Essay 3

Due Saturday, December 17 (any time): please submit as a Google Docs document and upload here.

Formatting instructions

• Your essay should be approximately 1000 words in length.
• Your essay should be double-spaced with 1″ margins.
• Please include a title at the start of the essay.
• Please insert page numbers.

Topics

Write an essay on one of the following three topics. Your essay should make good use of the texts we have studied so far this semester by providing clear citations when you present or summarize the ideas of an author. Please use standardized citations whenever you quote or refer to a text (e.g., “Zhuangzi 2 /19″ or “Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.1″) and review the advice in the handout “Presenting and Assessing the Views of Others.”

Topic 1:

When conducted in the present day, reflection on how one should live naturally requires attending to matters of sociopolitical concern, such as healthcare inequities, wealth disparities, environmental degradation, or the carceral state. A number of the ways of life we have studied this semester likewise connect the pursuit of personal well-being with the pursuit of social well-being. To what extent should these two pursuits go hand in hand, in your view? In answering this question, draw on an approach to the good life that you find in Daoism or Stoicism. You can confine yourself to one of these schools or their comparison, or you can contrast one of them with one of the other ways of life we have studied this semester, as you wish. How does their approach to the good life encourage us (or not!) to promote the good of others? Is this an advantage or a disadvantage of their view?

Topic 2:

How has studying Daoism and/or Stoicism and trying out their methods contributed to your efforts to live a good life as a college student in a world wracked by COVID-19 and other crises? You can focus on one school or you can compare your experiences. Please be sure to defend an explicit thesis — something like: engaging in practices inspired by the views of X left me disconnected from the real challenges I was facing, leading me to question the value of X’s view; or: engaging in practices inspired by the views of X clearly improved my ability to deal with the day-to-day challenges I faced, leading me to conclude that these views are indeed a path toward a better life.

Topic 3:

Unlike most classes, “Living a Good Life” has put a great deal of emphasis upon doing reflective exercises, beginning with the desire maps that you constructed for yourself at the start of the course and continuing through the exercises related to the four ways of life from the ancient world that we’ve studied. The real value of these exercises, however, lies not so much in what you got out of doing them on the days you did them, but on what insights and resources they provided for you to make use of going forward – indeed, adding to your toolkit for trying to live a good life. For this paper, reflect on what you learned this semester that was useful for you, what you think you could benefit from exploring further in the next month or next semester, and draw up a kind of “exercise routine” for yourself involving daily, weekly, or long-term intentional reflection and practices. Ideally, this should be something you can really implement and try out over the coming weeks to see if a longer-term intentional practice can make a positive difference. Your paper should explain: (i) what it is you want to work on and why it matters to you; (ii) the practices you plan to try out in working on it; (iii) the “regimen” you might follow (e.g, “I’ll do this every morning and journal at the end of the week”); and (iv) when and how you will assess the results.