Meaningful Lives: Paths to a Life Well-Lived

Catalog description

This seminar introduces approaches the perennial question, what is the meaning of life?" through philosophy. Following philosopher Todd Mays analysis in A Significant Life, the course adopts a practical translation of that inquiry sending us on investigations of what characterizes human lives that we can agree to be meaningful (i.e., rich, significant, worthwhile). In building up a general picture of such meaningfulness from specific examples, we will discuss and map different paths to gaining for oneself such a sense of self-worth. In addition to books by May and Virginia Woolf, the seminar will use examples from contemporary cinema as a way of investigating human meaningfulness.