At its conception, philosophy was seen as the foundational study. Critiques of the world’s major religions of the past came from the distinct philosophies of thinkers like Plato (Greek religion), the Buddha (Hindu religion) and Confucius (Chinese religion), for example. Indeed, much of our Christian theology owes an immeasurable debt to concepts developed by philosophers; for example, without Aristotle’s idea of “substance” we wouldn’t have the orthodox notion of Trinity as “three persons in one substance.” Additionally, theories about politics, business, theatre, art and science all came from philosophy, and occasionally even the same philosopher, such as Aristotle, was responsible for developments in subjects as diverse as literary criticism and biology (a branch of “natural philosophy”). Many philosophers have been what we now call “Renaissance Men.”
Philosophy at Redeemer is likewise foundational and was one of the major pillars when the university was founded. In the “Kuyperian” or “Reformed” tradition of the university, philosophy was seen as a kind of “inter-faculty” department meant to develop not just basic concepts about life’s most fundamental questions — questions arising out of subjects of a first-order nature (logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc.) — but also to serve all disciplines at a core-level vis-à-vis a number of second-order of “philosophy of” courses (philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, etc.).