Leadership and the Good Life

What makes a good life? What does it mean to live a flourishing life? What does leadership have to do with a life well lived? These are difficult questions that require intellectual muscles many of us have left untrained; we need one another’s help to ask and answerthem.We will explore these questions by engaging with various philosophical and spiritual traditions, featuring visits from contemporary individuals who aim to shape their lives by some of the traditions in question.Along the way, we will dive into texts from some of the great thinkers specifically related to leadership and the role of a leader in cultivating a good life for one’s individual benefit as well as for the sake of a community.Throughout world history and in contemporary practice, leaders participate in spiritual expression to: 1) cultivate individual and communal identity; 2) address progress, endure suffering, or make meaning; 3) develop ethical/moral paradigms for decision-making. This seminar explores the relationship between leadership and the good life (broadly conceived).Through reading, guest lectures, service-learning, group discussion, and written reflection (given its “W” designation), this course utilizes various disciplines as an interdisciplinary “I” course (e.g. philosophy, ethics, communication studies, medicine, poetry, psychology,anthropology, literature, astronomy, women’s and gender studies, and sociology). Most often, the course will draw upon the broad fields of philosophy, literature, and leadership studies. The course pays special attention to issues of: religious privilege, inter-tradition (and non-tradition) dialogue, and spiritual expression and influence.