Career Outcomes

Your Success Story Is Waiting… Students who pursue a philosophy degree are prepared to enter a wide variety of careers. You will graduate with strong communication skills, critical thinking skills, the ability to evaluate problems effectively, and superior analytical skills—all of which are in high demand by employers.

Career Paths

Philosophy majors have pursued, and succeeded in, numerous professional pathways, including:

• Law
• Education
• Business
• Social work
• Writing/editing
• Human resources
• Government service
• Consulting

Success Stories

dan henderson

The skills I developed through my studies in philosophy serve me every day in my practice as a senior associate at a big law firm. My practice involves reading complex (often ambiguous) income tax rules and applying them to unique fact patterns or deal documents. The reading and writing exercises from Vanderbilt’s philosophy classes have been great training tools, particularly when drafting cogent arguments, parsing esoteric statutory language, or repackaging complicated ideas into more digestible client advice, which all require careful reading, attention to detail, and logical reasoning. Puzzling your way through Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or diagraming logically valid arguments in Formal Logic are a great introduction to the type of thinking that lawyers use. Perhaps most importantly of all, my philosophy education introduced me to different ways of thinking and perspectives on life, which provide me with rich and varied toolkit to understand myself and others.

Gabriel Lazarus 

After graduating from Vanderbilt with majors in philosophy and economics, I attended law school at the University of Chicago. Since finishing law school, I’ve been practicing law in Washington, D.C., as part of the antitrust group of a global law firm.

Law schools and law firms are full of philosophy majors for good reason:  The best work attorneys do comes from deliberation with colleagues, co-counsel, and clients.  More than any other classes at Vanderbilt, my philosophy coursework taught me how to respectfully critique others’ ideas and productively respond to criticism of my own thinking.  As a litigator, I also have to think on my feet.  Defending my views in philosophy classes helped me learn how to make effective, off-the-cuff arguments.

Joey Lu

During my time with the Vanderbilt Department of Philosophy, I took PHIL 2103: Modern Philosophy with Professor Emanuele Costa. The course and the discussions led by Professor Costa sparked my curiosity about existential and metaphysical questions related to identity, embodiment, and illness, and now informs the type of physician-scholar I want to become.

After graduation, I started working as a cancer researcher in a lab at Stanford University, which combined with my philosophical interests to inspire a fascination in the philosophy of cancer and chronic illness. I decided I wanted to explore this fascination with Professor Costa, so I reached out to him with a series of philosophical questions and asking for mentorship. We are currently embarking on an academic research project that explores metaphysical perspectives on cancer, combining my interests in philosophy, medicine, and biomedical research. We look forward to co-authoring a publication together in the coming year and I am excited to continue my research in the medical humanities!

Brennan McDavid

I attended Vanderbilt from 2003 to 2007, double majoring in philosophy and political science, BA‘07. I have so many fond memories of my years at Vandy. I even have vivid memories of heated discussions of existentialism in a classroom in Furman Hall and office hours chats with the philosophy professors who had bookshelves towering to the ceiling. Now I’m a philosophy professor myself, at Chapman University in Orange, California. I specialize in ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the ethics and political theory of Plato and ethical epistemology of Aristotle. I owe a debt of gratitude to my first teachers in these topics, Professor Emeritus Henry Teloh, Professor Emerita Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, and Professor Lenn Goodmann, who was a generous and kind mentor to me through my undergraduate years. I also had the privilege of taking some of the very last classes that Professor George Graham taught in political theory, and Professor Brooke Ackerly left such a deep impression on me with some of her quick-witted and incisive comments in political philosophy classes that I find myself repeating her words (if only I could live up to her tone and general demeanor!) to my own students.

Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Sciences was my nest. It formed much of what I am today.

Lucia Schwarz

I am an assistant professor of philosophy and political economy at Tulane University, and studying philosophy at Vanderbilt was pivotal in shaping my career trajectory. Born and raised in Germany, I came to Vanderbilt as an exchange student in 2011-2012. Taking classes on epistemology, critical thinking, Kant, political philosophy, and free will with professors such as Scott Aikin, Julian Wuerth, and Robert Talisse deepened my interest in philosophy and ultimately made me decide to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. My professors at Vanderbilt were incredibly supportive and encouraging, and I was admitted to the philosophy Ph.D. program at the University of Arizona, ranked one of the 15 best programs in the country at the time. Now I am a philosophy professor myself, having the privilege to teach new generations of undergraduates about philosophical approaches to human nature, ethics, society, justice, gender, race, economics, and more. Besides teaching, through my academic writing, I seek to contribute to the ever-evolving conversations about pressing issues of our times as well as perennial questions about the human condition. Some of the questions I have written about are: how can we live our lives if nothing objectively matters? Do we have moral reasons to go vegan? Do plants matter just as much as animals? Why is it so hard to watch fictional depictions of sexual assault? Completing a Ph.D. in philosophy and succeeding on the academic job market is difficult, and I have had my fair share of doubts and rough patches along the way. For those, however, who have a deep desire to live the life of the mind, the philosophy program at Vanderbilt offers a solid foundation, skillful instruction, and supportive mentorship.