April 28

Monday, April 28, 2025
Plenary

Critical Commitments and the Good Life (with Guest Lecturer Elise Springer)

This lecture will explore the way in which critical commitments can play an organizing role in many people's motivation, and whether such commitments can be reconciled with living a good life. We'll consider the way in which recognizing and responding to urgent problems — whether global or personal — can reshape an individual’s sense of purpose, and reflect on the tensions and harmonies that can arise between the pursuit of final ends like eudaimonia and a devotion to causes beyond oneself.

Before Class

Right at the start of this course, you developed an “inventory” of desires, elaborating on that work with a “map” of means-end relations, and then with the specification of “final ends.” Please revisit that earlier work and consider the following questions:

  • Are there problems or challenges in the world that have dramatically come to your own attention (more than to others around you)?
  • Have you embraced any critical commitments in connection with these problems or challenges?
  • Considering these critical commitments alongside the desires and ends you’ve discussed earlier in this course, what kinds of harmonious and/or dissonant connections can you find between and among them?

After Class