The most popular class at Yale University is called “Life Worth Living” and is taught by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz.
The overwhelmingly positive reviews of the class might seem surprising, given that it could upend a student’s life direction (or at least the selection of a major — although one student did complain in an online review that he was disappointed the course didn’t include “more on yachts.”
“Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most” (The Open Field) is the newly released book version of the class, an exploration that includes myriad sages and seers throughout history offering their own views of a life worth living, including James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and Immanuel Kant, Confucius and Aristotle and Seneca the Younger.
“We treat LIFE WORTH LIVING as one long conversation among present-day friends, with help from extraordinarily insightful friends from the past,” the authors write.
Is the purpose of life to achieve one’s goals?
Albert Speer was Adolf Hiter’s chief architect, and he ended up designing “spectacular buildings” in support of a Nazi Party summarily murdering millions.
While the authors don’t force their beliefs upon readers, regarding Speer, they can’t help but comment that “It is possible to succeed in our highest aspirations yet fail as human beings.”
When the authors taught their course to inmates at Connecticut penitentiary, they realized many of the prisoners had initially attained what they wanted, like wealth and power.
“But,” the authors ask, “was that worth wanting?”
Oscar Wilde was a hedonist, declaring “I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden…” That buffet included a homosexual affair with a charming young royal when such couplings were illegal, resulting in Wilde’s incarceration.
But Wilde was an individualist who later believed the relationship was a terrible distraction to him.
He believed “The best way for a person to live is to find their own particular expression of humanity,” which for him was creating art.
To have idled his days with his young lover instead of creating, Wilde saw himself as a “devastating failure” squandering his life.
Seneca’s philosophy included that “You will cease to fear if you cease to hope.”
Disagree? The book offers many questions to frame the debate but leaves them unanswered.
If one wants to get ultimate clarity, the answer is apparently within.