About Philosophy

Etymologically, philosophy means love of wisdom. Throughout the history of philosophy there have been almost as many ways of pursuing wisdom as philosophers. From Plato's view that philosophy is a preparation for death to F. H. Bradley's wry observation that it consists of providing bad reasons for what we believe on instinct, philosophy has been characterized in so many ways that it is impossible to get universal agreement on a precise definition. Nevertheless, it may be possible to describe at least one reason for its pursuit that would find widespread, if not universal, acceptance among its liberally educated practitioners.

Philosophy at Mercer is dedicated to the Socratic motto that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Philosophy’s ultimate purpose is disciplined reflection on life’s “big” questions, universal questions about the meaning of Being that have occupied human beings since the dawn of history. These questions, simply put, are “What are we?” and “Why are we?” That is, what is the ultimate nature of the universe we live in and what does it mean to be human in it? These animating questions immediately generate more detailed questions in metaphysics (what is ultimately real? Why should there be anything at all?), philosophy of religion (is there a mind at the foundation of things and is it accessible to us?), ethics (what belongs to living a good life and what values are worthy of our allegiance?) and aesthetics (what is the nature of beauty and the basis of artistic discrimination?). Answers to these questions are interconnected, and many answers are possible. And different answers have different implications for moral philosophy (how should we conduct ourselves in relation to other persons?) and social and political philosophy (how should we organize our lives together?). Moreover, the persistent pursuit of these questions reveals a constellation of other questions. For example, how are answers to such questions justified? This, in turn, leads to reflection on the scope, methods, and limits of human knowledge (what, if anything, can we know, and how can we know it?), which form the subject-matter of epistemology and philosophy of science, and also raises questions about the nature of thought and language that make up the disciplines of logic, semantics, and linguistic analysis. Philosophy, accordingly, may be thought of as the exploration of this web of questions.

Why explore such questions? The answer is that, in an important sense, intelligent people have no alternative but to think things through for themselves. We are all socialized into a culture, and inherit its language, institutions, social practices, and values. This inheritance may be thought of as containing an implicit set of answers to the big questions. In rigid, traditional societies, where the individual has limited choices, the inherited answers work from cradle to grave, so questioning is rare. But in complex societies such as our own, it is hard to live unthinkingly by the inherited answers because there are too many of them. They contradict each other and make us feel confused and often place us in a continual clash between expectation and reality. When we become aware of this, we feel the need to question, to think through the big questions for ourselves. Philosophy helps us do this. It gives us the resources to think about the ideas that we ordinarily just think with, that is, to examine self-consciously and critically the approaches to life we have unconsciously inherited simply by being born at this time and place.

The philosophy department exists for people who want to explore the big questions and the best formulations of them that our philosophical tradition has to offer, thereby attaining some critical distance on their culture, time and place, and themselves. Our hope is that students who study with us will attain this distance, and pursue the Socratic motto wherever it may take them. Nevertheless, if and how a person takes the Socratic motto to heart must remain an individual matter. There are no guarantees. Those who want to understand the world by applying a simple paradigm to everything will find philosophy frustrating and confusing. Moreover, serious thinking is hard work and it is sometimes threatening to examine our fundamental beliefs. Still, the rewards are great. Chief among them is the satisfaction of being in charge of one's own mind. Philosophy, it has been said, is the mind fully awake!