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Audi Lecture: Meaning and the Afterlife

Thursday, April 10, 2025 4:15–6:00 PM

Description

Join us for a lecture from Kieran Setiya, Peter de Florez Professor and Philsophy Department Head at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Despite its conventional association with philosophy, the question of life’s meaning is often dismissed as nonsense by contemporary philosophers—or replaced with questions about meaningful lives—and for most earlier philosophers, the question doesn’t arise. In this talk, I’ll use the surprisingly recent origins of “the meaning of life” to explain what it could be. Drawing on a Romantic tradition in which the human future stands in for eschatology, I’ll argue that life could have a secular meaning, one that depends on progress towards justice, and thus depends on us.Sponsored by The Elias J. and Rosa Lee Nemir Audi Lecture Fund.

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