Sixth Form Philosophy seminars 2026

Are you imaginative and thoughtful? Then join us in November, online or in person at BRLSI for these free seminars, using philosophy to live flourishing lives. The seminars will be led by Calum Sims (University of Bristol) and take place weekly on Thursdays 5, 12, 19 and 26 November from 5.30-7.30pm.

Please note that this course is for Y12 and Y13 students only. To register, please email programme@brlsi.org, detailing your name and the name of your school.

Living the Good Life – seminar programme:

5 November – How Do We Live Flourishing Lives?

In this course, we’ll be using a range of philosophical ideas – some old, some new – to work out how to lead good lives. But what exactly is a good life? We’ll contrast Aristotle’s virtue ethics to a range of other classical theories to see how our views have changed throughout history and use these to test your intuitions and figure out what a good life means to you. This session will introduce you to the course and give us an opportunity to work out how to make it most useful to you. The seminars will explore a flourishing life consisting in several dimensions which are interconnected within a complex network of relations. We’ll figure out what flourishing means to you and what to do when our ideas of ‘the good life’ conflict.

12 November – Purpose, Meaning and Relationships

In this session, we’ll compare Aristotle’s individualistic framework for flourishing with some more recent relational frameworks. Is individual flourishing the ultimate good, or does it depend on relationships and friendships? Is happiness dependent on satisfying one’s goals in isolation, or is it altogether much broader and connected and what is the difference between happiness and leading a flourishing life? We’ll explore notions such as purpose, coherence, significance and mattering which leads us to discuss the importance of a life well-lived and work out what positive relationships look like to you.

19 November – Society, Mind and Vitality

According to the ancient Greeks a healthy body and a healthy mind were inextricably intertwined. How are the body and mind related, and what does culture have to do with it? In this session, we’ll look at some recent work on the relationship between body and mind and some recent work on the ways that technologies (like social media and AI) impact our abilities to live good lives. In an ever more connected and complex world where does the individual mind and body end and where does society start? By the end of this session, we’ll have a framework for thinking about the relationship between your mind and the wider world, and we’ll have thought about ways to improve mental health discourse to support flourishing.

26 November – Culture and Character

How can virtue ethics, embodied cognition and systems thinking help us to lead good lives? In this session, we’ll bring the ideas we’ve developed in the rest of the course together to explore the relationship between the rest of the world and you. We’ll draw on some ideas from cultural evolution to explore the ways in which you, as individuals, can be thought of as agents of cultural change. We’ll think about the ways in which culture is continuous with the natural world, and the ways in which you are (dis)continuous with culture, leaving you with a practical and lightweight toolkit for navigating the world and living the life you want. We’ll wrap things up by sketching out some values we want to promote going forward, better preparing us for living the good life.

If you are interested in participating in these FREE seminars, live online or in person, please email programme@brlsi.org with your name and the name of your school.