Flourishing as the Aim of Education: A Neo-Aristotelian View 2019003720, 9781138612938, 9780429464898

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of contents
Preface
1. An introduction to the concept of flourishing: good character and beyond
The aims of the book
The basics of flourishing accounts
The contours of flourishing
Rehearsal of some basics about character and virtues
What does a flourishing account add to an account of good character?
Food for thought for practitioners
2. Theories of flourishing in education: from the ideal to the practical
The new flourishing bandwagon in education
The first precondition of flourishing: external necessities
The second precondition of flourishing: a sense of meaning and purpose
Paternalism and elitism?
An ideal or a non-ideal theory of flourishing?
Food for thought for practitioners
3. The flourishing–happiness concordance thesis: do these two always go hand in hand?
Subjective versus objective well-being
The concordance thesis: two varieties
Flourishing without happiness
Happiness without flourishing
Just philosophical ‘armchair psychology’?
Food for thought for practitioners
4. The limitations of even supreme moral virtue: why we need contemplation and wonder to flourish
‘An insightful mess’
Developmental levels, individualisation and role-modelling
Role-based moralities: blessings and burdens
Blowing the whistle on philistinism
What is the missing virtue of contemplation then all about?
Food for thought for practitioners
5. Flourishing and awe: towards an extended, ‘enchanted’ Aristotelian theory
Venturing beyond Aristotle
Is Aristotelian flourishing flat and disenchanted?
Do we need supernaturalism to make sense of enchanted flourishing?
The example of science education
Initiating students into love of the transcendent
Food for thought for practitioners
6. Flourishing and epiphanies: going beyond Aristotle and Kohlberg
The road to Damascus
Academic musings and misgivings
Some relevant psychological evidence
Disenchantment, awe and elevation
Education for epiphanies
Food for thought for practitioners
7. Flourishing and the emulation of exemplarity: going beyond Aristotle and Zagzebski
Targeting the exemplarity of flourishing lives
Problematics of emulation – and examples from the historical emulation literature
The logical geography of admiration, emulation and elevation
Elevation as awe
How Mengzi (Mencius) may improve Aristotle
Food for thought for practitioners
8. Conclusions and reflections – and where we need to head next
A retrospective roadmap
The advantages of flourishing theories
Challenges and misgivings
Some further reflections on educational practice for flourishing
Concluding remarks and future directions
Food for thought for practitioners
References
Index

Citation preview

Flourishing as the Aim of Education

This book develops a conception of student flourishing as the overarching aim of education. Taking as its basis the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia, it provides a theoretical study of the foundations of flourishing that goes well beyond Aristotle’s approach. Flourishing as the Aim of Education argues that the ‘good life’ of the student, to which education should contribute, must involve engagement with self-transcendent ideals and ignite awe-filled enchantment. It allows for social, individual and educational variance within the concept of flourishing, and it engages with a host of socio-political as well as ‘spiritual’ issues that are often overlooked in literature discussing character education. Each chapter closes with food for thought for practitioners who can directly facilitate student flourishing. An outgrowth of the author’s previous monograph Aristotelian Character Education, this book follows new directions in questioning how to educate young people towards a life of overall flourishing. It will be of great interest to researchers, academics and post-graduate students in the fields of character education, moral education and moral philosophy, as well as to educators and policy-makers. Kristján Kristjánsson is professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics, and deputy director, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham.

Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education

Education and Free Will Spinoza, Causal Determinism and Moral Formation Johan Dahlbeck Teaching and Learning as a Pedagogic Pilgrimage Cultivating Faith, Hope and Imagination Nuraan Davids and Yusef Waghid Education and the Pursuit of Wisdom The Aims of Education Revisited John Ozolin,š Flourishing as the Aim of Education A Neo-Aristotelian View Kristján Kristjánsson Democratic Education in a Globalized World A Normative Theory Julian Culp Education and the Public Sphere Exploring the Structures of Mediation in Post-Colonial India Suresh Babu G. S. Epistemology and the Predicates of Education Building Upon a Process Theory of Learning Thomas E . Peterson For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-International-Studies-in-the-Philosophy-of-Education/book-series/ SE0237

Flourishing as the Aim of Education

A Neo-Aristotelian View

Kristján Kristjánsson

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Kristján Kristjánsson The right of Kristján Kristjánsson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kristjâansson, Kristjâan, 1959- author. Title: Flourishing as the aim of education : a neo-Aristotelian view / Kristjâan Kristjâansson. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019003720| ISBN 9781138612938 (hbk) | ISBN 9780429464898 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Education—Aims and objectives. | Education—Philosophy. | Students—Psychology. | Well-being. | Aristotle. Eudemian ethics. Classification: LCC LB41 .K824 2020 | DDC 370.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003720 ISBN: 978-1-138-61293-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46489-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Cenveo® Publisher Services

To Nora and Hlér, for being there.

