Is the world the way we think it is? What do we know? How can we distinguish between good and bad? Right and wrong? No matter what answers you give to these questions, they will depend on – and shape – a philosophical conception. In studying philosophy you will learn the meaning and the implications of questions like these. You will also learn how to formulate these questions and how to evaluate the diverse answers that such questions have received over the centuries. In fact, philosophy has always addressed such fundamental questions, questions that are often ignored because the answers are taken for granted.
You will not only be trained in a discipline and a method, but also learn its history. Philosophy has a long history and studying this history will make you realize that the meaning of big philosophical questions – such as ‘What is the soul?’, ‘What is science?’ or ‘What is it to be moral?’ – can change profoundly in the course of time. But what they mean today depends in part on the answers given by thinkers of the past.
