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 and 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 philosophical 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.