Table of contents

Preface 1 An introduction to the concept of flourishing: good character and beyond

x

1

The aims of the book  1 The basics of flourishing accounts  4 The contours of flourishing  8 Rehearsal of some basics about character and virtues  14 What does a flourishing account add to an account of good character?  19 Food for thought for practitioners  24 2 Theories of flourishing in education: from the ideal to the practical

26

The new flourishing bandwagon in education  26 The first precondition of flourishing: external necessities  33 The second precondition of flourishing: a sense of meaning and purpose  40 Paternalism and elitism?  44 An ideal or a non-ideal theory of flourishing?  47 Food for thought for practitioners  50 3 The flourishing–happiness concordance thesis: do these two always go hand in hand? Subjective versus objective well-being  52 The concordance thesis: two varieties  58 Flourishing without happiness  62

52

viii  Table of contents

Happiness without flourishing  65 Just philosophical ‘armchair psychology’?  69 Food for thought for practitioners  71 4 The limitations of even supreme moral virtue: why we need contemplation and wonder to flourish

73

‘An insightful mess’  73 Developmental levels, individualisation and role-modelling  75 Role-based moralities: blessings and burdens  80 Blowing the whistle on philistinism  85 What is the missing virtue of contemplation then all about?  87 Food for thought for practitioners  89 5 Flourishing and awe: towards an extended, ‘enchanted’ Aristotelian theory

91

Venturing beyond Aristotle  91 Is Aristotelian flourishing flat and disenchanted?  93 Do we need supernaturalism to make sense of enchanted flourishing?  101 The example of science education  106 Initiating students into love of the transcendent  109 Food for thought for practitioners  112 6 Flourishing and epiphanies: going beyond Aristotle and Kohlberg

114

The road to Damascus  114 Academic musings and misgivings  118 Some relevant psychological evidence  125 Disenchantment, awe and elevation  129 Education for epiphanies  131 Food for thought for practitioners  134 7 Flourishing and the emulation of exemplarity: going beyond Aristotle and Zagzebski Targeting the exemplarity of flourishing lives  135 Problematics of emulation – and examples from the historical emulation literature  138 The logical geography of admiration, emulation and elevation  147

135

Table of contents  ix

Elevation as awe  150 How Mengzi (Mencius) may improve Aristotle  156 Food for thought for practitioners  161 8 Conclusions and reflections – and where we need to head next

162

A retrospective roadmap 162 The advantages of flourishing theories 169 Challenges and misgivings 174 Some further reflections on educational practice for flourishing 186 Concluding remarks and future directions 190 Food for thought for practitioners 192 References Index

193 210

Preface

The present book follows naturally upon the heels of my 2015 Routledge book, Aristotelian Character Education, for which I was fortunate enough to win the prize of Education Book of the Year from the Society for Educational Studies. However, as I explain in Chapter 1, there is almost no overlap between the two books. I began working on this book during a sabbatical stay in Taiwan in the autumn of 2015, and I completed it in the autumn of 2018. I am grateful to my former and present colleagues at the Jubilee Centre for their advice, support and comments on earlier drafts of individual chapters or sections. I would especially like to single out Randall Curren, David Carr, Robert C. Roberts, Candace Vogler, James Arthur, Liz Gulliford, Tom Harrison, David Walker, Katy Dineen, Michael Fullard and Paul Watts. Other scholars and friends with whom I have conversed in a way that has left its mark on the writing of this book, or who have commented on specific portions of it, include (in no particular order) Howard Curzer, Blaine Fowers, Yen-Hsin Chen, Jennifer Frey, John White, Doret de Ruyter, Anders Schinkel, Matt Ferkany, Anna Alexandrova, Sophia Vasalou, Eranda Jayawickreme, Mark Jonas, Sophie Grace-Chappell, Christian Miller, Linda Zagzebski, Clark Morgan, Yasmeen Goddard-Coutain, Myeong-seok Kim and Philip Ivanhoe. I am indebted to the John Templeton Foundation for funding the work of the Jubilee Centre. My past and present editorial contacts at Routledge deserve thanks for being unreservedly supportive of the book project throughout its gestation. Kristian Guttesen provided invaluable editorial assistance towards the end. I received helpful feedback from audiences at a conference on Interdisciplinary Work on Character, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, 2015; a conference on Character, Non-Cognitive Skills and K–12 Education, CUNY Institute for Education Policy, Roosevelt House, New York, 2015; a seminar at Reitaku University, Japan, 2015; a seminar at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, 2015; a conference on Affective Education, National Taichung University of Education, Taiwan, 2015; a conference on Interdisciplinary Challenges in Wellbeing Research, Aix-Marseille School of Economics and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales,

Preface xi

Marseille, 2016; the International Positive Network Festival, Dallas, Texas, 2016; an Open University and Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference on Owning Our Emotions, University of London, 2016; the Aretai Centre Annual Conference, University of Genoa, 2016; the Association for Moral Education Annual Conference, Harvard University, 2016; the Virtue, Happiness and Meaning of Life Project Conference, Columbia, University of South Carolina, 2016; the Virtues of Greatness Conference, Dept. of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham, 2017; a seminar at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2017; a conference on Themes in the Philosophy of Kristján Kristjánsson, Institute of Ethics, University of Iceland, 2017; the conference Underlying Thought: Philosophical Analyses of Epistemic and Ethical Cognition, University of Cardiff, 2017; the Church of England Regional Character Conference, Cambridge, 2017; the conference Emotions: Rationality, Morality and Social Understanding, University of Tartu, Estonia, 2017; the Virtue, Happiness and the Meaning of Life Capstone Conference, University of Chicago, 2017; the Association for Moral Education Conference, St. Louis, 2017; the Annual Icelandic Medical Conference, Reykjavík, 2018; a workshop on Fostering Character Education in Germany and Austria, Düsseldorf, 2018; the Asia Pacific Network for Moral Education Annual Conference, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2018; the Virtue and Moral Education Conference, Institute of Philosophy, Gdansk, Poland, 2018; the Character Education in Latin America Conference, Pilar, Argentina, 2018; a conference on Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character, Goldsmiths University, London, 2018, and a University of Notre Dame Conference on Practicing Science: Virtues, Values, and the Good Life, London, 2018. I am grateful for permissions to recycle material from the following articles: ‘Flourishing as the Aim of Education: Towards an Extended, “Enchanted” Aristotelian Account’, Oxford Review of Education, 42(6), 2016; ‘Aristotelian Character Education: A Response to Commentators’, Journal of Moral Education, 45(4), 2016; ‘Recent Work on Flourishing as the Aim of Education: A Critical Review’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 65(1), 2017; ‘Emotions Targeting Moral Exemplarity: Making Sense of the Logical Geography of Admiration, Emulation and Elevation’, Theory and Research in Education, 15(1) 2017; ‘The Flourishing–Happiness Concordance Thesis: Some Troubling Counterexamples’, Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(6), 2018; ‘Virtue from the Perspective of Psychology’ in Oxford Handbook of Virtue, ed. N. Snow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); ‘Epiphanic Moral Conversions: Going beyond Kohlberg and Aristotle’ in Self-Transcendence and Virtue, eds. C. Vogler and J. Frey (London: Routledge, 2019).

