Introduction to Philosophy
PHIL151-001
Spring 2022
Welcome to the legacy web site for this class. Full mirroring is discontinued. Please find the course page on Blackboard, and check it at least weekly for announcements, assignments, web links of interest, and so on.
Click here for the
syllabus.
Blackboard site is now open.
To begin with, here are some sites you ought to get to know. Our
department web site includes
this
list of student research tools (with some amusements at the bottom).
Why is philosophy important at all? Socrates offers one answer in the
"Apology," or
"Defense Speech of Socrates," which is in our textbook. He explains
there that "the unexamined life
is not worth living."
Here
is another approach to thinking about the value of philosophy: Ayn Rand's essay
"Philosophy: Who Needs
It?", based on a speech she made to the senior class at the United States
Military Academy at West Point in 1974. Note that the answer is
"everyone." This essay isn't so much a plug for her own views
as much as a plug for philosophy generally as a vital activity.