…that are in fact offered already by every philosophy department in the country.  This is really quite bizarre:

The [new grant] program, which goes public today, will grant up to $25,000 each for “pre-disciplinary” pilot courses designed to tackle “the most fundamental concerns of the humanities.”

Among the “enduring questions” the endowment hopes the courses will ask: What is the good life? What is justice? Is there such a thing as right and wrong? Is there a human nature and, if so, what is it?

The endowment expects to make up to 20 awards, and $15,000 of each $25,000 grant will be a stipend for the faculty member who designs and teaches the course.

In the comments at the CHE site, Margaret Gilbert (I assume it is the philosopher of the same name) makes the relevant points:

[I]ntroductory philosophy courses regularly offered throughout the country routinely cover a selection of the “big questions” that interest the endowment. These are all time-honored questions of philosophy with a large and thoughtful literature associated with them. Further—-something that apparently concerns the endowment—-it is standard to consider a variety of answers to a given question rather than to push a particular “line”. The idea that these questions should be tackled in “predisciplinary” courses strikes me as a tad bizarre in light of this situation, unless it is only the idea that these courses should be part of a “core curriculum” intended for students who have not yet decided on a major. This is already often the case with introductory philosophy courses.

(Thanks to Jeff Dean for the pointer to this story.)