"The Meanings of Life: Ancient Visions"

FAIN: AQ-50016-09

Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA 15282-0001)
Jeffrey McCurry (Project Director: November 2008 to December 2014)

The development of an undergraduate course on the meaning of life, focusing on writings from ancient Greece and Rome.

This project aims to develop a course exploring nine different versions of how to live a life worth living by reading several works of ancient literature, history, and philosophy. By studying Homer, Sappho, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, and Augustine, students will learn how to think analytically about the fundamental question of the meaning of life by joining the western tradition's argument about the nature of the meaning of life.