The Meaning of Life
MIT's anthropology course looks at how different cultural traditions answer the question of what makes a life meaningful, treating it as a lived dilemma rather than an abstract puzzle. Readings and discussions cover cases where individuals must choose between meeting and defying the expectations of their community, drawing on ethnographic and historical material from a range of societies. The course frames moral decisions as social and historical practices, giving students tools to compare how people in different times and places have approached duty, honor, sacrifice, and personal fulfillment. Materials available through MIT OpenCourseWare include the syllabus, reading list, and assignments used in the actual MIT course, free to access under a Creative Commons license with no certificate offered. The emphasis stays on concrete case studies of moral choice rather than philosophical theory for its own sake.