Chapter 1

An introduction to the concept of flourishing Good character and beyond

The aims of the book Why do some students’ capabilities, strengths and talents seem to lie fallow at school? Why do so many students enter school as ‘originals’ but leave as ‘copies’? Why is so much of schooling preoccupied with preparing students for a life of tests rather than the tests of life? How can education be designed and executed such that it helps all students achieve their potential? Given the growing disillusionment in educational circles with mere grade attainment and high achievement in PISA scores as the be-all and end-all of schooling, the time is ripe to revisit some perennial questions about the role of education in helping students flourish overall as human beings. This book is written for readers who share my passionate interest in these questions, be they academics, university students, reflective practitioners or simply intellectually minded parents interested in looking beneath the surface of what talk of ‘student flourishing’ really means and how it can be put into practice. I know it is a tall order to reach out to all those diverse readerships, but I want to try to say something in this book that, at best, provokes, inspires and enlightens different kinds of readers – or, at least, shocks and infuriates them sufficiently to shake them out of their comfort zones. More specifically, this book proposes to develop a conception of student flourishing (understood as students’ objective well-being) as the overarching aim of education. Because I consider good education to be part of the good life, rather than just a preparation for it, I need to engage with a broad conception of human flourishing and show how education, ideally, both instantiates and encourages it. I define the core concept of the book as follows. Human flourishing is the (relatively) unencumbered, freely chosen and developmentally progressive activity of a meaningful (subjectively purposeful and objectively valuable) life that actualises satisfactorily an individual human being’s natural capacities in areas of species-specific existential tasks at which human beings (as rational, social, moral and emotional agents) can most successfully excel.

2  An introduction to flourishing

This is, to be sure, a rather complex definition, grammatically and substantively, involving many distinct variables that I begin to explain in the following section and spell out gradually in more detail in the course of the book. It will not escape the attention of observant readers that the conception of flourishing elicited here falls broadly within the parameters of the well-known Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia; hence the book’s subtitle, ‘A Neo-Aristotelian View’. I am an unrepentant Aristotelian sympathiser and am happy to accept the label ‘neo-Aristotelian’, although I understand myself to be so in a reconstructive rather than an exegetical sense (Kristjánsson, 2007; 2015; 2018). Yet the conception of flourishing developed in this book distinguishes itself from Aristotle’s own conception in various ways. While neo-Aristotelians typically offer friendly ‘naturalistic’ amendments or upgrades (rather than wholesale replacements) of aspects of Aristotle’s theory in light of contemporary social scientific findings and developments in current virtue ethics, this book departs further from the Aristotelian script by adding contours to the conception of flourishing that are recognisably un-Aristotelian. At no point do I want to imbue readers with the feeling that they are trapped with the ghost of Aristotle inside a jammed elevator. Notice here that I will be arguing that the ‘good life’ of the student, to which education should contribute, must involve engagement with self-transcendent ideals and ignite awe-filled enchantment in ways that go well beyond, and even clash with, traditional Aristotle-inspired conceptions of eudaimonia. Also, it must allow for moral elevation and radical gestaltswitches (epiphanic psycho-moral conversions) of kinds that are bound to appear alien to orthodox Aristotelians. In some ways, my conception will turn out to be more demanding than Aristotle’s, for example by postulating that the flourishing agent must have a clear personal sense of meaning or purpose and engage with transpersonal moral ideals. In other ways, it will be less demanding, for example by assuming that people need not be fully virtuous to flourish satisfactorily (e.g. being well ‘self-controlled’ can suffice) and that flourishing need not necessarily be accompanied by subjective well-being. In capsule form, I will be offering a new complex and multi-layered conception of enchanted flourishing to replace Aristotle’s own (arguably) disenchanted conception. One of my challenges will be to satisfy readers that I am not simply saddling Aristotle’s system with alien elements – such as a Platonic realm of transcendence or a cheapened ersatz version of religious spirituality – that undermine the credibility of the overarching, if fluid and flexible, Aristotelian architectonic of flourishing that I wish to preserve. Admittedly, in some sections of the book I will be debating with fellow Aristotelians and may end up speaking ex cathedra with respect to Aristotle’s magisterial voice. However, I do not take Aristotle’s text as the last word on anything. Do I believe that everything I say, in terms of conceptual underpinnings and empirical evidence about flourishing, could in principle be said without any reference to Aristotle and simply rely on contemporary

