Curriculum Detail

Discover Our Curriculum

Religion, Philosophy, & Ethics

The study of Religion, Philosophy & Ethics at Trinity School assists students in developing literacy in cultural, philosophical, and religious worldviews, in addition to helping them formulate their own personal ethical positions and existential identities. Seminar-style classes allow for a safe and stimulating environment in which students are challenged to share their perspectives on the human condition.

Upper School students enroll into at least one Religion, Philosophy & Ethics seminar as a requirement for graduation. Taken in either the junior or senior year, these college-level courses offer students an opportunity to study world religions or ethics. Recent religion seminars have included Religious Phenomenology, Literature in Asian Religions, and Sin & Redemption. Some of these seminars approach religion as a lived experience, and others follow historical or comparative theological models. The department’s ethics seminars encourage a deep critical engagement with a host of socially relevant ethical issues from violence to bioethics.

The unifying mission of the department is to examine how individuals and groups construct and experience meaningful worldviews. Whether the topic is animal research, religious conversion, or mystical experience, students explore an array of questions and themes by entering into conversations with classic and contemporary texts. These conversations span traditional disciplinary boundaries and draw upon knowledge from other courses and disciplines.

An Upper School student will leave a Religion, Philosophy & Ethics Seminar with an exposure to at least two world religions and familiarity with a specific methodological approach. Students leave the department’s seminars with much more than an introduction to the disciplines of Religion and Philosophy. They leave with an interdisciplinary language for thinking about what it means to be a questioning person in a pluralistic world.

Graduation Requirement: 1 semester

  • THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER/Sp

    What, if anything, can be considered distinctly American philosophical thought? As students seek to answer this question, they explore the richness and diversity of the American intellectual tradition.  Beginning with the works of Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, they study the earliest giants of this heritage alongside the American Enlightenment thinkers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.  Significant attention is given to what revivalists call classical American philosophy, the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and Columbia’s own John Dewey (Faculty 1905-1930, Emeritus 1939).   Concluding this journey, students survey 20th-century American moral philosophy by reviewing works on W.E.B. Du Bois, C. Wright Mills (Faculty 1945-1962), Reinhold Niebuhr (Faulty, Union Theological Seminary, 1928-60), John Rawls, and another Columbia giant Lionel Trilling (Columbia College 1925, PhD 1938, Faculty 1927–74.)  These thinkers, scholars, and cultural critics were engaged public intellectuals, significant figures of the last century who have often been referred to as respondents to pragmatism. Students analyze the impact their work had in the tradition of American philosophical discourse.

  • SOPHOMORE SYMPOSIUM

    The objective of this symposium is to encourage sophomores to reflect upon their self-identities, our identity as a pluralistic school, and our individual and collective relationships to a larger sense of society and world. Primary texts, case studies, and group discussions will be used to promote a multidisciplinary discussion across the grade-level and division. This symposium hopes to set the groundwork for a lifetime of philosophical reflection and inquiry.

    This is a required year-long course. 

    Pass/Fail

    2 periods per cycle

    Grade 10
139 West 91st Street | New York, NY 10024-1326 | (212) 873-1650
Located on the Upper West Side of New York City, Trinity School is a college preparatory, coeducational independent school for grades K-12. Since 1709, Trinity has provided a world-class education to its students with rigorous academics and outstanding programs in athletics, the arts, peer leadership, and global travel.