Mission Statement: To foster a critical, reflective, and interrogative attitude towards values, beliefs, experiences, and theories, and to cultivate the intellectual skills, ethical capacities, and affective dispositions necessary for developing this attitude, through a critical understanding of the significant and enduring questions, arguments, and texts of the history of philosophical thought about ourselves, our obligations, and the world, and through the rigorous examination of contemporary ethical problems.

Philosophy has traditionally been understood, since its beginnings in Antiquity, in the light of its etymology, as a “love of the truth.” Concretely this means that, for philosophy, questions have a preëminent place, insofar as it understands itself as the striving for the truth in its broadest and most fundamental forms and not merely as one particular field of knowledge. Without collapsing into a general skepticism or nihilism, philosophy has sought to exacerbate the questionability of what is questionable and to reveal that what seems obvious or beyond question most demands interrogation both into its nature and its legitimacy.

The philosophy department understands the cultivation of this attitude as the primary goal of an education in philosophy, and believes that philosophy specifically—though certainly not exclusively—is equipped to teach, train, and develop it. To cultivate this attitude, there are determinate skills and fields of mastery that are necessary, ranging from analytical, exegetical, and evaluative skills to the understanding of the major philosophical theories and arguments advanced throughout the twenty-six hundred year tradition of philosophy. In doing this philosophy seeks to raise the most fundamental and enduring questions about ourselves, our obligations, and our world.

The mission statement, therefore, identifies (a) the orienting goal of the department (an intellectual and existential attitude), (b) the necessary conditions for attaining this (a set of skills, dispositions, and capacities) and (c) the means of developing those necessary conditions.