Self-Mastery for Self-Giving: Practical Lessons for the Meaning of Life
“The French philosopher Jacques Maritain said that the meaning of life is ‘self-mastery for the purpose of self-giving’” (Pete Davis, Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing).
This four-part lecture series takes up the “Maritain formula” – the meaning of life is self-mastery for self-giving – and asks how this idea can help us to find more direction and fulfilment in our own lives and to give more fully of ourselves to others. Each lecture draws on a companion literary text and research from psychology and cognitive science to enhance our understanding of, and real-world capacity for, some aspect of self-mastery: accepting our emotions; aligning our behaviour with our values; developing our talents; and understanding our self-narratives.
As many researchers have pointed out, we live in a world that works against self-mastery. New technologies and corporations have “drug-ified the environment” and “gamified and optimised” everything from dating to investing to keep our attention hooked and our actions automatic. AI promises to take over activities we don’t want to do but may turn them into activities we can no longer do. At the same time, these novel factors act in concert with features of human culture, brains, and bodies that have always challenged our capacity for directed, non-reactive response. This series aims to help us comprehend these challenges and the ways we can successfully meet them – offering workable strategies grounded in science and illuminated by story – so that we can direct our own lives in this world and direct them towards what we truly value.
The lectures will be delivered by VHI Affiliate Dr Maria Devlin McNair. Each lecture will feature contributions from a guest speaker(s) in a relevant field of expertise and a response from Professor Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine, who delivered the 2024 VHI series “Shakespeare’s Virtues: Three Lectures on Living”. Following the lecture, all attendees are invited to participate in a Q&A session/group discussion.
All lectures will be held in person and online and are open to everyone. The programme is as follows:
- Lecture 1: Jane Austen, Emma and Persuasion; invalidation, anxiety, and tolerating our emotions. Wednesday, 17 February, 5:30-7pm.
- Lecture 2: William Shakespeare, Coriolanus; anger and mastering our actions. Wednesday, 24 February, 5:30-7pm.
- Lecture 3: George Eliot, Middlemarch; Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever; Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary: fear, curiosity, and fulfilling our potential . Wednesday, 3 March, 5:30-7pm.
- Lecture 4: Black Sails (television series created by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine): narrating and knowing ourselves . Wednesday, 10 March, 5:30-7pm.
More details to follow, for any questions please contact vhi@st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk