How Ought We To Live?

This is specifically referencing the Conclusions to your Stevenson and Barry texts, but you aren't limited to that text in building your answer.

Does Death Give Life Meaning?

*new* one week after the Boston Marathon Bombing
A Salon.com retrospective
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/20/across_america_a_week_of_chaos_horror___and_hope/

What do you think after our course? Use the last chapters of both books as well as other course materials and discussions.

Your Obituary

Review the Preface and pp. 6-13 of Barry and The Death of Ivan Illyich.  What is the meaning of life?  What are you not realizing about life?  How might an examination of life inform your living?  Answer this question, in part, by thinking about your own obituary.  What do you need to do now in order to have that obituary?  Feel free to reference Barry, Stevenson & Tolstoy in your response.

Philosophy in the World

What experiences in your life are hard to reconcile with our course material?  (Be specific in identifying the material).  Why is it hard?  What else could you do to square your thinking/philosophizing and your lived experience?

More Philosophy?  Would you take an additional philosophy course if money/time weren’t factors?  Explain.

Death Cafes

If we were to (at least theoretically) organize a death cafe, what would we do?

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173808940/death-cafes-breathe-life-into-conversations-about-dying

Grief

Any ideas about how to support someone who is in grief?  Here are some stories to consider.

Audio stories about grief:
http://www.npr.or
g/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=162232867&m=162232862

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=162304927&m=162304922

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

What was your initial reaction to the film?  What was it at the end?

How does the film relate to the course?  Does it change your opinion on anything?  Individual choice, end-of-life decisions?

April Current Events

9April13  After Years Of Struggle, Veteran Chooses To End His Life

http://m.npr.org/news/front/176509136?start=20
9April13  LA Times - How not to say the wrong thing

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-75241622/

7April13 Matthew Warren's Suicide
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/06/us/california-warren-suicide/?hpt=hp_inthenews

8April13 As Palliative Care Need Grows, Specialists Are Scarce

http://m.npr.org/news/front/176121044?start=15

Atheism

We've talked about atheism before (see earlier posts), but we haven't directly talked about the New Atheists who speak directly against religion and base their claims in science.  Here's an article about them, which addresses their apparent collective dislike for Islam.  Comments?
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/

Good Friday & Easter

Christians are the only major religious people to have a symbol of death represent them.  Comments on the holiday?  What it means to you and/or what you think it means to others?  Questions you have?

Having grown up in the Northern hemisphere, I've always associated Easter with new life, but I was reminded by someone over the weekend that it is fall in the southern hemisphere.  What do you think about that?

*new 3Apr13* Also, consider this essay about maintaining one's Catholic identity:
http://nyti.ms/14waFGx
Can reflective and honest intellectuals actually believe in the church’s teachings?