Understanding Religion: Society & Culture: Life Worth Living

What does it mean to live well? What is worth wanting and pursuing? What can lend meaning to this mortal life we live? This course is designed to provide a laboratory for considering a variety of possible answers to questions as fundamental and important as these. In preparation for class sessions, participants will read a selection of classic and contemporary texts from a variety of religious and philosophical traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Secular Humanism. In class, participants will join in conversation aimed at understanding and evaluating claims and perspectives encountered in the readings. By means of short writing assignments throughout the semester, students will dialogue with the readings and develop provisional answers of their own about the shape of a life well lived. The culminating assignment of the semester will ask students to describe their own present understanding of what matters most and what constitutes a life worth living.