Virtue and the Meaningful Life – Dr. David McPherson

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Dr. David McPherson argues that human beings are “meaning-seeking animals” and that an adequate neo-Aristotelian ethics must see the virtues as constitutive of a meaningful life ordered to strong goods such as the noble, the sacred, and love of God and neighbor.

This lecture was given on October 16th, 2025, at University of Florida.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

David McPherson is Professor of Philosophy in the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida as well as Affiliate Professor in the Department of Philosophy. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University, and during academic year 2021-22 he was Visiting Research Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. McPherson works in the areas of ethics (especially virtue ethics), political philosophy, meaning in life, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of The Virtues of Limits (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Virtue and Meaning: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020), as well as the editor of Spirituality and the Good Life: Philosophical Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Keywords: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, Constitutive View Of Happiness, Meaning-Seeking Animal, Nicomachean Ethics, Religious Hope, Stoicism And Loss, Strong Evaluative Meaning, Theological Virtues, Virtue And Happiness, Wartime Martyrdom

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast.
0:06.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church,
0:10.5	and the wider public square.
0:12.3	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters
0:17.3	around the world.
0:18.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.6	to mystic institute.org.
0:23.6	So I want to begin with a quotation here. This is David Wiggins. He's an Oxford
0:28.6	philosopher. He's still living, though he's probably about 90 years old at this point.
0:33.6	He says, even now, in an age not much given to mysticism, there are people who ask,
0:39.8	what is the meaning of life? They suppose that questions like that of life's meaning must be
0:46.6	among the central questions of moral philosophy. The question of life's meaning is not at the center
0:53.5	of moral philosophy as we now have it.
0:56.3	Philosophy has put happiness in the place that should have been occupied in moral philosophy by meaning.
1:02.8	So many people when they come to take a philosophy class, they might think it's about the meaning of life.
1:08.2	And I actually think that's a good philosophy class.
1:10.6	There's some students of mine this semester. I just gave them this line today. I said, a good philosophy class should help you to have your midlife crisis early. So you don't have to go buy the Lamborghini. It's not going to solve your problems anyways. But it should address the kinds of questions. Not that we actually want people to have a midlife crisis, but it should address the kinds of questions from which a midlife crisis arise, the questions about the meaning of it all. And we might think moral philosophy might have something to do with that question, but as Wiggins puts here, says here that, in fact, it doesn't seem to be case. Rather, people focus on happiness. So I'm fundamentally in agreement with Wiggins. So I'm just kind of like
1:45.6	giving you the text to my lecture would make easier to follow along here. So I'm fundamentally in
1:49.8	agreement with Wiggins that sentiment that the question of life's meaning should be among the
1:54.7	central questions of moral philosophy. In my book that was mentioned earlier, virtue and meaning,
1:59.6	a nearest till Italian perspective,
2:05.5	I seek to show what it is like, what it looks like to treat the question of life's meaning as a central question of moral philosophy.
	...

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