To confront the questions and challenges in life that have no easy answers requires, in Kant’s words, the courage to use one’s own understanding. Our mission in the philosophy department at Miami University is to empower our students to live courageous and thoughtful lives by passing on to them the rich inheritance of the philosophical tradition: its great texts, its central problems and questions, and its distinctive methods of critical thought, reflection, questioning and self-questioning, lucid argumentation, and cogent writing.