Find Meaning and Purpose at Work
Work plays a deeply important role in our lives. Finding good work — which, for many of us, means getting a meaningful job that we care deeply about — can seem like the crucial factor in determining whether your life goes well or poorly, and whether you end up happy and fulfilled or miserable and empty. But things aren’t nearly so simple. Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko, Notre Dame philosophy professors and co-authors of the newly released book The Good Life Method, invite you to continue the thoughtful, timely conversation about approaching the search for purpose in our work through the timeless lens of philosophy as self-care. We will share ways to shift our mindsets and think critically about the future as we dive headfirst into the promise of a new year.
Additional Resources
Work and the Good Life Method
Should Work Make You Happy?: For Aristotle, work — like any other habitual human activity we engage in over the course of our lives — should aid in the pursuit of happiness, or, at least, it should not detract from this goal. What exactly this means, though, and how we’d live it in our everyday lives is something each of us must contemplate for ourselves. Explore these course materials to guide you as you seek your own personal answer to this question.
The Working Life Course
Take a peek into The Working Life course offered to undergraduates at Notre Dame through the course website, and the short preview video below. Students can also participate in the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise and Society, an intellectually rigorous community at Notre Dame that goes beyond fundamentals to find deeper meaning in the practice of business through the liberal arts.
Defining (Good) Work: In order to further hone in on the role we think work should play in a life well lived, we have to start thinking about how we want to define work itself, and about how to separate out “good work” from “bad work.” Explore these course materials.
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Featured Speakers:
- Ryan Cook, Alumnus, University of Notre Dame; Cybersecurity Consultant, EY
- Paul Blaschko, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Philosophy Department, University of Notre Dame
- Meghan Sullivan, Wilsey Family Collegiate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame