The Meaning of Life: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and More

What is the meaning of life? The question invites religious and spiritual answers.

But it’s also a problem that philosophers try to approach systematically.

Søren Kierkegaard finds meaning in the self’s ability to connect the temporal to the eternal, while Martin Heidegger locates it in our way of living with death.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt draws attention to the democratic public sphere, where citizens exchange views about the significance of their words and deeds.

Existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus explore how individual integrity is achieved by facing up to a universe devoid of objective purpose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrates the experience of wholeness that nature provides to those who free themselves from the restrictions of society, Friedrich Nietzsche recommends approaching life as a work of art, and Susan Wolf identifies activities in which subjective passion meets objective value.

This course provides an opportunity to improve your ability to ask and answer what the meaning of life is.