An introduction to flourishing  3

philosophical and social scientific sources? Yes, I do. Do I believe that the message conveyed would be as coherent and compelling if presented in that way? No, I do not. So what is the role of Aristotelian theory then, exactly? The short answer is that I see it as a regulative ideal that helps give internal cohesion to the account of flourishing presented in this book. Flourishing as the Aim of Education picks up threads from my 2015 Routledge monograph, Aristotelian Character Education. However, it carries those threads in new directions such that there is virtually no overlap between the two books, apart from the fourth section of the present chapter where I rehearse some necessary ‘basics’ about character. In other words, this book is very much composed as a standalone volume. Educating young people as persons of good character is one thing; educating them towards a life of overall flourishing is a more ambitious goal, involving a set of considerations that exceed the remit of ‘mere’ character education and must ideally be pursued by every educator, inside as well as outside of classrooms. Flourishing being a more capacious goal than the cultivation of character, it allows for more social and educational variance, as explained later in this chapter, and it requires engagement with a host of socio-political as well as ‘spiritual’ issues that tend to be conveniently eschewed in the literatures on the moral and characterological dimensions of schooling. Although this book constitutes a theoretical study of the foundations of flourishing, it is meant to convey significant practical lessons to policy-makers and practitioners, and each chapter closes with salient ‘food for thought’ for teachers and other educators who are in a position to directly facilitate student flourishing. Yet the book is not meant to be a teaching manual. For those who are already converts to the cause of flourishing as the overarching aim of education and simply want practical advice on how to implement it in the classroom, I recommend sources that are already available (e.g. Morris, 2015; Arthur et al., 2016). That said, I question any neat dichotomy between ‘ideal’ and ‘non-ideal’ theorising (see further in Chapter 2), and I resent the stereotype of the educational philosopher occupied in idle musings on a remote mountaintop, looking down with a sense of horror mundi on the practitioners in the trenches. Having taught myself in the past at various levels of the school system, I have always failed to see how good educational theory can fail to be tethered to actual practice, any more than good educational practice can succeed without solid grounding in theory. In this book, as in my previous forays into educational philosophy, I aim to make a twofold contribution, to theory and practice, even if the latter may at times be more implicit than explicit. This book does not exist in an historical or theoretical vacuum, and I am not a lone crier in the desert. Alongside the recent surge of Aristotle-inspired virtue ethics in moral philosophy (see e.g. Annas, 2011), the rise of positive psychology as a psycho-moral and educational paradigm, drawing ever more closely on Aristotelian insights (see e.g. Seligman, 2011) and the recent

4  An introduction to flourishing

revival of interest in Aristotelian or quasi-Aristotelian character education (see e.g. Kristjánsson, 2015), flourishing has re-emerged as a popular ideal of the good human life. At the same time, a number of educational philosophers have already developed theories of flourishing as the overarching aim of education (see e.g. Brighouse, 2006; White, 2011; de Ruyter, 2004; 2015; Wolbert, 2018). I will be drawing closely on those general theoretical insights throughout the book, as its arguments unfold across various chapters, and in Chapter 2, I explore specifically some of the educational incarnations of the new flourishing paradigm. I have been inclined in the past to a somewhat ambivalent attitude as to whether to treat related but varyingly grounded approaches to a virtue-based flourishing agenda, such as virtue ethics/character education versus positive psychology/­ positive education, as friends, enemies or ‘frenemies’ (Kristjánsson, 2013). Let me make it clear that my aspirations in the present book are for the most part accommodating and conciliatory, striving for the consolidation and coagulation of a stream of ideas that are already up for grabs. For example, my aim is not so much to distance myself from the newly emerging paradigm of flourishing in education as it is to show how it may, at times, benefit from closer convergence with Aristotelian philosophy, just as it may, at times, benefit from clearer divergence from it. To use a rather worn-out idiom in educational discourse, the paradigm of flourishing as the aim of education is ‘old wine in new bottles’. I say that unapologetically here at the outset. Good ideas in education rarely lose traction. However, they must be retrieved, reconceptualised and repackaged for each new era in the development of human associations. In sum, those are precisely the aims of the present book.

The basics of flourishing accounts A poem that is often cited in popular web posts (Enright, 2017) describes human life in terms of a small acorn growing into a mighty oak tree – despite initial disbelief from the acorn that this can actually happen. It also describes the cruel autumn winds that knock the acorn around and can jeopardise its growth, although the particular story in this poem has a happy end. It must be admitted that standard accounts of flourishing tend to lean heavily on simple analogies like the one presented in this poem about an acorn realising its potential – or actualising its ‘inherent teleology’ – by developing into an oak tree (cf. Haybron, 2016, p. 27). While evocative and suggestive, such analogies run the risk of triteness, just as it could be complained that the message of the poem is simplistic rather than just simple. Indeed, a threat of bland truisms hovers constantly over educational accounts of flourishing, as I acknowledge at various junctures in what follows. Yet there is something intrinsically attractive about the idea that the goal of education – and of life more generally – is to become the best specimen of one’s species that one can

