Expressive individualism has become the dominant anthropology in the modern liberal paradigm, which has manifested in the instrumentalization of activity and the subjective imposition of meaning. The human person is viewed as a rights-bearing individual in competition with other individuals, each in the pursuit of self-posited goals. This strips human persons of a communal and objective realm of meaning. This essay modestly attempts to address the meaning of life of the human person by setting aside the liberal framework and picking up Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, supplemented by David McPherson’s framework of strong evaluative meaning. In conjunction with Blaise Pascal’s tripartite anthropology of body, mind, and spirit, this framework resituates the human person in the physical, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of objective, transcendent meaning. I affirm the importance of individual agency in choosing to conform one’s spiritual and rational faculties to the proffered norms of virtue and meaning and propose that such submission gives rise to cohesive societies in which human persons understand themselves as members of a community, pursuing a common good by common standards. I leave the determination of whether this anthropology and economy of virtue can coexist with liberalism to political philosophers.

Audra would like to thank her faculty sponsor, Dr. Greg Beabout, for his support of this project. She credits Dr. Beabout with her decision to major in philosophy, recalling with gratitude the stimulating discussions in his Introductory Philosophy course. His example of authentically living out Saint Louis University’s Catholic Jesuit mission in the classroom and beyond has been an inspiration and privilege to witness. She is confident her study of philosophy under Dr. Beabout’s guidance has bettered her academically and personally.