Susan Wolf: 'Meaningfulness: A Third Dimension of a Good Life'

Denison University’s Department of Philosophy and the Titus-Hepp Lecture Series welcome Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Susan Wolf presenting “Meaningfulness: A Third Dimension of a Good Life.”

In thinking about what we want for ourselves and for those about whom we care, we tend to think in terms of the categories of self-interest and morality. We want, in other words, to be both happy and good. These categories, however, leave something out: an interest that our lives be meaningful. This lecture will propose an analysis of meaningfulness in terms of subjective engagement with objective values. Understanding meaningfulness this way brings together the attractive elements of other more popular ways of thinking about the concept and makes intelligible why we should care deeply about having meaning in our lives.

Wolf is the Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she has taught since 2002. Wolf’s interests range widely over moral psychology, value theory, and normative ethics.

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