It was 1981, and I had barely survived my first year at the University of Havana, where I was studying chemistry. The leap from high school to university had been a huge adjustment—not just for me, but for many others. In the fall of 1979, about 250 of us began the program together. By the second year, fewer than 50 remained. That year we were introduced to a new subject: Philosophy. Every subject has to start somewhere, and we began with the classics—their ideas, their conflicts, their strengths and weaknesses. But one question weighed heavily on us: why study philosophy at all? Shouldn’t we be focused on chemistry—the nature of substances, their reactions, the concepts of atoms, molecules, and bonds? That was the very first challenge we posed to our philosophy lecturer, and to us, it seemed perfectly legitimate. The answer, fittingly, was philosophical. In the Soviet context, philosophy was meant to train us in analytical reasoning and critical thinking—by grappling with big questi...