An introduction to flourishing  5

possibly be. One could even say that if any one hoary old adage has stood the test of time, it is the one about not letting one’s capacities lie fallow. One of the attractions of flourishing accounts of education is that they are typically less philosophically loaded, more readily couched in ordinary language (of oak trees, acorns, etc.) and more immediately appealing to practitioners and lay people than tends to be the case with some high-brow and esoteric accounts of ultimate educational aims, requiring more theoretically charged vocabularies. If you grasp why it is natural and good that an acorn gets the chance to grow into an oak tree, or that a bird develops wings to fly, then you also understand why it is natural and good that a child can mature into a fully developed, well-rounded adult. You do not need to learn any fancy new vocabulary from a philosophy course to explain or articulate this basic understanding – although some grounding in philosophy will help to elaborate, argue for and justify your account, as I propose to demonstrate in this book. Within the tradition of flourishing accounts descending from Aristotle, those tend to be grounded in a naturalistic methodology. That simply means that any substantive claims such accounts make are considered answerable to empirical evidence from everyday experiences, and from the natural and social sciences. (Aristotle often refers remaining puzzles about the good life to ‘the natural scientists’, although that is slightly comical because he was himself probably the greatest natural scientist of his day.) This is precisely the reason why a number of current social scientists seem to find more affinity with flourishing accounts than with more theoretically ‘heavy’ accounts relying on less readily ‘testable’ assumptions. There is no place in flourishing accounts for what I called earlier the philosophical horror mundi: fear of the real world. This is also why neo-Aristotelians are able to take quite a few liberties in updating the original Aristotle in light of contemporary evidence, arguing that this is what he himself, as a devout naturalist, would have done. Owen Flanagan calls the current empirical-normative inquiry into the nature and conditions of human flourishing ‘eudaimonistic scientia’: scientific inquiry aimed at capturing deep structural features of Homo sapiens, based on testable hypotheses (Flanagan, 2007, pp. 1, 38, 112). Aristotle would undoubtedly have acquiesced in that formulation. Yet, for those steeped in post-Enlightenment conceptions of ‘naturalism’, it must be made clear that the understanding of ‘naturalism’ on offer here has no necessary logical association with reductivism, behaviourism, operationalism or instrumentalism (see Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 10.2, in response to Jacobs, 2017). Indeed, it could be seen as an antidote to all those ‘isms’. The most elementary taxonomical point to make about the flourishing accounts is that they represent a so-called objective view of human well-being, as defined below. However, even that apparently simple claim opens up a terminological can of worms. John White (2011) uses the terms ‘well-being’ and ‘flourishing’ (and indeed ‘fulfilment’) interchangeably, and

6  An introduction to flourishing

others would add ‘happiness’ to the mix. Yet White is aware that there are deeply and ramifyingly divergent accounts of ‘well-being’ or ‘happiness’ (as the ungrounded grounder or summum bonum of human life) competing for allegiance. Broadly, those can be divided into subjective and objective accounts. A subjective account considers the criteria of well-being to be subjective in the sense that they have to do with psychological states (experiences, attitudes, feelings, beliefs) of an agent. If the agent’s reports on those states are authentic (both non-deceptive and non-self-deceptive), they are the last words on her well-being. On an objective account, however, the criteria of well-being have to do with objective features of the agent – facts about her life – that can, in principle, be viewed from outside and to which she may or may not be privy. Those will include psychological states (on which the agent is, then, no unique authority) but also various externalities concerning the circumstances and the proper or improper (e.g. virtuous or non-virtuous) running of her life. There is no space here to offer an extended critique of the main well-­being accounts, all of which retain partisans; in any case, those have been well rehearsed in recent literatures (see e.g. Haybron, 2008) and I revisit them in Chapter 3. In brief, the most prominent subjective ones are hedonic and life-satisfaction accounts. On the former, well-being is identified with pleasure as a raw, undifferentiated subjective feeling. Those accounts are typically criticised for not making a qualitative difference between types of pleasure and for implying (counter-intuitively) that being mindlessly ‘high’ on a pleasure-inducing pill counts as true well-being. On the latter accounts, well-being signals the ratio of one’s perceived life accomplishments to one’s aspirations. Those accounts are typically criticised for the counter-intuitive assumption that to enhance well-being, it is as useful to lower aspirations as it is to increase attainments. Hedonic and life-satisfaction accounts have been combined to form widely used measures of so-called (overall) subjective well-being (SWB). More relevant for present purposes are the objective accounts, of which the flourishing-as-the-aim-of-education one is an instantiation. In some of those accounts, which are often referred to collectively as eudaimonic, well-being refers to, and can be measured via, a range of objective criteria having to do with the optimal functioning of human capabilities (cf. Nussbaum, 2011; WilsonStrydom & Walker, 2015). Because the rest of this chapter, and indeed this whole book, is taken up with developing precisely such an account relevant to education, there is no need to say more about them at this juncture. However, it is worth noting that accounts of subjective well-being as the aim of education also exist (see e.g. Noddings, 2003). Recent decades have seen many attempts to offer combined accounts of well-being, aimed at capturing both subjective and objective criteria. Two of those are specifically germane to the topic of this book as they have been used extensively in educational contexts. One is the positive psychological

