19 Jan The Good Life Method: Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning
Although most of the posts on this blog come from a psychological or more specifically, positive psychology perspective, there’s much we can learn about happiness and life from philosophy and philosophers.
Which is why I’m sharing this article from the Next Big Idea Club which I’m pretty sure you’ll find thought provoking and helpful …
Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko are philosophy professors at the University of Notre Dame. For the past seven years, they have been developing and teaching a course called “God and the Good Life,” devoted to helping thousands of students reflect on, and live, good and excellent lives.
Below, Meghan and Paul share 5 key insights from their new book, The Good Life Method: Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning. Listen to the audio version—read by Meghan and Paul themselves—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Happiness is more than a feeling.
We all want to be happy, but what exactly does this mean? We often think about happiness as a feeling or emotion—the opposite of sadness. It’s what we feel while we’re watching our favorite movie or eating a delicious meal. This psychological kind of happiness is important, and we certainly can’t ignore it if we’re trying to lead meaningful, contented lives. However, philosophers since Aristotle have challenged us to think about happiness differently.
Suppose a neurosurgeon offered to have a device installed in your brain that would give you a constant feeling of well-being. You’d never stop experiencing something like a runner’s high, or the feeling of being absorbed in your absolute favorite activity. Most of us would probably refuse this offer, and it’s not because we don’t want to be happy. Happiness is a complex state we achieve through years of effort, hard work, and life experience. Some of the experiences that ultimately contribute the most to our overall happiness can feel painful, sorrowful, or even tragic.
If we want to be truly happy in the philosophical sense, then step back and ask about the kind of life we’d need to lead, and the kind of person we’d need to become.
2. You can learn to ask better questions.
A lot of folks are uncomfortable with the idea that we can develop better ideas about big existential “good life” questions. In our deeply polarized times, it can be unnerving to even think about having a conversation with someone else about a complicated moral, political, or religious topic. From the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, we get a model for how to make progress on our beliefs through asking questions we don’t think we know the answer to.
“The skill, as Socrates shows, is learning to love not knowing and getting more skilled at asking.”
… keep reading the full & original article HERE