Loyola University Chicago

Department of Philosophy

Professors Emeriti and Others

Victoria S. Wike, PhD

Title/s:  Professor Emerita

Email: vwike@luc.edu

About

Victoria S. Wike, Professor of Philosophy and former Director of Graduate Studies. She received her BA summa cum laude from MacMurray College (philosophy and religion), a Licence èn Lettres from the Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne (philosophy), and the MA and PhD degrees from The Pennsylvania State University (philosophy). She has taught at Loyola University Chicago since 1979, including one year at the university's Rome Campus. In 2007, she was awarded a "Master Teacher" designation from the College of Arts and Sciences for excellence in teaching.

Her publications include: Bioethics in a Changing World (co-authored with Jennifer Parks, 2009), Morality and the Professional Life (co-authored with Cynthia Brincat, 2000) Kant on Happiness in Ethics (1994); Kant's Antinomies of Reason (1982), and articles in The Journal of Value Inquiry, Idealistic Studies, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, and other journals and collections. She has presented papers at international Kant meetings and various ethics conferences and universities, as well as to faculty and student colloquia and also to community and church groups. Her research interest is Kant, particularly Kant's ethics, his dialectic, the highest good, empirical ethics, communal aspects of Kant's ethics, and the nature of reason.

She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Kant, a graduate course on principles of health care ethics, in addition to undergraduate courses in philosophy of human nature, ethics, health care ethics, and bioethics and biotechnologies. Her newest undergraduate course is Ethics and Education, which enables students preparing to become teachers to consider issues of vocation and professionalism, moral decision-making, and ethical topics for teachers.

Degrees

Pennsylvania State University

Research Interests

Early modern philosophy, especially Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Kant's moral philosophy, health care ethics