• Philosophy

    Philosophy

  • Contact Us

    General Admission Contact
    The New School for Social Research
    Office of Admission
    72 Fifth Avenue, 1st floor
    New York, NY 10011
    212.229.5600 or 800.523.5411
    [email protected]

    Admission Liaison
    Mariam Matar

    Department of Philosophy
    6 East 16th Street, room 1015A
    New York, NY 10003
    212.229.5707 x3078

    Mailing Address
    79 Fifth Ave, room 1015A
    New York, NY 10003

    Chair
    James Dodd

    Senior Secretary
    Despina Dontas

    Student Advisors
    MA: Miranda Young
    PhD: Ben Olson

    Philosophy Student Handbook

  • Admission

  • The Philosophy department of The New School for Social Research has inherited a legacy of critical thinking and public social and political engagement from thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, and Agnes Heller and is rooted in the belief that philosophy reaches beyond academia. Our faculty and alumni are as likely to be found writing in the pages of the New York Times or protesting in the streets as they are publishing in academic journals or lecturing at Oxford and Frankfurt.

    Our graduate degree programs in Philosophy are designed to be more creative and flexible than traditional programs. Founded on a fierce commitment to intellectual freedom, our vibrant intellectual community is a place where divisions between Continental and Analytic and philosophy and politics, anthropology, literature, and classics become obsolete.
     
    The graduate curriculum centers on a mix of problems-based and historically oriented courses. Areas of particular strength for our faculty include ancient philosophy, critical theory, existentialism, German idealism, feminist thought, French structuralism, phenomenology, post-Analytic philosophy, pragmatism, psychoanalysis, social and political philosophy, and philosophies of art, language, mind, and nature. 
     
    Within the Philosophy department, MA and PhD students can study ancient Greek, Marxist critiques of capitalism, emerging scientific discoveries in artificial intelligence, and animal ethics and politics or spend a semester or year focusing deeply on a single classic philosophical text such as Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Spinoza’s Ethics. Students and faculty also develop independent studies on topics ranging from philosophical anthropology, philosophy of trust, and narrative to Leibniz, Hume, and Aristotle.

  • Philosophy Degrees

    The department offers intellectually rigorous programs of study, each with its own requirements.

  • Featured Courses

    The courses in Philosophy combine deep intellectual analyses of important philosophers with a robust and comprehensive survey of important ideas. Pairing an understanding of both thinker and thought creates a context in which to understand underlying concepts and examine bigger intellectual implications.

    Explore our courses

  • Scholars and Work

    Look closer at our historically-informed, and intellectually-curious philosophical work:

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    Even amid a pandemic, NSSR students have envisioned incredibly creative, intellectually rigorous, and community-minded projects and conferences.

     Learn more about research
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    Eric Godoy (Philosophy PhD, 2015) asks who bears responsibility

     Graduating student outcomes

  • Take The Next Step

Submit your application

Undergraduates

To apply to any of our undergraduate programs (except the Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students and Parsons Associate of Applied Science programs) complete and submit the Common App online.

Undergraduate Adult Learners

To apply to any of our Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students and Parsons Associate of Applied Science programs, complete and submit the New School Online Application.

Graduates

To apply to any of our Master's, Doctoral, Professional Studies Diploma, and Graduate Certificate programs, complete and submit the New School Online Application.