Every human being seeks answers to life’s most basic questions—questions regarding the nature of knowledge, truth, rationality, language, being, transcendence, God, faith, beauty, the good, justice, humanity, friendship, love, sexuality, identity, power, authenticity, and so on. Philosophy is faithful to the human condition itself when it maintains a living relation with these basic questions of m
eaning and concern: What is the good life? What constitutes our proper relation to the truth? What are the prospects for rational reflection and shared conviction? The persistence of these questions (rather than uniformity of answers) confers on the history of philosophy its unity, even as the diversity of possible responses also provides for richness and a growing stock of intellectual resources for addressing such questions. The mission of the Philosophy Department at Boston College today, in both its teaching and scholarly research, is to provide a challenging, yet supportive environment for the exploration of these questions and answers that inform our personal, communal, and institutional lives.
