Because it asks ultimate questions. Because it explores how to live a good life. Because it takes seriously the questions that arise in life and tries to answer them. Because it exposes and questions assumptions. Because it helps you find your own answers and your own standards for answers.
Because it calls on both your creativity and your rigor. Because it uses all your interests and everything you know, from art and literature, history and social science, to mathematics and natural science. Because it makes you articulate in speaking and writing, clear in thinking and reasoning, and able to draw connections among ideas of all kinds. Because you have decisions to make, evidence to weigh, opinions to assess, mysteries to contemplate, a world to understand, a life to live.
The philosophy department at UC Denver consists of engaged scholars. Each of the full-time faculty possesses a specialist's knowledge of specific fields and figures, but these specializations are complimented by the generalist's perspective. The typical gap between scholar and teacher is crossed constantly by the UC Denver Philosophy Department. For the student this means that the fine points of philosophical ideas are carefully explained, while they are also set into a larger historical and practical context, largely free of jargon. Students benefit because they are dialectically guided away from what they know towards what they don't know; teachers benefit because this kind of contact with students introduces new perspectives and concerns into their explanations. The overall result is an exciting transaction of arguments and ideas.
The department is pluralistic in orientation, with faculty strengths that include ancient, continental, analytic and American approaches. All faculty agree that a proper understanding of historical context is basic to more specialized work in philosophy, and that a diversity of approaches to philosophical subjects is the beginning of wisdom.
The department features a major, minor, and an ethics minor. All faculty teach regularly at the introductory level, and take special care to make each student's experience a fulfilling one. The department has a regular speaker series, featuring invited philosophers, which is open to all.
More information about philosophy:
An excellent collection of articles about the value of philosophy is here.
* Photo above by Doris Huchthausen, 2011..