The pandemic has forced many of us to rethink our answers to some of life’s deepest questions: How should we treat other people? Should we practice a religion? Does it matter what we believe? What would make our lives meaningful? 

Thankfully, we’re not alone. Virtue ethics, as Notre Dame’s Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko contend, offers a method for reasoning about, and gaining new insights into, these age-old questions.

On this episode, Sullivan and Blaschko join Commonweal assistant editor Griffin Oleynick to discuss insights from their new book The Good Life Method: Reasoning through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning, based on their popular course at Notre Dame. 

For further reading:

• “Inside the Seminary,” Paul Blaschko 
• “The Problem with Lazarus,” Meghan Sullivan 
• “Highbrow Self-Help,” Charles McNamara
• “Should Philosophy Retire?”, George Scialabba