The Moral Craft of Life

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Humans have made and created things for their subsistence, their use, their enjoyment, and their fulfillment for millennia. We build the things we need for life and we also create meaning and express value in and through that making and creating. How we think about our skills and creative capacities, and how we cultivate them and to what ends we deploy them, are primary ways in which we consider and shape how we ought to live. Human creativity is, fundamentally, a moral activity, involving choice, expression of earthly (and divine) goods, and pursues what we hold dear as our ultimate concerns. This course explores philosophical and theological visions of craft, labor, and creativity, and their connections to moral and political life, as a way to think about how our laboring, crafting, and creating is a fundamental part of what constitutes the good life.