HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
COURTESY OF ISABELLE WIJANGCO
THE BIG QUESTIONS
impart through the nascent effort.
One of the foundation’s launch
events in 2012 was a two-day
conference on the “Art of Living.”
Hundreds of students, faculty
and Providence residents listened
to philosophers, psychiatrists,
experimental psychologists and
scholars of other disciplines examine the “good life.”
Meanwhile, at Stanford University, there’s Sophomore College, a
three-week intensive course series
where students meet for several
hours every day with the same
class and live together on campus.
Among its seminars, “The Meaning of Life” was taught by the
university’s dean of religious life,
and included field trips to houses
of worship and readings of George
Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara
and Robert Bolt’s A Man for All
Seasons. In another push, the Office of Religious Life hosts “What
Matters to Me and Why,” a series
of hour-long public discussions
with faculty and administrators
about “life questions.” Speakers
are encouraged to discuss their
personal struggles and reasons for
pursuing their fields.
The philosophy department
chair spearheading the program
at Brown, Bernard Reginster, ad-
Isabelle Wijangco, 23, said the “Meaning of Life” course at
Stanford was one of the most important classes she’s taken.
mits the limitations of universities
when it comes to changing conversations at the dinner table. The
challenge, he said, is to take the
questions “first, to students and
faculty outside the confines of academic philosophy and second, to a
wider public.” How could exploring
philosophy, psychology and literature, for example, amplify the life