From: Justin Barnard's Philosophy pages at http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~jdb8178/crsinfo.htm

What is Philosophy?

Its purpose is to introduce students to both the content of philosophy through a sampling of historically significant philosophical problems as well as the discipline of being a philosopher. Accordingly, readings are short but dense, and special attention is giving to developing critical thinking abilities through close textual analysis. Students are also encouraged to bring their own perspectives to bear through evaluation of material covered in class. Most students enrolled in this course are underprepared when it comes to their abilities to read and understand difficult texts and write philosophical papers.

Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same. Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their answers to life's most basic questions. To make such a pursuit more systematic academic philosophy is traditionally divided into major areas of study.

Metaphysics: At its core the study of metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the world, what it is like, and how it is ordered. In metaphysics philosophers wrestle with such questions as:

Is there a God?

What is truth?

What is a person? What makes a person the same through time?

Is the world strictly composed of matter?

Do people have minds? If so, how is the mind related to the body?

Do people have free wills?

What is it for one event to cause another?

Epistemology: Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It is primarily concerned with what we can know about the world and how we can know it. Typical questions of concern in epistemology are:

What is knowledge?

Do we know anything at all?

How do we know what we know?

Can we be justified in claiming to know certain things?

Ethics: The study of ethics often concerns what we ought to do and what it would be best to do. In struggling with this issue, larger questions about what is good and right arise. So, the ethicist attempts to answer such questions as:

What is good? What makes actions or people good?

What is right? What makes actions right?

Is morality objective or subjective?

How should I treat others?

Logic: Another important aspect of the study of philosophy is the arguments or reasons given for people's answers to these questions. To this end philosophers employ logic to study the nature and structure of arguments. Logicians ask such questions as:

What constitutes "good" or "bad" reasoning?

How do we determine whether a given piece of reasoning is good or bad?

History of Philosophy: The study of philosophy involves not only forming one's own answers to such questions, but also seeking to understand the way in which people have answered such questions in the past. So, a significant part of philosophy is its history, a history of answers and arguments about these very questions. In studying the history of philosophy one explores

the ideas of such historical figures as:

Plato

Aristotle

Aquinas

Descartes

Locke

Hume

Kant

Nietzsche

Marx

Mill

Wittgenstein

Sartre

What often motivates the study of philosophy is not merely the answers or arguments themselves but whether or not the arguments are good and the answers are true. Moreover, many of the questions and issues in the various areas of philosophy overlap and in some cases even converge. Thus, philosophical questions arise in almost every discipline. This is why philosophy also encompasses such areas as:

Philosophy of Law

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Mind

Political Philosophy

Philosophy of History

Philosophy of Feminism

Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of Literature

Philosophy of the Arts

Philosophy of Language

Why study Philosophy? at : http://www.fsu.edu/~philo/resources/ugrad/stuphil.htm

While the study of philosophy does not provide one with a particular set of "skills for a trade," the lifelong benefits it inculcates are virtually limitless. Here are just a few. The study of philosophy enhances one's ability:

To think, speak, and write clearly and critically,

To communicate effectively,

To form original, creative solutions to problems,

To develop reasoned arguments for one's views,

To appreciate views different from one's own,

To analyze complex material, and

To investigate difficult questions in a systematic fashion.

What should be clear, even from this brief list, is that studying philosophy develops abilities that are not only essential to almost any vocation, but instills qualities vital to one's growth as a person. Moreover, for many students such qualities quite often produce practical benefits as well. For example, because studying philosophy improves one's analytical skills, it affords a

greater probability of success on standardized tests such as the GRE, LSAT, and GMAT.

Finally, studying philosophy is not merely useful for the benefits it bestows. It is also intrinsically worthwhile, since many of the issues with which philosophers grapple are fundamental to human existence. Is there a God? What is truth? What can we know? What is beauty? Wrestling with questions such as these and learning the history of responses to them enriches one's life in way that no other discipline can.