Episode 140: Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko discuss the good life

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What is the Good Life Method and why did Meghan and Paul create it?

Unknown 0:15

Yeah, no.

Matt Teichman 0:19

Hello and welcome to Elucinations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I'm Matt Tykeman, and with me today is Megan Sullivan. The Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Notre Dame Institute of Advanced Study. And Paul Blaschko, who is Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and Director of the Shidi Family Program in Economics, Enterprise, and Society. And they are here to discuss of the good life. Megan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko. Welcome. Thank you so much for having us.

Meghan Sullivan 0:50

We're excited to be here.

Matt Teichman 0:53

Okay, so the good life isn't a phrase that's always on the tips of our tongues today, but I think nonetheless, despite that, we all have some idea of like, you know, hey, this is the kind of life I'd like to live, and this is the kind of life I'd not like to live. So how about I just take a stab at it? I'm gonna say Living the good life means making a decent amount of money, having a lot of career success, um, you know, falling in love, maybe having a family if that's your thing, maybe not, and like living for a long time. So is i have I just totally nailed it right now and like we could just pack up and go home?

Meghan Sullivan 1:25

Yeah, I mean you're you're on the road. You're doing better than somebody who thinks the good life is uh just watching Netflix endlessly and then um I don't know, quitting your job or Well

Matt Teichman 1:36

that's interesting. So I actually I have a question about that. So Like what if you're a cinophile or something and like you want to devote yourself to the study of great films? Now granted Netflix has a somewhat limited selection, but I don't know, what uh like maybe you're a cinophile and like your specialization or something is like contemporary Netflix shows. Like, could you live a good life just like locked in a room all day and like doing whatever you do, you know, writing film criticism or whatnot?

Meghan Sullivan 1:59

So there there are a couple different approaches you can take as a philosopher to this meaning of life question. And also, you know, you can feel so special. Like we wrote a book about the meaning of life. Yeah,

Matt Teichman 2:08

I know.

Meghan Sullivan 2:09

What that has answers.

Matt Teichman 2:10

Everything's at stake here.

Meghan Sullivan 2:12

Here here are at least a couple camps you might fall into. One campus pretty much any set of projects or non projects that you adopt for yourself can be meaningful. Uh and there aren't really better or worse ways to answer the question about whether you are leading a good life. Paul and I are not in that camp and we don't think like many virtue ethicists are in that camp, but that is one approach and if that's your approach, there are probably books that you can find that would help you out. There's one that just got published the same publication day as our good life method book called The Sunny Nihilist, and I think this is the approach that that book takes.

Matt Teichman 2:46

This is a good uh time to mention that I completely forgot to plug your book. Megan Sulvan and Paul Blaschko have an awesome new book out called The Good Life Method Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning, and it's out now from Penguin Press. So Anyway, where we were at was we were drawing a contrast between different approaches to thinking about what counts as a good life. And then um so uh there's like maybe a distinction we want to draw between people who have specific prescriptions about like, you know, if you want to do a really good job of like being a computer programmer, do X. If you want to do a really good job of being a Of mixing concrete, do why. But you're not in that business.

Matt Teichman 3:22

Is that am I understanding that right?

Meghan Sullivan 3:24

Or not. So one of the things that we aim to do in the book is to introduce readers to Aristotle's approach to the good life and show how he's inspired a bunch of other really phenomenal philosophers over the last 2400 years. And this general approach that he founded and has since grown into virtue ethics is really useful for our 2022 lives. And this does require taking some substantive philosophical Stand on what it ev even is to give people advice about the good life.

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Chapters

8 chapters

1 What is the Good Life Method and why did Meghan and Paul create it? 0:15–5:34 2 How do the authors redefine a philosophy class to focus on students’ life plans? 5:34–10:56 3 Why do they reject the idea that any life can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based only on personal attitudes? 10:56–16:18 4 What is Aristotle’s role in their approach to happiness and virtue? 16:18–21:44 5 How do they distinguish between telic (goal‑oriented) and atelic (process‑oriented) activities? 21:44–26:50 6 What practical tools do they give students for balancing work, relationships, and personal growth? 26:50–31:10 7 How does the book blend philosophy, personal storytelling, and ‘philosophical apologies’? 31:10–37:18 8 What role do religion and faith play in the Good Life Method and why is it optional? 37:18–43:26

Speakers

1 identified

Matt Teichman 8 min

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Netflix 1 Twitter 1 PayPal 1 Stephen Colbert 1 Aristotle 2 Aaron Powell 1 Plato 1 Socrates 1 Elucidations 2 Braintree 1 effective altruism 1 Matt Tykeman 1

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Recorded10 Apr 2022

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Show notes

Intro philosophy classes often get stuck in a rut. Some philosophy classes go through a list of old dead people and try to understand excerpts from some of their most influential writings, over the course of a semester. Could be something like: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche. Other types of intro classes go through a list of topics that contemporary philosophers feel are canonical and have students read papers on those topics. Could be something like: the problem of evil, the mind-body problem, arguments for the existence (or non-existence) of God, the is/ought distinction, and external world skepticism. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that type of class per se—I’d bet a lot of listeners tune into Elucidations precisely because of a kickass class they took on those lines. But sometimes, an instructor will quickly throw a syllabus like that together just out of a general feeling that that’s what you’re supposed to do. Not because the syllabus consists of material that they personally feel excited about. When that happens, what we often end up with is a room full of people who kinda don’t know what they’re doing there, including both the teacher and the students.This month’s Elucidations guests have a different approach. Their first-year students come from all different backgrounds and majors, and when they walk in, Sullivan and Blaschko immediately ask them: what are you planning to do with your life? Why? What do you hope to get out of it? What is it that makes this plan superior to others? This format still gives the usual suspects like Aristotle, Mill, etc. a seat at the table, but now they’re brought in specifically to help students figure out what they’re going to do when they graduate. Part of what makes this work is that Sullivan and Blaschko are completely open about sharing their own life stories, including big decisions from their past and the reasoning that went into them.With these background conditions in place, the class turns into a vibrant debate about how to make a future for yourself, thus bringing philosophy back into contact with its original mission from 2500 years ago in ancient Athens. Namely: to give everyone the skills they need to live a good life, to understand what makes the life they’re living good, and to define what a good life is going to look like for them personally, as opposed to for other people.Their course at The University of Notre Dame, God and the Good Life, has taken the higher education world by storm, and in order to bring some of what they’re up to to a bigger audience, they have adapted it into a new book from Penguin Press, called The Good Life Method. Tune into this month’s episode to learn all about how to live your best life!Further ReadingIf you’re interested in getting a glimpse of the book, you can look at excerpts from it here:The Good Life Method, Meghan Sullivan and Paul BlashckoYou can also take a look at the authors' personal website, which contain links to many of their writings on this and other topics:Meghan SullivanPaul BlaschkoHappy reading!Matt Teichman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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