Professor Vermeule will discuss the benefits of both action and contemplation which is the topic of her recent book, Action versus Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters. The publisher, University of Chicago Books, states that the book “reminds us of the richness of a life that embraces action and contemplation, company and solitude, living in the moment and planning for the future. The active and the contemplative can—and should—be vibrantly alive in each of us, fused rather than sundered. … we can discover how the two can nourish, invigorate, and give meaning to each other, as they have for the many writers, artists, and thinkers, past and present, whose examples give the book its rich, lively texture of interplay and reference.”

Instructor: Blakey Vermeule, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Department of English at Stanford. She has written three books in literature and philosophy, which is her intellectual passion. A New Englander, she moved to California for graduate school.