Meaning, Flourishing, & the Good Life

In this course, we will examine a range of influential answers—embedded in major religious and philosophical traditions and emerging from scientific investigation—to what is perhaps the most important question that confronts us: just what are the basic constituents of human flourishing? Our goal will be to think broadly, deeply, collaboratively, and pluralistically about the leading (and competing) answers to this question. Our guides will be historically and culturally significant texts and figures that have inspired living traditions of inquiry via accounts of human flourishing that continue to win adherents. The goal will not be to convince students that any one tradition or set of answers is correct, but that the question to which they are addressed is momentous, inescapable, and worthy of continuous reflection. After all, we don’t want our lives to go poorly!