Dear Questioners,

We talked about the big questions that humans have asked for millenia: “What is the good?” “What is happiness?” and “What is justice?” We mostly wrestle with these questions in texts–histories, poems, essays, stories, novels. Our job as scholars is to read those texts, think about them, and see what they have to say about these Big Questions.

It’s nice to know what year Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, but what’s really important is to think about the Big Questions Roger Williams’s life and experience ask: “What is freedom?” “What is conscience?” “How should we make rules?” Through wrestling with these big questions, we just naturally learn the facts that go with them.

As you learn, you leave behind your own thoughts on the Big Questions–maybe in what you write and publish, but mostly in the life that you live.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck