An important center for the study of Continental philosophy in the United States, the Philosophy department is proud of the diversity of its international faculty and of their interests. Over the years, many eminent philosophers have helped create and sustain the intellectual vibrancy of The New School for Social Research-among them Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Aron Gurwitsch, and Reiner Schürmann.

True to its international origin and its firm roots within the University in Exile, the Department of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research is one of very few in the United States to offer students thorough training in contemporary Continental philosophy, the modern European philosophical tradition, and the history of Western thought. The program consists of two major components that emphasize breadth and depth in equal measure. The first component includes the study of such major figures as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Freud, Gadamer, Adorno, Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Derrida. The second component includes rigorous engagement with the many movements, schools, branches, and ideas associated with those figures. Accordingly, philosophy here becomes the study of phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatism; the study of political and social thought; the study of ethics, critical theory, and aesthetics; the study of transcendental idealism and empirical realism; the study of epistemology, metaphysics, and ontology; the study of logic and language; the study of rationality, methodology, and naturalism within the social sciences; the study of nature, culture, beauty, goodness; the study of unconscious and conscious processes; the study of contingency, necessity, and human freedom; the study of tragedy; the study of truth. The department maintains and deepens the interdisciplinary tradition of its original faculty by encouraging students to take courses in the school's other departments.