The Course
In God and the Good Life (GGL), you'll have the opportunity to wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes your life meaningful. The course tackles such issues as what justifies your beliefs, whether you should practice a religion, and what sacrifices you should make for others. We'll learn what the greats like Aristotle, Plato, and Descartes have to say about how to live well. We'll reason through real-world case studies where philosophical considerations underlie major business and life decisions. We'll talk in small, intensive dialogue groups and in large, raucous debates about how we answer these questions. GGL satisfies the first philosophy requirement at Notre Dame.
Debating whether beliefs or practices make a religion
There are three lecture sections of GGL in the spring of 2023, taught by Professors Paul Blaschko, Justin Christy, and Meghan Sullivan. All GGL students must also enroll in a Monday or Tuesday night dialogue group. For more information about the course schedule, see the Policies & Assignments tab. Assignments in GGL are social, action-oriented, and project-based. You'll participate in weekly assignments with your dialogue group. You'll keep a notebook of homework and class reflections. And over the entire semester, you will compose a philosophical apology -- an essay that is part reflective memoir and part rigorous defense of your philosophical views.
By the end of the course, you'll have formed close intellectual friendships with your classmates, strong analytical skills, and most of all, a vision for what the good life can be.
GGL is part of a major national effort to better understand and teach philosophy as a way of life. Educators (or folks just interested in the philosophy behind our philosophy), should check out our teaching site: philife.nd.edu. The GGL Program has gotten some press: Chronicle of Higher Ed; Vulture; New York Times; America Magazine; Inside Higher Ed; and Notre Dame Magazine. It's also just resulted in a book, released in January 4th of 2022.