An introduction to flourishing  7

PERMA-model, capturing positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning and accomplishments as criteria of well-being (Seligman, 2011). Notably, the PERMA-model relies more on objective criteria than previous positive psychological models (e.g. Seligman, 2002), for in PERMA even the apparently subjective elements are supposed to be underpinned by (objective) strengths and virtues. Another model is that of self-determination theory (SDT ), which posits certain innate universal human needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness (Ryan, Curren & Deci, 2013). Interestingly, SDT has also taken an explicitly Aristotelian turn of late after the fathers of the theory, Ryan and Deci, began to collaborate with the Aristotelian philosopher Curren. It is not difficult to understand why latter-day accounts of well-being in school contexts tend to gravitate towards objective criteria. Since the demise of the self-esteem industry, when it turned out that too high self-esteem predicts negative psycho-social outcomes more than too low self-esteem does (Baumeister et al., 2003), education theorists are wary of accounts that simply aim at making students happier about themselves, independent of actual merit. It is also understandable, however, why subjective criteria continue to carry appeal, for it seems churlish to rate as high on well-being – simply by dint of external criteria – a student who does not share that assessment and is perhaps deeply dissatisfied with her own life (cf. de Ruyter, 2004, p. 380). One of the apparent advantages of Aristotle’s original account of eudaimonia is precisely to posit that such a disharmony is not likely to occur, because a certain kind of pleasure, close to what is often characterised nowadays as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), will typically characterise a flourishing life. For Aristotle, this specific type of pleasure signals the completion of flourishing activity: activity that is not only conducive to an independently sought end of eudaimonia, but is also part of that end. Such activity is true ‘en-ergeia’, the actualisation of our true ‘ergon’ or functional essence as human beings (as explained in the following section): a sign of development, progress and fulfilment. Indeed, Aristotle does not seriously consider the possibility that anyone except the virtuously flourishing can experience this type of supervening pleasure, and he deems it wrong to call someone good who ‘does not enjoy fine actions’ (1985, p. 21 [1099a16–20]). It must be remembered, however, that the flow-like state in question is not pleasure simpliciter but the experience of non-frustration and lack of inner conflict. As it differs in species and value from all other pleasures (1985, pp. 277–279 [1175a21–b24]), we could call it the specific experience of eudaimonia in action. Methodologically, this also means that identifying cases of flow (in this Aristotelian sense) can be an indicator of eudaimonic happiness. Brighouse maintains, along those lines, that reported high levels of subjective well-being can count as evidence that a student is flourishing (2006, p. 48). While that is no doubt true as a rough guide, recent research has indicated that agents can (perhaps counter-intuitively) be radically self-deceived about

8  An introduction to flourishing

their own subjective well-being (Haybron, 2008). For example, a student sinking into depression may not be aware of it until fairly late and continue to score high on SWB tests. I fully agree with the Aristotelian point that happiness (qua a certain kind of pleasure) ideally and even typically supervenes upon the flourishing life, but I am sceptical of accounts that propose to obliterate, or at least underplay, the subjective–objective distinction by offering various kinds of ‘sobjectivist’ hybrids. I critique such accounts in Chapter 3, and I do think that flourishing can, in principle, occur without subjective happiness – although that is far from being the ideal outcome. Despite the gradual move towards more objectivist accounts of well-being, of which Martin Seligman’s work (2011, in contrast to his 2002 book) constitutes a prime example, there is an unfortunate tendency among social scientists – so used to seeing SWB as the common denominator of all desirable human outcomes – to think that they are resisting the primacy of SWB just by assenting to its demands with sufficient reluctance. At all events, various problems, both terminological and substantive, continue to haunt the landscape of well-being accounts, and those necessitate a very thorough explication of what sort of account – objective, subjective or sobjective – one is proposing. Even the term ‘flourishing account’ allows for a number of different conceptualisations and interpretations. I need to be more specific in what follows than I have been so far. We need to move beyond the basics.

The contours of flourishing Aristotle’s original concept of flourishing as eudaimonia rests on one fundamental argument: the so-called ergon (function) argument, according to which human beings have a natural function, just as an oak tree or a tiger does: a function that can be grasped by looking at what humans are best at (Aristotle, 1985, p. 15 [1197b25]). If all is well, human nature moves teleologically towards the execution of its specific human function, its humanness, just as the function of the tiger moves towards the actualisation of its tigerishness. The function peculiar to human beings, according to Aristotle, ‘is the soul’s activity and actions that express reason’. As ‘each function is completed well when its completion expresses the proper virtue’, the human good ‘turns out to be the soul’s activity that expresses virtue’ – infused with reason (1985, p. 17 [1198a12–16]). What is ‘proper to each thing’s nature’ (here, reason-infused virtue), is ‘supremely best and pleasantest for it’ (1985, p. 287 [1178a5–7]). Hence, to flourish or live well in the distinctive human way will typically give human beings a kind of pleasure as an ornament: the type of ‘flow’ explained in the preceding section. It is part of human psychology to enjoy the exercise of our realised human capabilities. The same goes ideally for learning this exercise, for instance at school, so something is not quite right, according to the orthodox Aristotelian conception of flourishing, if the

