The Practice of Philosophy at St. Mary's University

In our own culture, academic philosophy is a highly marginal and specialized activity. You might find it surprising, then, if it were suggested, as we are now suggesting, that the roots of some of the inquiries which now engage the attention of philosophers at St. Mary's and the roots of some of the problems central to our everyday practical lives are one and the same. It might be even more surprising, when we go one step further, and suggest that we cannot understand, let alone solve, many of those central problems without serious philosophical work.

The philosophy practiced here at St. Mary's -- both in research and in the classroom -- is concerned with a systematic understanding of the structures by which humans participate in reality. At the center of human existence (and the focus of philosophical interest) are the dynamic processes by which persons encounter, understand, and then mount responses to the natural reality and social-historical reality that they encounter. What in everyday life we simply refer to as "thinking" involves successfully employing a set of related operations by which we attend to our experience and attempt to make the objects of our experience intelligible. Additionally, such "thinking" becomes "critical" when it is able to sort out conflicting understandings and arrive at a judgment of fact or truth. In turn, such "critical thinking" opens onto another set of operations that establishes the realm of morality and culminates in value-oriented "doing."

Such philosophical self-understanding circles around three questions: What are we actually doing as we go about"thinking," "thinking critically," and "acting responsibly"? What do we know and what are we trying to realize when we so act? and How do we know that such knowing and doing are proceeding objectively and normatively? Because these questions and their answers are so basic, and because they are fundamental to any context of human inquiry, we identify and regard the philosophy we practice as foundational.

Our courses, then, center upon operational foundations of mental processes within the dynamics of the human knower/actor, and the inherent demands within the person that are the guarantee of objectivity and normativity in the human encounter with the reality of both the natural and human world.

Our students and colleagues need to know that while we are deeply interested in the history of great philosophical ideas (which have led over time to the constitution of the various physical sciences and human sciences), and while we as a department do participate in that more sophisticated form of the mediation of the past to the present, that is one role of education, our principal and overriding concern is the need of every student to uncover, understand, and to take responsibility for the dynamic structure by which he/she, together with others, participates in the natural and social worlds. Such an educational effort addresses foundations in the developing person and it represents a commitment to a method of human development.