“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Plato

Philosophy involves a critical examination of our most fundamental beliefs about truth and reality, right and wrong. It challenges many of our assumptions about what we know and how we should live. It is an "interface" discipline, concerned with how different views of the world clash or fit together, and with how far different perspectives (moral, scientific, religious, metaphysical, personal) may be reconciled. It is also concerned with how different views of the world fit together. Can we, for example, reconcile moral, scientific, religious, personal, and metaphysical perspectives on the universe? Like the great majority of university disciplines, Philosophy is not a directly vocational subject. Instead it gives you the opportunity - perhaps the only chance many people will have in their lives - for extended reflection on and discussion of, in those immortal words, "life, the universe, and everything".

Nevertheless, a training in Philosophy does provide you with a number of transferable skills that are highly prized by employers in every area of business or professional life. The ability to think clearly, to reason logically, to expound and evaluate arguments, to reject facile assumptions and search for coherent principles of thought and action - no student of Philosophy leaves their study of the subject without having picked up these valuable skills.