The Good Life: Religion, Philosophy, & Life's Ultimate Concerns

What does it look like for a human life to go well? What leads to human flourishing or “happiness” or “success”? What is freedom? Love? Justice? What is the basis for ethics? What is our relationship to the environment and natural world? What is the significance of death? How do our beliefs (or lack thereof) about God or the gods shape our answers to life's big questions? Do they really matter? We examine how philosophical or religious traditions around the globe have answered these questions, beginning with their founders. Traditions (and founders/key figures) covered include Confucianism (Confucius); Islam (Muhammad); Christianity (Jesus); Stoicism (Socrates), Judaism (Moses), and Buddhism (the Buddha).

This course is taught by a team of leading scholars in these traditions, including instructors in classical studies, religious studies, divinity, and philosophy. As part of the Transformative Ideas Program for Sophomores, students will have opportunities to hear from guest speakers, enjoy meals with these guests and their professors, and participate in select co curricular activities with students from other classes within the program. Enrollment in this course is limited to Sophomores.

Assignments & Grading

• 2 short five (5) page analytic papers (40%). Paper 1 due Oct. 21 and Paper 2 due Nov 14, both at 11:59 PM.
• 1 final 8-10 page paper (30%) This should be a creative project of your choice. We will provide possible prompts and guidance but the goal of this project is to encourage you to reflect on the themes of the course. While we will provide some essay prompts, you should feel free to propose a topic and genre of your choosing: e.g., a dialogue, a series of reflective journal entries, or "Meditations" (like Marcus Aurelius), a fictional short story, an essay outlining your own philosophy of the good life, or a traditional research paper. Your grading team and classmates will work with you on this project to help you define and achieve your writing goals. Complete details of this assignment will be introduced in our Break Out Session on Nov. 29; final version due December 16.
• Participation (30%)

Civil Discourse

Like the Transformative Ideas program as a whole, The Good Life seeks to promote open and civil cross-disciplinary conversation about life's biggest questions. Crucial to this process is the ability to freely and respectfully explore and try out a wide range of arguments, whether these viewpoints represent your own deeply held convictions, ideas you are unsure about, or efforts to play devil's advocate. Students in the Good Life will naturally have many different points of view and prior beliefs: all viewpoints aimed at advancing our conversation are welcome and encouraged. Here are some guidelines, inspired by the syllabi from previous courses taught by some of your professors, to help us with this common undertaking: (a) Practice charity: listen well to others and try to understand their arguments and concerns. Interpret others' words so that they convey their argument in its best and strongest form; when you critique an idea, try to focus on the argument itself, not the person who said it; (b) practice intellectual humility: recognize we are all learning and growing (even your professors!), and that we can learn from one another;(c) aim at truth, not victory.