The Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the UCP Braga Regional Center results from a restructuring process between the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Social Sciences, the latter being established in the year 2001. The Faculty of Philosophy, in turn, was founded by the Society of Jesus in 1947, being the first university teaching institution in Braga and the mother Faculty of the Portuguese Catholic University, established in 1967.

Education, not being a neutral task, has as its starting point and programmatic principle an idea of the person. The Society of Jesus has believed, for centuries, that education is a privileged means for building a more just world, which becomes more feasible when Universities offer teaching and research of excellence. Excellence here is understood taking into account the formation of the whole person in the double aspect of virtus et litterae (virtue and letters, being and knowledge, wisdom and knowledge, heart and reason). A well-educated person is one who serves a society, not only in terms of professional competence, but also one who takes the common good as the driving force behind his or her actions.

The Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences has, behind it, a Christian philosophical and humanistic tradition that is striking in its identity. The search for truth, reasoned critical reflection, the dialogue with culture and science, the dialogue between faith and reason, the defense and development of the human person in all its aspects, from conception to death, the attention to Ecology, are some of the salient points in the exercise of its teaching and research.

As defined in the Statutes of the UCP, the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences seeks to be very attentive to the great contemporary problems and challenges of humanity, trying, through critical and demanding research, in the context of a culture of and for the truth, and of a personalist pedagogy, to find ways, in synergy with civil society, the business world and the Church, that lead to the construction of an increasingly just and inclusive society.

Professor José Manuel Martins Lopes, SJ.
Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences