Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions

Overview

Course No. 4320

Guided by a passionate and thorough professor, this intellectually gripping course offers a rigorous and wide-ranging exploration of what various spiritual, religious, and philosophical traditions from both the East and the West have contributed to the question of life’s meaning. What is the meaning of life? It’s a question every thoughtful person has pondered at one time or another. Indeed, it may be the biggest question of all—at once profound and universal, but also deeply personal.

We want to understand the world in which we live, but we also want to understand how to make our own lives as meaningful as possible; to know not only why we’re living, but that we’re doing it with intention, purpose, and ethical commitment. But how, exactly, do we find that meaning, and develop that commitment? How can we grasp why we are here? Or how we should proceed? And to whom, exactly, we should listen as we shape the path we will walk?

This comprehensive 36-lecture series from a much-honored scholar is an invigorating way to begin or continue your pursuit of these questions, and it requires no previous background in philosophical or religious thought. It offers a rigorous and wide-ranging exploration of what various spiritual, religious, and philosophical traditions from both the East and West have contributed to this profound line of questioning, sharing insights from sources that include ancient Indian texts, foundational Chinese texts, classical Western texts, modern philosophers, and unique perspectives offered by Native Americans.

Course Structure

1. The Meaning of the Meaning of Life

Establish the solid ground from which your journey will begin. You’ll learn the meanings that the word “meaning” itself may embody and preview the approaches you will take to the question that gives the course its name.

Duration: 33 min

2. The Bhagavad-Gita-Choice and Daily Life

One of the core texts of the Mahabharata—a major moral and religious text for most Hindus—introduces you to the critically important skill of truly reading a text, deeply and with comprehension. It also begins your consideration of the concept of human choice.

Duration: 30 min

3. The Bhagavad-Gita-Discipline and Duty

Plunge more deeply into the Bhagavad-Gita’s wisdom by grasping the three kinds of yogas, or disciplines, embedded in its metaphors. See why these disciplines of action, knowledge, and devotion are all required if life is to be coherent, integrated, and rational.

Duration: 30 min

4. The Bhagavad-Gita-Union and Purpose

Conclude your reading of the Bhagavad-Gita with an appreciation of the theophany—Krishna’s revelation of the nature of divinity. True freedom, says the Gita’s final message, comes from disinterested action, reflective knowledge, and a finding of value at the cosmic level of a universe divine in its own right.

Duration: 32 min

5. Aristotle on Life-The Big Picture

Shift your perspective from India to the roots of Western thought about life’s meaning by beginning your study of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. This introductory lecture sets out the framework of Aristotle’s view, as set forth in the lecture notes kept by his son and pupil, Nichomacheus.

Duration: 31 min

6. Aristotle-The Highest Good

Explore Aristotle’s search for the “highest good.” It is a search that takes you through his famous “function argument” and offers an explanation of the comprehensive state of being known as eudaimonia, the fully flourishing life that may well elude evaluation until long after death.

Duration: 30 min

7. Aristotle-The Happy Life

Your examination of Aristotle’s ethical teachings concludes with his explanation of virtue, its key dimensions, and its necessary coupling with action. Special attention is also paid to the importance of friendship.

Duration: 32 min

8. Job’s Predicament-Life Is So Unfair

As you move to the Hebraic tradition, you grasp how the core question has shifted. Instead of seeking our answer in our relationship to the cosmos, as in the Indian tradition, or to society, as in that of the Greeks, the focus is now on our relationship to a personal God.

Duration: 30 min

9. Job’s Challenge-Who Are We?

The book of Job brings an encounter with a troubling conclusion. Although life may indeed have meaning, it is a meaning shrouded by a mysterious divine, and we may need to live in ignorance of what that meaning may be.

Duration: 32 min

10. Stoicism-Rationality and Acceptance

Your focus moves to the beginnings of Stoic moral theory in the writings of Seneca and Epictetus. Their accounts of a good life describe one that is moderate, reasonable, and controlled, living in harmony with the universe and society, and accepting of the inevitability of death.

Duration: 29 min

11. Human Finitude-The Epicurean Synthesis

A brief introduction to Lucretius, the foremost Epicurean philosopher, serves as a gateway to the thought of Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius’s Meditations synthesizes Stoic ideas about rational order and the importance of emotional control with Epicurean ideas about finitude and impermanence.

Duration: 31 min

12. Confucius-Order in the Cosmos and in Life

Your focus shifts to China and the ideas attributed to the man known to the West as Confucius. Hear what his teachings have to say about concepts like warm-heartedness, propriety, virtue, filial piety, the nature of the universe, and the achievement of an effortless excellence of character.

Duration: 29 min

13. Daodejing-The Dao of Life and Spontaneity

An exploration of a very different Chinese approach to understanding than that set forth in Confucianism begins with a cautionary demonstration of the startling differences in interpretation that will always be present among various translations of a text.

Duration: 30 min

14. Daodejing-The Best Life Is a Simple Life

Some beautiful readings from the Daodejing bring out the profound differences in outlook that set it apart from Confucianism. Grasp how it turns away from social structures and the “cultivation” of individual excellence in favor of a simple, natural life.

Duration: 31 min

15. Daodejing-Subtlety and Paradox

Conclude your immersion in the Daodejing with this examination of some of its most important aspects. Take in its perspectives on the nature of the universe, the subtlety and suppleness of virtue, the value of “negativity,” and the delicacy of life.

Duration: 31 min

16. Zhuangzi on Daoism-Impermanence and Harmony

Your exploration of Daoism ends with its longest classical text, the Zhuangzi. You find not only the themes of spontaneity and the suspicion of logic, but also ridicule of the Confucian emphasis on ritual, propriety, and rigid relationships.

Duration: 32 min

17. The Teachings of the Buddha

This lecture begins with the search for enlightenment by a young Indian prince and concludes with an introduction to what he found—the so-called Four Noble Truths, including the eightfold path to sharing that enlightenment.

Duration: 32 min

18. Santideva-Mahayana Buddhism

Here you begin your study of one of the major evolutions in Buddhist thought, the Mahayana, and one of its major texts—Santideva’s Bodhicaryavatara—a “how-to” manual for leading an enlightened life.

Duration: 32 min

19. Santideva-Transforming the Mind

Enhance your grasp of Mahayana Buddhism and Santideva’s description of the meaningful life, achieved only through the “six perfections”—the pursuit of generosity, propriety, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom.

Duration: 31 min

20. Zen-The Moon in a Dewdrop and Impermanence

Expand your understanding of Buddhism with an introduction to Zen. This path to Buddhahood is aimed at direct transformation. Knowledge is handed directly from mind to mind, with great emphasis placed on a teacher-disciple lineage that each Zen master can trace directly to Zen’s originating moment.

Duration: 32 min

21. Zen-Being-Time and Primordial Awakening

This lecture takes you through Zen concepts like duality and non-duality, perception and conception, Dogen’s presentation of time as the very nature of our world, and what is required to reawaken our primordial Buddha-nature.

Duration: 32 min

22. Taking Stock of the Classical World

A look back at the classical traditions studied thus far reveals that although there is no unanimity, there are common dimensions, as well as a consensus about the value of a virtuoso life attained through contemplation and practice.

Duration: 31 min

23. Hume’s Skepticism and the Place of God

European modernity brings the first challenges of science and reason to the primacy of theology. David Hume argues that, although theism may well be reasonable, it cannot be rational, establishing the foundation for separate public and private spheres.

Duration: 32 min

24. Hume’s Careless and Compassionate Vision

You explore Hume’s distinctions between Nature and Second Nature, the importance of our social lives to our cognitive lives, and the key roles our passions and imagination play in our beliefs and actions.

Duration: 31 min

25. Kant-Immaturity and the Challenge to Know

The work of Immanuel Kant is considered the demarcation line for modern academic philosophy. Here you take up Kant’s view of the Enlightenment as a call for people to emerge from their self-imposed immaturity and realize their nature as fully formed human beings.

Duration: 30 min

26. Mill’s Call to Individuality and to Liberty

Readings from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty reveal the first purely individualistic doctrine of the meaning of life encountered in the course. Mill presents the strongest possible defense of the connection between a meaningful life and a liberal social order.

Duration: 32 min

27. Tolstoy-Is Everyday Life the Real Thing?

A novella by Tolstoy presents a very different and critical view of modernity, suggesting that its values of secularization and mass society invariably lead us, in fact, to a life that is meaningless.

Duration: 31 min

28. Nietzsche-Twilight of the Idols

Nietzsche initiates postmodernism in philosophy—its first sustained attack on modernity. Through readings from his Twilight of the Idols, you grasp Nietzsche’s dismissal of modernity’s core values, including philosophical progress, reason, systematicity, god, and transcendent value.

Duration: 30 min

29. Nietzsche-Achieving Authenticity

Nietzsche’s repudiation of modernity’s concept of a meaningful life does not mean he lacks his own. This lecture presents his vision of life as a successful creative act on a grand scale, with oneself as the hero of a great autobiography.

Duration: 30 min

30. Gandhi-Satyagraha and Holding Fast to Truth

Your introduction to the thought of Gandhi reveals him as even more radical than Nietzsche. Although a realization of Gandhi’s views would admittedly sacrifice many of modernity’s benefits, including much of technology, medicine, and law, it is a price he says we must be willing to pay.

Duration: 30 min

31. Gandhi-The Call to a Supernormal Life

Gandhi’s own life serves as an example of the supernormal life he advocates. See how his argument for what he believes to be the only meaningful life includes echoes from almost every text we’ve examined.

Duration: 31 min

32. Lame Deer-Life Enfolded in Symbols

Readings from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions offer a different vantage point for seeking meaning: a symbolic view of life. It is not that modernity lacks its own symbolism or is without meaning, says this Lakota Sioux holy man, but that it means the wrong things.

Duration: 28 min

33. Lame Deer-Our Place in a Symbolic World

Go deeper into Lame Deer’s critique of modernity, examining his ideas about the impact of money and our fetishism about it, the alienation from nature it brings about, and modernity’s simultaneous denial and spreading of death.

Duration: 33 min

34. HH Dalai Lama XIV-A Modern Buddhist View

You are introduced to the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist-inflected but very modern, secular vision about the universal human goal of happiness. You learn its components and the relationship between their pursuit and the interconnectedness of human life.

Duration: 32 min

35. HH Dalai Lama XIV-Discernment and Happiness

A vigorous discussion of how to achieve happiness reveals how the Dalai Lama’s views of a meaningful life, modern as they are, also contain a deep traditionalist thread. We must still commit to the bodhisattva path, the altruistic aspiration to attain awakening for the benefit of all.

Duration: 32 min

36. So, What Is the Meaning of Life?

Tempting as it may be to form a single answer agreed on by all, there is none to be found. What is clear is that there are recurrent themes, with the answer that works for you likely to be found among them.

Duration: 34 min