This talk introduces and summarises the author’s forthcoming book, The Good Enough Life. It is based on 16 months-long fieldwork with middle-class retirees living in a small town on the east coast of Ireland, I call Cuan. The talk will argue that anthropological modalities can allow one to evaluate an ethnographic study of ‘the good enough life’ in comparison to the writing of philosophers about ‘the good life’, ranging from Socrates, the Stoics, Kant and Heidegger, to Rawls, Nussbaum and MacIntyre. Aspects of the good enough life discussed in the book include freedom, equality, the satiable society and sports. It examines in the light of Hegel, how through the creation of this town these people created themselves. As well as a study of a contemporary Irish town this book attempts to reset the relationship between anthropology and philosophy.
Hosted by the Department of Anthropology with the support of the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute