The Conduct of Life in Western and Eastern Philosophy

Harvard HDS

A study of approaches in the philosophical traditions of the West and the East to the conduct of life. Philosophical ethics has often been understood as meta-ethics: the development of a method of moral inquiry or justification. Here we focus instead on what philosophy has to tell us about the first-order question: How should we live our lives?This year a major concern will be the study and contrast of two such orientations to existence. One is the philosophical tradition focused on…