The Department of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, Catholic University in Ruzomberok is a respected institution, which offers degree programmes at all three levels. At the bachelor (BA) and master (MA) level students may choose a teacher training programme teaching of philosophy (in combination with another subject), a single major study programme in philosophy or a double major study programme in philosophy combined with either English and American studies or history. At the doctoral (PhD) level students may study philosophy within a full-time or part-time study. Department’s professors teach their students to analyse, discuss and write philosophical essays. During the classes students are encouraged to improve their critical thinking and creativity. The curriculum contains courses in the main philosophical areas such as metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, bioethics, and history of philosophy but students are also offered more specialized courses discussing the work of particular philosophers (L. Wittgenstein, A. MacIntyre etc.) or analysing philosophical problems. The department cooperates with other philosophy institutions in Slovakia and abroad and it regularly organizes the Slovak round of the International Philosophy Olympiad.

    The research of the faculty members focuses on selected issues from the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of history, moral and political philosophy, bioethics, philosophy of art, ancient and medieval philosophy. Their publications, projects but also conferences they organize usually concentrate on the work of philosophers (such as Thomas Aquinas, Martin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Bernard Lonergan, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, Frank Ankersmit or Paul Roth) and on the debates surrounding philosophical issues of realism, free will, liberalism of neutrality, historical representation or the ontological status of works of art.