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Socrates claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Why not? One reply is that since our unexamined opinions and
values are often inseparable from who we are and how we conceive
of ourselves, our satisfactions, our relations to others,
reality itself, our lives, and the worth of our lives depend
on our efforts to achieve greater understanding. The examination
and critique of claims to truth and rightness is central to
philosophy. The promise it holds out is that of greater self-understanding,
involving the gradual liberation from false beliefs and partial
views of ourselves and our world. Because of this, it has
an essential place in the liberal arts curriculum.
The aim of the philosophy department is to introduce students
to the inquiries of important philosophers and to aid them
in developing and in exercising their own critical, independent
thought. To this end, philosophy courses encourage students
to formulate issues and questions and to evaluate critically
philosophers' arguments and their own in classroom discussion
as well as in the writing of papers. |
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