First-years Embark on Examined Life

June 24, 2009

The common intellectual experience for your class -- the Class of 2013 -- will be a new film by documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor, a film called Examined Life. You will all be watching the film in small groups with Stonehill professors during your first few weeks on campus in the fall.

This is an unusual film in that it tries to take a central tenet of philosophy -- Socrates' statement that "the unexamined life is not worth living" -- and to engage with ideas about how to live an examined life through short interviews with eight renowned contemporary philosophers. The interviews occur in places of special significance to the philosophers themselves- and are mostly conducted while these individuals are walking.

So why did we decide that this film would provide an appealing common experience? Well, it will require you to do something college asks you to do quite frequently: to think -- and to think deeply -- about what really matters, about the choices that will confront you in life, and about how to construct and live by your own ethical framework. And it will also help you to recognize that we don't all have the same framework.

You will like some of the philosophers in the film and respond to their issues- others you will frankly find boring. But the response will be different for each of you. Remember, the person sitting next to you might also care about something that you are indifferent to -- but that's worth exploring and understanding.

So -- what are some of the compelling questions this film asks? Here are a few:

• What acts of kindness or compassion do we perform that give us a clear conscience? If there is still human suffering or inequality anywhere, can one have a clear conscience?
• What do we spend our money on? And what is the meaning of that spending? Is there an ethics to our consumption?
• Can we eat another being? How do we justify that in a way that is consistent with our view of life?
• Are we responsible for each other? And how far does that responsibility extend? What kind of responsibility is implied by calling ourselves global citizens?
• What kind of social contract do we want -- and how should that contract treat women, children, people with disabilities? Is it enough for our social contract to strike a deal of mutual advantage, or do we have an obligation to work with others toward the best possible society?
• What happens to the stuff we throw away -- or flush away -- and how do we take responsibility for that stuff being part of the world we live in?
• How can we deal with our own dependency? Do we or do we not live in a world where we assist each other?

Hopefully, you will find some questions in the film that resonate with you- and your professors will then be asking you to deepen your thinking about those questions. Beginning today -- in your classroom experience -- you will learn about suggested readings to accompany the film. You will have several opportunities to discuss the film and these readings with faculty and fellow students in the fall. And on Thursday, October 8th, filmmaker Astra Taylor and her sister, Sunaura Taylor -- who appears in the film -- will be on campus for a talk with the entire community and for smaller engagements with classes and other groups of students.

But besides introducing our common intellectual experience, I have another motive in telling you a little about this film. The ideas in it are complex. There is no "plot" to draw you in, no story to follow. You will need to work at figuring out if and why the ideas in it matter. And this is a lot like the rest of college, where we will expect you to be agents of your own learning. We want you to enjoy what you study, but we also want you to work for that enjoyment. We want you to get a little lost- to wander into subjects and ideas you didn't know existed and to learn from them. You are all beginning a journey today together, but you will quickly take different paths. Ultimately, there is no right way. There is only your way.

We hope that your explorations at Stonehill and wherever Stonehill sends you will deepen your intellectual curiosity and confirm you as a lifelong learner. We also hope for a little more: that your time here will build in you an understanding of the value of community, of connectedness, of interdependence. The vision of humanity in Examined Life suggests that we are here to take care of each other, to create a social contract that will promote human happiness, to protect and preserve the ordinary decencies that give order to our local community, and to imagine and realize our place in a global community.

I hope this film will make you want to learn more (more philosophy, more comparative ethics, more languages, more cultures, more law, more about diversity, ability and disability) and that it will inspire or reinforce your own ethical standards, your moral courage, your active citizenship. This kind of growth really matters to us at Stonehill because we care not only about what you will become, but about who you will become.

As you enter the Stonehill community we hope this film will be the first of many texts that you dig into and ask, through it, who you are and how you want to be a force for good in the world. Enjoy your experiences at Orientation, enjoy the rest of summer, and come to campus this fall prepared for your classes and for events and discussions that will extend your engagement. I will see you then!

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