Finding Life’s Meaning: On Work and Vocation

“What is the point of work? An income? Prestige? Meaning? To better the world? Would we be better off if we didn’t need to work, or is labor a constituent aspect of the good life?

Many consider their work as closely related to their identity and purpose, as linked to a sense of self-worth. If that’s true—and not everything thinks it is—then finding “good” work is related to a good life. Moreover, if our work and our identity relate, some work might not be “right” for you, even if it might be right for someone else. Or, perhaps this is all overblown and it doesn’t much matter what one does, it’s just a job, after all.

This Fall seminar launches a theme for the year—Finding Life’s Meaning—in which we consider the nature and meaning of work, with a follow-up spring seminar on the meaning of vocation—and how to discover one’s vocation.

Like all Witherspoon seminars, we’ll read important texts—classic and contemporary—not out of curiosity or simply to learn, but in the attempt to find wisdom, to know how best to live and think and act so as to live well and flourish. And we try to seek for wisdom collegially, with friends of the mind, with any point of view considered.

Open to any and every Princeton student.”