An introduction to flourishing  9

flow fails to happen. Flourishing implies not only having virtue in a dormant state but also expressing it; therefore, it constitutes an activity rather than a state. Moreover, cultivating one’s flourishing is not just a self-interested activity. Many of its constitutive virtues necessarily (logically and/or empirically) include other people: say, compassion. In some other virtues, such as friendship, the self–other distinction even becomes blurred, with friends constituting ‘second selves’ (Aristotle, 1985, pp. 212–213 [1156b7–12]). In order not to turn against our own nature, we must ‘go to all lengths to live a life that expresses our supreme element’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 286 [1177b33–34]). Despite the existence of various disabling conditions (that I go on to discuss in Chapter 2), most people who receive a good upbringing would seem to be capable of achieving flourishing; the reason why many do not is often self-inflicted (see Curzer, 2012, p. 393). For ‘anyone who is not deformed [in his capacity] for virtue’ will be able to achieve flourishing ‘through some sort of learning and attention’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 22 [1099b18–20]). Aristotle is rightly seen nowadays, however, to have committed various empirical errors when excluding large groups of people (including manual labourers) from the set of potential flourishers. At all events, the standard neo-Aristotelian view is that flourishing is not to be treated as a rarefied ideal for the exclusive few. To sum up, then, in light of the function argument, flourishing can be seen as the intrinsically desirable, ultimate end of human beings. It involves virtuous, reason-infused activity, suitable and peculiar to human beings, achieved over a complete life (see further in Curzer, 2012, p. 418: cf. Wolbert, de Ruyter & Schinkel, 2015). Aristotle basically equates the flourishing life with the virtuous life. Even though that claim is not as radical as it may seem to be because of the broad scope of the term ‘virtue’ (arête) in Aristotelian philosophy that goes well beyond that of the standard moral virtues, I give reasons later in this chapter for departing from that equation (and similarly from the equation of character education with education for flourishing). That said, the sort of theory of flourishing that I am interested in, and will be fleshing out in this book, retains three distinctive Aristotelian elements. It is teleological in the sense of having to do with nature-fulfilment, the execution of an inbuilt function; it is perfectionist in the sense of necessarily incorporating the cultivation of human virtues and being explicitly constrained by moral concerns; and it is about capacity actualisation rather than just success, worldly or otherwise. A Nobel Prize winner or a victorious Olympian might not be flourishing overall as a human being. These conditions (reduced here from Fowers’s more detailed list of nine, 2016, p. 69, though I would in principle endorse all the elements on his list) exclude various accounts of well-being that have been categorised as ‘eudaimonic’ (see Haybron, 2016), such as objective-list theories and a host of non-teleological and non-perfectionist accounts.

10  An introduction to flourishing

To put it simply, the theory that I propose to develop in this book is Aristotelian in form and at least quasi-Aristotelian in nature, although I will be driving a number of wedges between the details of my account and the original Aristotelian one. Similarly, the educational accounts that I explore, especially in Chapter 2 (e.g. those advanced by Brighouse, White and de Ruyter), also – arguably – satisfy those above conditions and can thus be considered ‘quasi-Aristotelian’, in the sense given to the term here, although their advocates might resent that label for various reasons. Buying into the three conditions comes with a set of assumptions, some of which I go on to identify specifically in the course of this section. Most generally, it implies the endorsement of a certain view of human nature as that of active rational, moral, emotional and social agents in search of a meaning ful life (cf. Haybron, 2016, pp. 44 and 51). Many of those background assumptions are essentially controversial, and I could write a whole book in defence of each one of them. There is no space for such a defence here; hence I can do little more than articulate them and acknowledge that if readers do not share this overall set of assumptions, they will probably come away from this book with a strong sense of dissatisfaction. They might even be best advised to stop reading right now. That may seem like an abrupt and inhospitable thing to say, but there is only so much that one can address in a single volume. This book is written for readers who share an Aristotelian-cum-Enlightenment humanist conception of people as beings with a common nature; as beings who can flourish or wilt in an objective sense in their lives. It is written for readers who are interested in bringing this conception to a higher level of theoretical and practical precision, rather than defending it against sceptics: anti–Enlightenment, postmodern or otherwise. To exemplify the sort of ‘precision’ I am aiming for, here is a quick recap of the complex specification of flourishing, or of ‘living well’ (Curren, 2013) as a human being, that I offered at the beginning of this chapter, and how I propose to elaborate upon it: ‘Human flourishing is the (relatively) unencumbered, freely chosen and developmentally progressive activity of a meaningful (subjectively purposeful and objectively valuable) life that actualises satisfactorily an individual human being’s natural capacities in areas of species-specific existential tasks at which human beings (as rational, social, moral and emotional agents) can most successfully excel.’ By ‘(relatively) unencumbered and freely chosen’ I mean, on the one hand, that the flourishing life must not be constrained by external forces that go beyond the normal limitations of the human condition. For example, a person in chains does not flourish. I discuss some of the external necessities of flourishing in Chapter 2 and why, if those ‘preconditions’ are not met, flourishing will be hampered or ruled out. On the other hand, I am simply reiterating the well-known Aristotelian claim that a non-autonomously chosen life path does not have moral value. In general, as Curren puts it, the ‘qualities of persons and circumstances mediate the fulfilment of human potentialities

