Broaden Your Perspective

The study of philosophy benefits students personally and professionally. The questions asked by philosophers are questions that come up in every age and in every human life. They are in that sense inevitable questions, though people often hurry past them: What is the best way to live? What does a just political order look like? How is knowledge to be distinguished from true opinion? What is the relation between knowing and doing? Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder, or does it somehow inhere in things we call beautiful? Did the order manifest in nature come about purely by chance, or does it point beyond itself to some source of order?

Such questions are worth pursuing in their own right, but philosophical habits of mind are also practically useful. Philosophy majors fare very well in the job market, because employers in a wide variety of fields highly value the talents that philosophy naturally fosters: analytical ability, clarity of thought and expression, an interest in getting to the essentials, an eye for the big picture, the willingness to consider things from different points of view, a preference for truth over convenience, an ability to take constructive criticism in stride, an openness to new approaches to longstanding problems, to name only a few.