The Graduate Program in Philosophy (stricto sensu) at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel) is grounded in the institutional history of its Department of Philosophy. Since its establishment on August 24, 1984, UFPel has maintained an undergraduate Philosophy program at the Licentiate level (in 2005, a Bachelor’s degree was introduced, and in 2014, a Philosophy course in the distance learning modality was created).

In the second semester of 1997, the lato sensu Graduate Program was introduced with the creation of the Specialization Course in Moral and Political Philosophy. The Graduate Program at the Master’s level was established in 2007 to meet an important demand from the southern region of Rio Grande do Sul, as well as from Uruguay. For this reason, the Program has maintained exchanges with the Universidad Católica del Uruguay (UCU) and the Universidad de la República (UDELAR). Additionally, a cooperation agreement was signed with the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), which already had a well-established Graduate Program.

The creation of the Master’s program in Philosophy, with its first class starting in March 2008, aimed to consolidate, at the teaching level, the research activities carried out by its faculty, seeking to become a reference point for investigations into relevant issues in moral and political philosophy. In its first official evaluation, the Program received a score of 4 from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). In 2013, the Specialization Course in Philosophy was reactivated, and in 2014 (when the Department celebrated its thirtieth anniversary), the Doctorate in Philosophy at UFPel was approved by the CAPES Scientific Council, with activities starting in August 2015.

The Program currently has 11 permanent faculty members, along with 2 collaborating professors and 1 visiting professor, all engaged in teaching, research, and extension activities related to the course’s concentration area and research lines.

The Program is structured around a major concentration area, Ethics and Political Philosophy, with four research lines: Concepts of Virtue; Foundations and Critique of Morality; Law, Society, and State; and Moral Epistemology. The Program also publishes the journal Dissertatio, founded in 1995 (indexed in CLASE, with an A2 rating by Qualis/CAPES), the journal Seara Filosófica, edited by PPGFIL students since 2009 (classified as B1 in Qualis/CAPES), and, since 2014, the Dissertatio Filosofia, Dissertatio Studia, and Dissertatio Incipiens collections.