Let's go to the questions that you talk About in the class and the book yeah or So in your in your course you you're Helping students figure out some again Huge these are all such heavy questions Right how should you treat other people How should you how should you believe Should you practice religion yeah what Would make your life meaningful yeah so I I don't I didn't have a class like This no wonder it was it's so popular I I want to know the answer to all four of These so where do you want to start yeah Well one thing I could say is you know Uh an assignment that we've got that Frames the whole class uh is called the Apology assignment and so you know one Of the one of the real goals that we've Got in this class is to help our Students wrestle with what some of the Greatest thinkers have said about these Questions and then come to some sort of You know even if it's a tentative answer Some sort of answer for themselves uh Because it's really important I mean We're committed to this idea it's really Important uh to attempt to answer these Questions uh it's gonna make a huge Difference for your life Um and so we we encourage our students To complete what we call a philosophical Apology uh explain the apology the Philosophical apology yeah so Historically philosophers uh when
Pressed or when questioned uh especially About their beliefs right so so Augustine uh Saint Augustine is a good Example of this uh he was a rhetorician Uh he was kind of this professor he was In high society he was this Elite Academic and you know you he was really Aspiring to sort of a position of Political power he suddenly converts to Christianity which at the time was you Know this barbaric religion that was Like you know low culture just terrible Poetry like everybody thought what are You doing and so what does he do he Writes a book called The confessions Where he lays out philosophically what His beliefs are and he argues for those But he also tells the story of his life To make sense of that right and Philosophers have done this you know not Just in the Christian tradition uh David Hume uh and Nietzsche famously write you Know the sort of philosophical story of Their life to make themselves Intelligible to the world to say you Know you think I'm crazy I'm committed To these you know pretty pretty out There views let me explain that to you Let me tell you how I came to these yes And why So that's what we have our students do Right and those four questions that you Had mentioned about uh religion and Belief and meaning you know the the real
Sort of core of our classes is we raise Different philosophical Um answers to those questions and then We challenge our students to engage with Those and to try to answer them on their Own in their own philosophical apology Uh so that's a project that I think is Is really useful and helpful uh for all Of us like you mentioned you know not Not everybody takes a class like this in College uh and so this is really kind of The project of of the book The broader Project that we're on is is try to give People a chance to think through those Things and uh and do that in the context Of their own experience
