Big questions from small beginnings
Thinking in a philosophical way might begin for someone in a encounter with a work of art — a painting, a song, a movie, a dance or theatrical performance — that surprisingly elevates one’s experience into something sublime and wonderful and requires asking “what is art?” and “how is an experience with art different from ordinary experiences?” Or philosophical reflection might begin with beholding an astounding natural sight — a brilliant sunset, a placid body of water, a yawning canyon, a magnificent landscape — that transports one beyond the routine of work and play to discover a deeper reverence for nature and life and to become united with the divine. For someone else it might begin in wonder about the infinite, the endlessness of time and space, the smallness of the here-and-now, and move someone to reflect on meaning, purpose, and existence. Some of us enter profound philosophical reflection in these ways.
Yet, perhaps for most of us philosophy arises out of what is mundane or commonplace in our day-to-day experience. Thinking philosophically might begin for someone quite unexpectedly in a casual encounter as when talking with a friend or family member about how to prepare a meal for persons having diverse religious or cultural dietary restrictions. We puzzle about cultural differences and wonder “are there any absolute human values or is everything relative?” For someone else philosophical reflection might arise in a painful encounter with the loss of a loved one, where questions about “why?” and “what to do?” come rushing in and he is forced to examine “what is meaningful about life?” Someone else might ask for a second opinion when told that she needs a new transmission and then consider “what criteria are required for knowing what makes a statement true or false?” Yet another person, having traveled the same sidewalk countless times, might suddenly one day marvel at its craft and exclaim “what a wonder a human being is”. And parents often find themselves faced with having to mediate differences of opinion among their children and their children’s friends in a public playground … and wishing for Solomon’s wisdom. Such ordinary and routine encounters can become moments of revelation and discovery, and they can provide wonderful occasions for deepening our understanding of life and enriching our worldly wisdom.
Contemporary causes for philosophical reflection
And yet nowadays it has become ordinary, but hardly mundane, that we encounter numerous moral challenges that increasingly require our taking extra-ordinary steps toward their solutions — issues concerning death and dying with dignity, torture and corporal punishment, peace, war, and human rights, challenges to justice because of social inequalities, and a multiplicity of environmental concerns. For us in the US these moral challenges arise within a pluralistic societal arena where finding universal rights and wrongs seems especially elusive and bends us toward cultural and social relativisms. Sometimes we as a people become terribly fragmented and imagine ourselves in a moral morass. Moreover, we are especially beset by a long history of racial and gender disparities compounded more recently by increasing poverty and an erosion of our quality of life. We are poignantly concerned to reconcile the interests of the individual with those of the larger community of which we are a part. Matters are complicated by the plethora of arguments and argumentations from diverse quarters aiming to persuade us toward or dissuade us from one or another answer to difficult problems. And while these concerns will require our special concerted efforts to establish enduring solutions, these same concerns have challenged human beings from ancient times. Indeed, both the problems and the search for their solutions have especially distinguished what it is to be human.
Searching for guiding principles
However, enduring solutions rarely, if ever, emerge spontaneously and haphazardly. Enduring solutions require considerable reflection, deliberation, and especially intelligent decisions guided by reference to principles. Philosophy can help us find our bearings and work through our difficulties just because of its continuing concern to frame problems properly and to provide principles for their solutions.
Philosophy’s original inspiration
Today philosophy is a well established academic discipline, complex and highly specialized, and it often struggles to be relevant and meaningful. However, in its classical origins in the West, as also in the ancient traditions of the East, philosophy’s beginnings were concerned with how to live a complete and fulfilling life. Philosophers were not only concerned to understand the natural world, they were also occupied with asking what it means to be a good person, whether there is a purpose to life, what is the place of human beings in the world order, how should a community be organized to promote virtue and happiness. Philosophy was concerned with living a virtuous life in a community of family, friends, and fellow human beings.
