse O. Sanderson High School. He has studied music (classical trombone performance) at Northwestern University, engineering and ...
, musician (BA 1985)
See also
*
Joseph Maréchal
Joseph Maréchal, SJ (; 1 July 1878 – 11 December 1944) was a Belgian Jesuit priest, philosopher, theologian and psychologist. He taught at the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven and was the founder of the school of ...
References
External links
* (English)
Site of the ''Tijdschrift voor Filosofie''Journal Ethische Perspectieven(NL)
Ethical Perspectives(EN)
{{coord, 50.87599, 4.70667, type:edu_globe:earth_region:BE, display=title
KU Leuven
Education in Leuven
Educational institutions established in 1889
1889 establishments in Belgium
Philosophy departments