Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times

by Leon R. Kass

Overview

Most American young people, like their ancestors, harbor desires for a worthy life: a life of meaning, a life that makes sense. But they are increasingly confused about what such a life might look like, and how they might, in the present age, be able to live one. With a once confident culture no longer offering authoritative guidance, the young are now at sea--regarding work, family, religion, and civic identity. The true, the good, and the beautiful have few defenders, and the higher cynicism mocks any innocent love of wisdom or love of country. We are supercompetent regarding efficiency and convenience; we are at a loss regarding what it's all for.

Yet because the old orthodoxies have crumbled, our "interesting time" paradoxically offers genuine opportunities for renewal and growth. The old Socratic question "How to live?" suddenly commands serious attention. Young Americans, if liberated from the prevailing cynicism, will readily embrace weighty questions and undertake serious quests for a flourishing life. All they (and we) need is encouragement.

This book provides that necessary encouragement by illuminating crucial--and still available--aspects of a worthy life, and by defending them against their enemies. With chapters on love, family, and friendship; human excellence and human dignity; teaching, learning, and truth; and the great human aspirations of Western civilization, it offers help to both secular and religious readers, to people who are looking on their own for meaning and to people who are looking to deepen what they have been taught or to square it with the spirit of our times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641770989
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	06/09/2020
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	629,355
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Leon R. Kass is the Madden-Jewett Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Originally trained in medicine and biochemistry, he has been engaged for decades with ethical and philosophical issues raised by biomedical advance, and, more recently, with broader moral and cultural issues. He taught at St. John's College (Annapolis) and Georgetown University before returning to the University of Chicago, where for thirty-four years he was an award-winning teacher deeply involved in undergraduate education and committed to the "big questions" and the study of classic texts. His books include: The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature; Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying (with Amy A. Kass); Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics; The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis; and What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song (with Amy A. Kass and Diana Schaub). Dr. Kass served on the National Council on the Humanities and as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics. He was an inaugural recipient of the Bradley Prize in 2003. In 2009 he delivered the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.

Table of Contents

Foreword 9

Introduction 15

1 Finding Meaning in Modern Times: An Overview 29

I Love, Family, and Friendship: Some Reflections on Modern Culture

2 The End of Courtship 45

3 The Higher Sex Education: Help from an Old Story Amy Kass 68

4 Virtually Intimate: Is the Internet Good for Love and Friendship? 93

5 What's Your Name? Amy Kass 115

II Human Excellence and Human Dignity: Real and Distorted

6 Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness 143

7 Human Dignity: What It Is and Why It Matters 165

8 For the Love of the Game: The Dignity of Sport Eric Cohen 185

9 A Dignified Death and Its Enemies: Why Doctors Must Not Kill 208

10 A More Perfect Human: The Promise and Peril of Modern Science 234

III In Search of Wisdom: Learning, Teaching, and Truth

21 The Aims of Liberal Education: On Seeking Truth 255

12 Looking for an Honest Man: The Case for the Humanities 278

13 Science, Religion, and the Human Future 300

IV The Aspirations of Humankind: Athens, Jerusalem, Gettysburg

14 Human Flourishing and Human Excellence: The Truth(s) of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 329

15 The Ten Commandments 352

16 The Gettysburg Address: Abraham Lincoln's Refounding of the Nation 381

Acknowledgments 395

Notes 397

Index 403

Editorial Reviews

Leon Kass's new book is a gift so great that one feels any expression of thanks to be inadequate. Kass deals with fundamental subjects with an extraordinary combination of grace and depth; he shows us how a life of penetrating questioning can lead to a deep and powerful understanding of the human things.

William Kristol

As a scientist, humanist and teacher of the young, Leon Kass has studied the ills of late 20th century American culture as closely as anyone, never failing to ask the big questions: what is a worthy life and how can one live it? In these sobering but hopeful essays, Kass ponders the challenges and the prospects for finding meaning in family life, work, public service and the quest for knowledge under present circumstances. Each essay is a treasure, to read, ponder, and read again.

Mary Ann Glendon

Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

Leon Kass presents the attractions of morality in subtle detail and graceful prose. His essays, most of them done with his late wife Amy Kass, seek to grasp what is permanent rather than charge or drift into restless, unmeaning change. Neither grouch nor censor, Kass earns his readers' respect for argument, utility, and wisdom.

Harvey Mansfield

Professor of Government, Harvard

Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

From the Publisher