The Meaning Of Life

An Introduction to Meaning, God, Absurdity, and Death

What you'll learn

Be able to state main views on the meaning of life

Identify major philosophical authors and traditions

Recognize the perspective of major religious traditions on the meaning of life

Defend one's own view on the meaning of life

Requirements

No previous experience needed! This is ideal as a first course in philosophy, and should also be interesting to more experienced students.

Description

This course introduces the main philosophical questions about the meaning of life, drawing on both religious and non-religious perspectives. At the end of the course students should have a good grounding in core philosophical questions about life's significance. Readings are drawn from: The Meaning of Life: A Reader, Klemke and Cahn (Eds.), 4th Edition.We begin with a discussion of the religious or theistic perspective on the meaning of life, focusing on a short piece by Leo Tolstoy as well as expository discussions of Christian and Buddhist perspectives on the meaning of life.We next turn to secular or non-religious perspectives. We consider Schopenhauer's view that life consists fundamentally of suffering, as well as Camus's view that life is in some sense fundamentally absurd, as well as more contemporary responses to these perspectives.We then consider the question of what death is, whether death is bad, whether immortality would be good, and what significance our death might have for the question of whether our lives do (or do not) have meaning.Finally, we briefly consider psychological work on how meaningfulness in life might be empirically measured through questionnaires and other devices, and the uses of such measures for actually improving human life.

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Section 2: The Religious View

Lecture 2 Tolstoy's Confession

Lecture 3 Christianity

Lecture 4 Buddhism

Lecture 5 Other Religious Views

Section 3: The Non-Religious View

Lecture 6 Schopenhauer on Suffering

Lecture 7 Russell on Worship

Lecture 8 Camus on Sisyphus

Lecture 9 Nagel on Absurdity

Section 4: Death and the Meaning of Life

Lecture 10 Nagel on Death

Lecture 11 Williams on Immortality

Lecture 12 Scheffler on the Afterlife

Section 5: The Psychology of Meaningfulness

Lecture 13 The Psychological Question of Meaning

Lecture 14 The "SoMe" Questionnaire

Anyone with an interest and openness to fundamental philosophical questions about life.