Latin and Philosophy

Latin and philosophy is a pairing that reaches into the deepest roots of Western intellectual life. Latin is the language of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Augustine, and Aquinas, and knowledge of it is the key to a literature of enormous richness and to an understanding of a culture that shaped European thought, law, religion, and political organisation for over two thousand years. Philosophy asks the most fundamental questions human beings can pose: what can we know, how should we live, what is the nature of reality and mind, and how should power be organised and justified.

Studied together, these disciplines develop an extraordinarily precise and wide-ranging analytical capacity.

This four-year full-time programme at the University of St Andrews develops your Latin language ability and your literary and cultural analysis skills alongside a rigorous engagement with philosophical thought from the ancient world to the present day. You will study Latin texts across genres, from poetry and oratory to history and philosophy, developing the close reading skills that classical scholarship demands. Your philosophy studies will introduce you to both analytic and continental traditions, covering areas such as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy.

A year abroad provides the opportunity to extend your studies in an international academic environment.

With a typical entry tariff of 168 points, the programme attracts students who combine intellectual ambition with a genuine love of language and ideas. Graduates go on to careers in law, the civil service, academia, journalism, publishing, consulting, and education, as well as postgraduate study in philosophy, classics, or law.