哲学的目的是研究能影响人们思想和生活的基本假设，并在此过程中展示如何为自己做到这一点。这包括审视赞成或反对各种立场的论据，审查其历史，文化和知识背景，并批判性地评估和评估这些论据。正是由于它的基本性质，哲学才可以追溯到古希腊人和其他古代文明，并且一直是大学的悠久历史。哲学和宗教工作人员被公认为各自领域的专家。他们的研究已在世界上其学科排名最高的期刊上发表。研究和出版领域包括道德认识论，苏格拉底哲学和关于如何生活的古老方法，现代市场的伦理学，科学和方法论哲学，现实主义和反现实主义以及个人身份，萨特与存在主义
Philosophy aims to examine the fundamental assumptions that inform people's thinking and lives, and in the process to show how they can do so for themselves. This involves looking at the arguments for or against various positions, examining their historical, cultural and intellectual contexts, and critically appraising and evaluating those arguments. Precisely because of its fundamental nature, philosophy has its roots right back to the ancient Greeks and other ancient civilisations, and has been a long-standing part of the university. Philosophy and Religion staff members are acknowledged as experts in their respective fields. Their research has been published in the highest rated journals for their disciplines in the world. Areas of research and publication include moral epistemology, the philosophy of Socrates, and ancient approaches to the question of how one should live, the ethics of the modern market, philosophy of science and scientific method, realism and anti-realism, and personal identity, Sartre and existentialism, Foucault and post-structuralism, and philosophy and film, classical Chinese Philosophy, philosophy of medicine, and complex systems, continental philosophy of religion, and philosophical hermeneutics. The University of Newcastle's (UON) Philosophy and Religion academics are engaged in international collaboration with researchers from many prestigious institutions in Europe (University of Bristol, University of Manchester,University of Oxford), North America (Williams College, Massachusetts) and Asia (Fudan University, Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, University of Hong Kong).