Ministry of Ideas

It's common to equate meaning with depth, but the surface of things, with its wild and rapturous beauty, can coax us into life.GUESTStephanie Paulsell is the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies in the Harvard Divinity School and served as the Interim Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church from 2019 to 2020. An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she is the author of Religion Around Virginia Woolf, (2019), editor (with David Carrasco and Mara Willard) of Goodness and the Literary Imagination (2019), and a regular columnist in The Christian Century.  SHOW DESCRIPTIONMaking Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are finite creatures who struggle to accept our finitude. But if we can learn to embrace our limits, we will find that our relations with one another, the created world, and God allow us to experience a love so exquisite, it need not last forever.Guest: Matthew Ichihashi Potts is Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. He studies the thought and practice of Christian communities through attention to diverse literary and theological texts.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meaning paradoxically has to be both made and discovered, an inescapable entanglement of the singular and the universal. And though the fruit of such wrestling may not be uncomplicated happiness, it often leads to a deeper awareness of the sweetness of existence, the holiness of an hour.Guest: Zohar Atkins is the Founder of Etz Hasadeh, a Center for Existential Torah. He is a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He holds a DPhil in Theology from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and semikha from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science often draws a picture of the world as a giant machine, a meaningless mechanical clock ticking and tocking forever. But religion and poetry offer a different view, one that is teeming with life and overflowing with spirit.Guest: Michael Ruse is a British-born Canadian philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and works on the relationship between science and religion.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though life’s ultimate meaning may be elusive, the goods of love, work and play are so deeply rewarding that for most people they are sufficient for creating a happy life. And with new advances in neuroscience, we increasingly understand why that is at a molecular level.Guest: Paul Thagard is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author of many interdisciplinary books. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, where he founded and directed the Cognitive Science Program.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a deep mystery to the existence of the universe. And although a final answer to the question of meaning is not possible, it is our highest responsibility and greatest hope to seek one.Guest: Francis J. Ambrosio is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University. Dr. Ambrosio’s teaching interests are in the areas of Plato, Dante, Existentialism, and Postmodernism.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meaning is less an objective thing to be discovered than a life-project, a narrative that unfolds over time. This doesn’t mean that every detail of our life fits a perfectly coherent plot, but rather we forge a beautiful expression of our deepest values.Guest: Todd May is Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University and the author of A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We inherit a world that is already made, full of stories and structures and significance. But all of us have the capacity to remake the world and the meanings available in it.Guest: Simon Critchley is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His work engages in many areas: continental philosophy, philosophy and literature, psychoanalysis, ethics, and political theory, among others. His most recent books include The Problem with Levinas and ABC of Impossibility, though he has written on topics as diverse as David Bowie, religion, and suicide.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meaning is more than pleasure or even happiness—it is an intense and fulfilling engagement in projects and relationships that bring forth the best within us and disclose mysterious, beautiful worlds of love.Guest: Susan R. Wolf is the Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Wolf’s interests range widely over moral psychology, value theory, and normative ethics. Her research has focused especially on the relation between moral and nonmoral values, the nature and conditions of responsibility, and the idea of meaningfulness as a dimension of a good life.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have a tendency to view our lives as meaningful only if we are involved in heroic acts of service, creativity, or achievement. But this is misguided. Even when we are ordinary, we are all, as living creatures, capable of an intense engagement with the world that infuses life with significance.Guest: Michael Hauskeller is the head of philosophy department at the University of Liverpool. He is a generalist, trying to come to terms with this "deeply puzzling world" (to borrow an expression of Mary Midgley's), to understand it and to understand our place in it. Philosophy, he says, is about finding out what is actually going on and what we are doing here.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci . Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices