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THE GOOD LIFE METHOD

REASONING THROUGH THE BIG QUESTIONS OF HAPPINESS, FAITH, AND MEANING

Thoughtful contemplations about thorny moral questions.

How to live virtuously and well.

In 2016, Notre Dame philosophy professors Sullivan and Blaschko began teaching a course called God and the Good Life, which became hugely popular among undergraduates. Their aim, they write, was to help students to live more intentionally and to take agency and responsibility for their choices. Drawing on the content and pedagogy of that course, the authors offer a warm, empathetic guide for examining the quality and meaning of one’s own life. They encourage readers to hone their ability to pose and answer strong questions—“the kinds of questions that uncover our deeper reasons for believing and doing what we do”; to pay loving attention to others’ stories; and to think about “how the episodes of your life fit together.” The first half of the book considers everyday philosophical challenges, “questions about money, work, family life, and political friction.” The second half focuses on existential matters such as faith, suffering, and death. Each chapter concludes with exercises designed to prompt self-awareness about the connection of one’s choices to one’s ethical and moral goals. Throughout, the authors contrast effective altruism with virtue ethics, two philosophical perspectives that lead to quite different ways of defining a morally good life. While effective altruists, such as philosopher Peter Singer, believe one should earn as much as possible in order to give away as much as possible, virtue ethicists believe that “ ‘care for the soul’ is the most important work any of us can do.” That work requires training and practice. The authors draw on thinkers from Plato to William James, St. Thomas Aquinas to Kierkegaard, Aristotle to Iris Murdoch as they present a wide range of responses to much-debated moral questions. The authors themselves share candid reflections on the evolution of their own thinking, including “philosophical apologies”—that is, defenses—of many hard decisions they’ve made.

Thoughtful contemplations about thorny moral questions.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-984880-30-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021

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THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.

“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023

ISBN: 9780063304413

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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