Rhythms of a Purposeful Life

Listen in to a conversation between Kimberly Belcher ‘03 MA, ‘09 Ph.D., associate professor of theology, J. J. Wright ‘14 MSM, ‘17 DMA, Grammy® Award winner and Director of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, and Dr. Meghan Sullivan, founding Director of the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the Ethics Initiative at Notre Dame. Meghan shares her unexpected journey from aspiring lawyer to passionate philosopher and educator. Discussing her course ‘God and the Good Life,’ and her reflections on the parable of the Good Samaritan, Meghan delves into the significance of ethics, faith, and personal fulfillment. The conversation covers her personal faith journey, the challenges in the philosophy discipline, and her collaborative efforts to reshape philosophical and ethical education at Notre Dame.

Meet the Faculty: Meghan Sullivan

Meghan Sullivan is the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She serves as director of the University-wide Ethics Initiative and is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. The hub for University research and teaching in ethics, the Institute includes the new Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C, Center for Virtue Ethics, the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab, and a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation focused on developing the next generation of courses on human flourishing, as well as a robust slate of highly competitive fellowships and programming.

Sullivan is deeply interested in the ways philosophy contributes to the good life and the best methods for promoting philosophical thought. Time Biases, her 2018 book with Oxford University Press, offers philosophical guidance about how to navigate the puzzles that the passage of time poses to rational planning. It was featured in a 2021 New Yorker piece. In 2022, Sullivan published The Good Life Method with Penguin Press (co-authored with her teaching collaborator Paul Blaschko) based on a wildly popular introductory philosophy course she developed at Notre Dame called “God and the Good Life.” Since 2016, “God and the Good Life” has accompanied over 5,500 Notre Dame students through the process of developing a philosophical plan for their lives. Sullivan’s course has been recognized with major grants from the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation, and over 120 faculty at other universities have participated in course development programs based on the model. In the past, Sullivan has collaborated with faculty in other departments to offer courses on NBC’s The Good Place, Ted Chiang’s science fiction, and Thom Browne’s fashion empire.

Sullivan has been honored with one of Notre Dame’s Joyce Awards for Teaching, with the Provost’s All-Faculty Team Award, and with the City of South Bend’s 40 Under 40 Award. She is a co-editor for Nous, a top philosophy journal. She holds degrees from the University of Virginia (B.A.: Philosophy and Politics, Highest Distinction), Oxford (B.Phil: Philosophy), and Rutgers (Ph.D.: Philosophy), and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (Balliol College).