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Reflecting on the good life: intergenerational dialogue.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This manuscript describes a course designed for incoming students as an introduction to liberal arts education, which proposes a close relationship between ethics and aesthetics, between "the good" and "the beautiful." Students are exposed to different Western philosophical definitions of the good life, as well as to different definitions of beauty. Underlying is the course's working metaphor of life as work of art: life as a work of self-creation. In weekly conversations with senior citizens, students produce an autobiography informed by readings, and assist their conversation partners in producing a narrative of their own life. Unlikely conversation partners of different generations can stimulate with their questions a deep reflection on the definitions of the "good life" at work in the span of a lifetime.

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What is "the good life?" The question seems to encapsulate the main topic of ethics, the discipline of philosophy that seeks to find ultimate justifications for human existence. An individual's life is affected, conditioned and perhaps even determined by a myriad of contingencies. Yet, the way in which an individual overcomes and even employs these contingencies in a process of self-creation can be found to be poignantly analogous to an artist's creation of a work. Both the "self-created" individual, in this limited sense, and the artist must adapt to the contingent hand they have been dealt, if they are to "impose" on their material a form they ultimately find to be beautiful. For, isn't that what we all hope to be able to declare on our deathbed, "My life has been beautiful!"?

Yes, I will wholeheartedly grant, these are heavy questions with which to welcome a group of fourteen eager and starry-eyed incoming college students to our campus. And yet, since some questions take a lifetime to answer, it is never too early to begin asking them in all seriousness! Not only is the perspective on each stage of the road bound to be unique, and the definition of the "good life" it will yield particular to that given situation, but, most importantly, one of life's most perplexing characteristics is its unpredictable duration. This last fact is one that I was painfully reminded of recently in the context of the course I wish to describe in what follows.

The question regarding "the good life" as well as that regarding the relationship, if any, between what we find to be "good" and what we find to be "beautiful," constitute the leitmotif for a course I teach at Colorado College, [1] which is designed as an introduction to a liberal arts education. In a brief seven weeks, students are expected to begin developing strong habits in the practice of close reading of difficult texts, thematically comparing them, conducting collective research on artists that inspire them, communicating those...

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