Asking the Biggest Questions
Philosophy professors Bin Song and Peter Weigel published three books at the end of 2025, sharing the results of years of study.
If you were to describe Washington College in one phrase, chances are high you might say it is a liberal arts college. But what exactly does a liberal arts education mean?
Perhaps the first definition would be a system in which students study a variety of subjects to develop broad knowledge and the critical-thinking skills that enable them to continuously learn and adapt effectively throughout their lives.
While that is among the most important benefits of a liberal arts education, the foundational idea is even deeper. Associate Professor Bin Song traces the idea to Aristotle and says the philosopher was interested in education that prepared people to be effective citizens by enabling them to think for themselves and make the best decisions—the same reason Washington College was founded in 1782.
“If you want to be a free citizen, your mind needs to be free. To learn a variety of subjects, to continue to renew your knowledge, is a prerequisite to being a free man. In essence, it is a prerequisite for functional democracy,” Song said. “The current American tradition of liberal arts still tries to add to this inherited idea, enlarge it, and refine it so liberal arts education means to liberate the human soul so that you can think for yourself, live independently and in a community, so as to support the best political institution we can envision.”
With this more complete backdrop in mind, two things seem clear: philosophy provides a basis for developing exactly those liberating habits of thought and broad perspectives at the core of the liberal arts, and the job of keeping our minds free never ends.
New publications by Song and his colleague, Associate Professor Peter Weigel, provide opportunities to keep challenging one’s thinking for Washington College alums, philosophy students, and faculty, and anyone with an interest in wrestling with some of the biggest questions in life.
“In some ways, philosophy is a long conversation with great minds on the great questions,” Weigel said. “You may not get certain answers, but you are at least probably less likely to be deceived. You won’t be thinking others’ thoughts alone or things that are handed to you.”
Just as a liberal arts education provides the bedrock for effective citizenship in a democracy, Song and Weigel both wrote on topics that can form the organizing principle for an individual life: transcendence, the nature of God, and what religious traditions hold sacred.
Young people often show great interest in these “great questions,” according to Weigel, who, in addition to teaching philosophy and religion courses from an academic perspective, is also a practicing Catholic and provides support for the Catholic Campus Ministry.
“Does my life have a point? What should I do? Is there a God?” Weigel lists as examples. “They’re hearing so many messages about values that I think in recent years there has been more interest in religious questions. There’s a hunger for studying these types of questions. We do it in an academic and rigorous way. And I’m also very careful to always look at different sides of a question.”
Song structures his classes to help students not only study but also practice what they learn, so they can truly understand and benefit from elements of mindfulness and thoughtful reflection.
Both the book he published and the one he contributed to last year examine Confucianism and Christianity, and his academic preparation consisted of their deep study. Song asserts that multi-religious identity is not inherently contradictory but is, in fact, a real possibility for scholars and well-educated laypeople alike.
But whether a person holds one faith or another, or both Confucianism and Christianity or no religion at all, Song argues that everyone can benefit from having a central principle, something transcendent in one’s life and worldview. He uses the metaphor of the highest beam in a Chinese house, saying all other elements of the building design are incomplete without that focal point.
“Once you identify what is transcendent, then its implication will pervade all the other elements of your life without any remainder because it becomes a guiding principle of your life view,” Song said. “If we lack this ultimate purpose, it is harder to understand how each part of life becomes meaningful. On this level, the most abstract philosophical issue, transcendence, is also deeply tangible, deeply material, regarding its impact.”
Debating Transcendence: Creatio ex nihilo and Sheng Sheng
by Bin Song
Arising from work Song had been doing since his doctorate in religious studies at Boston University, this book takes a conscientious approach to establishing a methodology for understanding and translating, conceptually as well as literally, ideas from Confucian (Ruist) thought and Christian theology so that they can be considered together. Song reviews the lengthy history of commentary in both traditions and makes the argument that particular interpretations of the Ruist conception of Ultimate Reality show it to have a transcendent quality akin to that ascribed to the Creator God of Christianity.
Through the approach Song lays out, the book makes an important contribution to the field of comparative study of religions. The American Academy of Religion and the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division are organizing panels to discuss the work at their annual meetings.
Reading Aquinas’s Five Ways: The Arguments for God in Summa Theologiae
by Peter Weigel
Saint Thomas Aquinas developed his theology in the 13th century and created approaches to philosophical and theological questions that continue to influence debates today. But two realities that have arisen over eight ensuing centuries provide the impetus and material for Weigel’s book on Aquinas’ Five Ways of reasoning to the existence of God. Firstly, modern readers often lack the background knowledge of Aquinas’ thought and the historical context in which he worked to fully understand the Five Ways. Secondly, there have been innumerable advances in the intervening hundreds of years that can benefit from being considered with Aquinas in mind.
In his book, Weigel provides perspective and supporting arguments from elsewhere in Aquinas’ writing that make the Five Ways clearer to current students and readers. And he does not shy away from introducing potentially complicating developments from modern science and philosophers. His book equips readers with the relevant background and context, then trusts them to use their new understanding to decide how Aquinas can be relevant in today’s world.
Retelling Sacred Stories: Our Journeys to a Shared Sacred Story
edited by The Fetzer Institute
Song is one of three authors on “When the Fire Came: A Retelling of the Confucian Sacred Story,” one of 10 stories in this collection published last year by The Fetzer Institute, a nonprofit organization that aims “to prove that viewing the world as inherently sacred—through a diversity of faith and spiritual beliefs—is necessary for shared flourishing.” For this book, the organization recruited scholar-practitioners from eight world religions to retell sacred stories from their faith in “a literary ‘experience’ of the awakening, changing, and surrendering of the heart evoked by the Sacred in their tradition,” as described by institute Vice President for World Religions and Spirituality William Vendley in the introduction.
Working in the field of religious studies and specializing in Confucianism (or Ruism, as it is more properly called), Song and his co-writers (Anna Sun of Duke University and Pauline Lee of Saint Louis University) know each other well, which was important through the several year process of writing a story together that aimed to encapsulate some of the essential wisdom of their shared tradition.
“We thought this was a good opportunity to introduce the tradition [of Confucianism] in a more accessible and engaging manner, particularly under the leadership of the Fetzer Institute,” Song said. “In [my book Debating Transcendence] as well, working on the tradition of Confucianism in an accessible, modern, and comparative manner is always my major expertise and major passion.”
—Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven
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