Spanish and Philosophy
Spanish and philosophy is a pairing that brings together one of the world's most widely spoken languages and the discipline that has, across more than two millennia, probed the deepest questions about knowledge, value, and reality. Spanish gives you access to the vibrant and diverse cultures of Spain and Latin America, to a literary tradition spanning from medieval ballads and the Golden Age of Cervantes and Lope de Vega through to the twentieth-century modernism of Borges, Neruda, and Marquez, and to a linguistic community of extraordinary geographical and cultural breadth. Philosophy develops the conceptual precision and argumentative rigour to engage with the most fundamental questions human beings ask, and to do so with clarity and intellectual honesty.
At the University of Edinburgh, this four-year, full-time programme develops your Spanish language proficiency to a high level alongside a serious engagement with the major areas of philosophical inquiry. In Spanish, you will work on all four language skills throughout the programme, reading literary and non-literary texts in the original and engaging with Hispanic culture, history, and intellectual life. In philosophy, you will study ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, political philosophy, and other areas, engaging with both canonical texts and current debates.
The combination is particularly rich because Spanish and Latin American intellectual traditions have themselves produced major philosophical contributions, from the scholastic debates of the Golden Age to contemporary political philosophy in Latin America, and the programme allows you to engage with these in their original language.
Graduates go on to careers in teaching, translation, journalism, the civil service, law, international business, research, and many other fields where the combination of a major world language, critical thinking, and cultural breadth is valued. Further postgraduate study in philosophy, Hispanic studies, or applied ethics is also a well-established route.