A Required Philosophy Course: In the Liberal-Arts Curriculum
T H IS paper concerns three questions: Should the liberal-arts college require its students to take a philosophy course? What should be the content of that course? How should the course be taught? To answer the first question, we must say something about the kind of education that the liberal-arts college seeks to provide. Since an immense amount has been written about the aims of liberal education, all we need emphasize here is that one of the aims is to free the student from the bondage of prejudice, provincialism, and illogicalityin short, to develop a critical outlook in him. This outlook consists in an attitude of self-restraint in which the grounds, alternatives, and consequences of beliefs are examined skeptically. This attitude enables one, as Bertrand Russell put it, to proportion the degree of intensity with which one holds one's beliefs to the amount of evidence available for each belief. Can philosophy contribute significantly to developing the critical outlook?' Decidedly so! First, the philosopher scrupulously investigates and analyzes the extensive and intricate vocabulary we use to describe, to explain, and to evaluate. He explores the concepts we use in thinking about problems that themselves constitute the subjectmatter of the other humanities and of the natural, formal, and social sciences. Philosophy ranges over all thought and experience. The philosopher's concern is methodological; namely, to apply his special techniques to different subjects and thereby to clarify the concepts employed in these subjects. Second, the philosopher carefully evaluates the grounds upon which are based certain contentions fundamental to the ordering of our lives; for example, the contention that God exists or that nothing is right in any objective sense. To evaluate these grounds is to ascertain whether the beliefs they allegedly support are justified;