The Good Life: Public, Personal, Private

What does it mean, to live a ‘good life’?  This is a perennial question, of interest to all people, not least philosophers and theologians.  What is goodness?  Is it to be identified with God?  How do we become good?  What is a ‘good’ human being, or a ‘good’ society?  The question has both theoretical and practical dimensions: theoretical questions of theology, philosophy, psychology, ethics; and practical questions of how to live, in a variety of contexts, such as ecology, religious life, literature and the arts.  What are today’s greatest challenges to attaining the good life?  Where do we look for wisdom about the good life – to which thinkers, traditions, texts and examples?

The Heythrop College interdisciplinary postgraduate and research students’ conference is an annual event. This year the aim is to explore these and other questions (the list is not exhaustive) from different perspectives.