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Message from Department Chair

Dear Spring and Summer 2020 Philosophy Graduates,

Many congratulations! We cannot celebrate your accomplishment in the normal way, but that doesn’t lessen the pride we feel in your work and your success. We send our very best wishes to you and to your family as the coronavirus pandemic threatens us all and changes all our lives.

In the popular sense to have a philosophical attitude is, as Merriam Webster puts it, “to be calm or unflinching in the face of trouble, defeat, or loss”. I hope that the study of philosophy may have helped you cultivate that attitude, as the etymology suggests it might. But I hope also that the study of philosophy may have done something else: prepared you to think rationally and creatively in complicated and unfamiliar situations like the one we find ourselves in.

Some years stand out in our collective historical memory. They begin or end eras; they appear as if in bold type. You have graduated in one of those years. It has deprived you of a traditional rite of passage. But crossing a virtual stage is no less real an achievement. I hope you manage to celebrate it fully in a way that fits the moment.

Congratulations again!

David K. Phillips
Department Chair and Professor

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