Faculty/Staff Detail

L. Sebastian Purcell, Philosophy Department, presented “What the Aztecs Can Teach Us About Happiness” at the Chautauqua Institution on Aug. 10. Purcell has written widely on topics of moral, political and Latin American philosophy, from topics addressing environmental ethics to his comparative scholarship on Aristotle and the Aztecs. In 2016 he received the American Philosophical Association’s national prize for best essay in Latin American Philosophy for his comparative work on Aztecs, happiness and the good life. A philosopher by trade, he has learned that creative and critical thinking can have an impact on living better, and he applies these thoughts to investing, art and society. He writes about natural goodness, the ethics of cosmopolitanism, and what he calls the “Normativity Challenge: Happiness across Cultures.”