Philosophic studies at the University of Dallas have three features that set the UD philosophy program apart from many others. First, UD philosophy students read the great philosophers themselves, not textbook summaries. The core courses and the historical courses, in particular, focus on the study of some of the most influential texts of the Western philosophical tradition, from Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Augustine's Confessions, and Thomas Aquinas's On Being and Essence to Descartes' Meditations, Kant's Prolegomena, and Heidegger's Being and Time. Second, majors in the UD philosophy program receive a solid grounding in the history of Western philosophy. In this fashion, they acquire an understanding of not merely an isolated thinker or theory, but of the unfolding of the philosophic tradition as a whole. Third, as a philosophy department at a Catholic university, the UD philosophy program encourages dialogue with theological texts and ideas.