Education as Self-Fashioning: College and The Good Life

Academic study was once concerned with one overriding question: what is the best way to live our lives? What are the ultimate goals and values we should privilege over others? Today we often assume that value choices are personal. But many teachers in Antiquity (and beyond) thought that these choices needed to be debated, and that education demanded that we debate and think them through. In this class, we ask questions about the good life, but we also consider whether college is still designed to raise such questions. We will read thought-provoking, influential texts from Antiquity and modern times, by such writers as Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Voltaire, DuBois, and Martha Nussbaum.