This course allows students to encounter those outstanding figures in the history of philosophy who are also major figures in the history of Catholic thought; these include thinkers such as St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman and St Edith Stein; Pope John Paul II was himself a philosopher whose work students study in depth; the course lays stress upon reading primary texts of, for example, Plato and Aristotle, as well as other key figures in the development of Western thought; the course also presents the Catholic tradition of philosophy to students as a living, dynamic reality, in critical and constructive dialogue with the other philosophical traditions at work in contemporary culture; the course aims to equip Catholic students both to understand their faith better and to contribute to the evangelisation of the culture in which they live, recognising that philosophy also helps us to make a reasoned case for the Faith with non-believers in terms of the reason which is natural to us as human beings.