The final episode of this season of Callings features an interview with Jennifer Herdt, the Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School, where she also serves as senior associate dean of faculty affairs. She is the author of many books and articles on virtue ethics, early modern and modern moral thought, and political theology. Her most recent book, Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call the Live Well, engages with questions of calling and obligation to others. Jennifer’s research also explores science-informed theological anthropology, which has been funded by a grant by the Templeton Foundation. In her teaching and research, Jennifer explores the connection between virtues, the good life, and the “call to live well.”
In her conversation with hosts Erin VanLaningham and John Barton, Jennifer discusses what it means to live a virtuous live and how that grounds our sense of genuine happiness and fulfillment. “It’s not about getting as much out of life for yourself as possible,” she observes, perhaps counter-intuitively. Instead, she challenges us to resist these kinds of dominant cultural narrative and live our vocations so as to be “fully responsive to the world that we live in.” As we do so, Jennifer suggests we ask this important question: “What is worthy of my devotion?”
Click hereto listen to the episode featuring Jennifer Herdt, “Reimagining the Good Life.”
Geoffrey W. Bateman is the editor of Vocation Matters.