Philosophy’s enduring questions
However, to answer what is best for a human being required that the ancient thinkers examine what virtue is and whether goodness can be taught, what a human being is and how human beings are related to the natural and supernatural worlds, how to distinguish and to know what is right and wrong, how to distinguish was is real from what is misleading, deciding whether there are universal and objective truths in a rapidly changing and widely diverse world, does God exist and what does God want of human beings. These and other concerns emerged during the first stirrings of philosophical reflection and they continue to concern thoughtful persons in contemporary times. Philosophy began in wonder at the natural world, turned attention to the human condition and loving wisdom, and initiated a rational quest that continues to this day to know thyself by examination of what it means to be a good person.
Philosophy Department Objectives
The Philosophy Department is one of the original academic departments at Canisius College (founded in 1870) and it continues to play an important role in the liberal education of Canisius students. Philosophy is represented in the Core Curriculum and the All-College Honors Program. The department offers a major and several minors. It also houses the Cognitive Science program.
The objectives of the philosophy program are to develop reflective and analytical skills and to help students understand, articulate, and evaluate the values, principles, and assumptions on which major individual and social decisions rest. By studying the various traditions of philosophy and by analyzing the underlying philosophical issues facing persons and societies in the contemporary world, students can attain perspective, knowledge, and skills important for making significant personal, professional, or public decisions. For this reason the Canisius College Core Curriculum includes three courses in philosophy: Introduction to Philosophy (PHI 101) and two other courses selected from Area Studies V.
While philosophical reflection and contemplation might begin in consideration of something ordinary and commonplace and be an inescapable part of human experience, it is a special kind of activity. When someone acts in a moral way or does something good, that person is not doing philosophy. But when that same person asks about what it means to be moral or immoral, what principles ought she use to guide her decisions and actions, that person is disengaged from action and has entered into reflection. The same applies to assessing the cogency of a piece of literary criticism or examining the principles of scientific inquiry. In this way philosophy steps outside the realm of everyday activities to examine them rationally — philosophy is a metasystematic activity whose special province is to objectify and reflect on principles and values, to seek their foundations and to examine their applications to living and doing well. The principal branches of philosophy are metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Philosophy is a theoretical science with practical applications
Moreover, philosophy is not especially an empirical science as are biology and physics, sociology and psychology. The notion of person, for example, is not discoverable by studying the natural and social worlds or by taking a survey of people’s opinions. Rather the concept person is decided upon, not without considerable discussion and controversy, beforehand and then applied to such concerns as medical ethics, artificial intelligence, and animal rights. Of course, the notion of person becomes refined in the process of its application to changing circumstances. Yet, even biologists step outside that role to become philosophers when they work at defining life and then apply their definition to a virus to see whether it satisfies the definition. And while philosophical reflection might aim at practical concerns, it is really more a theoretical science than a practical science.
Philosophy different than religion yet sharing a common interest
Finally, while philosophy and religion share many concerns, especially about moral matters, the study of religion and religious experience compasses a diversity of disciplines — archaeology, Bible studies, comparative religions, sociological and psychological aspects of religious experience — and does not have a common and distinctive systematic methodology for examining principles and values. In addition, religious experience often has revelation as a starting point. Philosophy’s starting point, however, is reason, and reason’s own study, logic, grounds philosophical reflection, argumentation, and deliberation. Concerns for developing a person’s faculty of critical thinking and capacity for extended argumentation are addressed by logical investigations as part of philosophical inquiry. In this connection, then, philosophers and religious thinkers might sometimes disagree about the truths that underlie moral principles and about establishing knowledge about meaning and purpose, but they are equally committed to seeking truth and understanding and to the promotion of human well-being.
Philosophy — the science of the sciences
Philosophy is concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, the foundations of the natural and social sciences, principles of ethics and art, with the scope of human knowledge, distinguishing truth from falsity, and about what constitutes happiness and living well. Because of its power to objectify principles, philosophy has been considered the science of the sciences.
Philosophy at a Jesuit Institution
Philosophy at Canisius College