You can use your Las Vegas-Clark County Library District card to borrow titles from these partner libraries:
The Good Life Method
Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning
1 of 1 copy available
For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful.
Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God.
Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment.
The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages.
* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF with a list of resources for further reading.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
January 4, 2022 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593458440
- File size: 262733 KB
- Duration: 09:07:21
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Two popular Notre Dame professors explain how to use philosophical reasoning to build "a vision of how your life will all fit together into a coherent and meaningful whole." Narrator Sean Patrick Hopkins captures the authors' enthusiasm but never oversells their message. With his vocal charm lifting the entire production, his quiet confidence draws listeners into the authors' advice on how to live more deliberately. Part of their "good life" formula involves being less impulsive and thinking more about the future we desire--a big ask for today's in-the-moment young people. But with a boost from Hopkins's performance, the authors suggest empowering strategies: Question your assumptions, celebrate your intentions and ability to act, and practice the art of sustaining attention to what's really important to you. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from October 25, 2021
“Philosophy can supply the methods” for living a good life, according to this wise and accessible guide. Notre Dame philosophy professors Sullivan (Time Biases) and Blaschko bring to the page their course on applying philosophy to one’s life plans, covering the works of such thinkers as Plato, Søren Kierkegaard, William James, and Elizabeth Anscombe to provide a philosophical foundation in virtue ethics. Their ideas, the authors posit, can help one find their way to eudaimonia, an Aristotelian concept that means “having fulfilled your function as a human being.” The first half of the study focuses on such concerns as jobs, relationships, and money, and the authors use Plato’s approach to sophistry, for example, to discuss finding common ground in a polarized political age (“Tolerance is a virtue directed at people with positions, not positions themselves”). The second half deals with more spiritual subjects such as religion, contemplation, and suffering; though both authors are forthright about their Catholic beliefs, their entertaining and insightful approach to applying philosophy everyday will appeal to readers both religious and not. Those pondering the perennial question of how to live a good life should start here.
-