We will examine how the philosophers of the western canon answered some of reality’s most profound questions—questions like: What do we really know, if anything? Is there a god? An initial cause of the universe? Are some bits of reality more fundamental than others? Do we have souls over and above our material bodies? Is everything that happens predetermined by what preceded it? How should we live our lives? And what makes for morally right and wrong action? Philosophers living in the so-called west have asked themselves these questions for some 2500 years. They have produced a gamut of competing answers. We will consider and debate their answers. Doing so will require examining ancient, medieval, and early modern texts by thinkers including Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Aquinas, Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Mill. We will put these thinkers in conversation with one another and in some cases put them in conversation with contemporary 20th and 21st century scholarly work. Doing so will enable us to witness the persistence, extent, and development of these philosophical questions across history.