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in activity constitutive of living well’ (2013, p. 239). One way to redescribe this feature of flourishing would be to say that it must involve both negative freedom (freedom from relevant flourishing-diminishing constraints) and positive freedom (in the sense that the agents must do something with their negative freedom rather than just sitting pretty on it). By ‘developmentally progressive activity’ I draw attention to the fact that this conception of flourishing presupposes a developmental account of ‘living well’ in general and ‘rationality’ in particular, as activities that progress more or less completely over time and with need for much external assistance (see e.g. Curren, 2013, p. 236). In order to understand flourishing, we thus need to understand the various ways in which individuals learn to engage with values over a whole life. I explore some of those in Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7. By ‘a meaningful (subjectively purposeful and objectively valuable) life’ I am, on the one hand, referring to the objective nature of flourishing accounts and, on the other hand, to the fact that meaning must be subjectively sought and chosen. Subjective attraction must meet objective attractiveness, to use a phrase by Susan Wolf (2000, p. 9). I say more about ‘meaningfulness’ as a precondition of flourishing in Chapter 2. By ‘actualises satisfactorily an individual human being’s natural capacities’ I flag the nature of flourishing as a ‘satis concept’ (Russell, 2009, chap. 4.2), more commonly referred to as ‘a threshold concept’ (see e.g. Curzer, 2012, pp. 400–401). A ‘satis concept’ is most helpfully understood as belonging to a subset of threshold concepts: those with vague, rather than sharp, boundaries. ‘Satis concepts’ are such that, for the concept C, something can satisfy it simply by being ‘C enough’ rather than being ‘absolutely C’ or ‘as C as can be’. In most relevant cases, when we have established that an item has passed the ‘satis requirement’, asking further questions about how close to absolute perfection the item is becomes superfluous. Thus, in the case of flourishing, we are normally interested in whether people are flourishing or not (or, if they are not flourishing, say because of bad health, to what extent their lives approximate flourishing); the additional question of how far down the line of possibly complete flourishing the flourishing individual has gone may seem pedantic or even churlish, unless we have some additional aim in mind, such as to establish whether the individual would be better characterised as a phronimos, a megalopsychos or a bearer of heroic virtue (cf. Chapter 4 in this book). In other words, a question about flourishing is normally a question about minimal requirements to cross a threshold. The answer may be complex, however, with respect to a concept such as ‘flourishing’, because many different ‘satis’ criteria need to be met, as indicated by the longish definition under discussion here. Notice also here that ‘minimal’ must not mean ‘unspecific’. Otherwise, the concept of flourishing becomes like a shopping trolley that everybody can fill with his or her random choice of goods. The variables in the definition will have to be populated with sufficient specificity to prevent the

12  An introduction to flourishing

account of flourishing from becoming bland and – as philosophers of science would put it – ‘undisconfirmable’. It has even been argued that eudaimonia and ‘education’ (at least on the Greek understanding as paideia) are virtually synonymous, in which case the claim that flourishing is the aim of education becomes tautological (Francesconi, 2018). While they may well be so on a formal definition (in ancient Greek at least), there is arguably sufficient space for disagreement on the contours of a substantive definition of ‘flourishing’ to make the theory proposed in this book informative. Moreover, flourishing itself is by no means the only contender for the aims of schooling that could potentially compete with the traditional ones of grade attainment and employability; others would include social cohesion and equity (Chapman, 2015) – unless one simply decides to subsume those under the concept of flourishing, in which case the triteness objection may begin to rear its head again. I fully agree that there is no surer sign of the triteness of an account of the aims of education than for everybody being able to say: ‘Like motherhood, we are all for it.’ Obviousness is not only a cause of weariness; it dissipates salience. By ‘human being’s natural capacities in areas of species-specific existential tasks at which human beings (as rational, social, moral and emotional agents) can most successfully excel’ I am referring to the earlier mentioned ‘function’ (ergon) argument. Human beings’ flourishing is species-specific, relying on the precise nature of Homo sapiens and how it can be actualised. Aristotle focused in his original ergon argument on the unique rationality of human beings, as noted earlier. My reconstructed version of it would be partly broader (by incorporating also discrete human forms of emotions, morality and sociability that cannot be found in other species, not even the Great Apes) but partly narrower (by making greater allowances for the rationality of animals). Those differences aside, one of the advantages of the flourishing concept is that it can, in principle at least, mutatis mutandis, be applied to any natural living organism. As noted earlier, this definition requires, for its credibility and vitality, the endorsement of a number of background assumptions, at least if it is to be turned into a general blueprint for ‘living well’ and ‘educating well’. I will briefly sketch two here: moral universalism and moral progressivism. Moral universalism, as understood here, is little more than the theoretical elaboration of Aristotle’s well-known claim that ‘in our travels we can see how every human being is akin […] to a human being’ (1985, p. 208 [1155a20–1155a22]). It includes a belief in a common human nature and the objective reality of the moral and non-moral properties that make up this nature. Gens una sumus: we are one people. Indeed, it would probably seem astounding to an alien from outer space how monocultural human beings are, irrespective of distances in geography and time. We more or less like and do the same things: eating, making love, playing games, creating art, socialising, gossiping, etc. We even started to build pyramids on both sides of the Atlantic at about the same time

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in history without any cross-Atlantic interaction. The interhuman capacities to do well the things that characterise us as a species form the very fulcrum around which an account of human flourishing must revolve. Notably, this observation does not entail any particular stance on the proverbial nature–nurture debate. No doubt, parts of this uniformity are genetically pre-programmed. However, the uniformity of human environments (compared to those, for example, that we see on other planets in our solar system), and the survival tasks they create, is such that most of the universal human features could just as easily be described as nurture-and-culture driven adjustments into which every new-born human being is gradually initiated. I would never have aspired to write a book about human flourishing as the aim of education without the presupposition that individual differences in personality and character dwarf cultural differences. I can in principle have more in common with a person of a different gender, race, religion and sexual orientation, living in a far-away society, than I have with a white middle-aged man living next door to me. Our personal baggage is, I would argue, much heavier than our cultural baggage (although that is not the same as discounting the latter, see e.g. Flanagan, 2017). The account of flourishing on offer in this book thus controversially assumes the ‘politics of similarity’ rather than the ‘politics of difference’, although it allows for a plurality of divergent ways to cultivate our convergent capacities, as explained later in this chapter. If the term ‘multiculturalism’ simply refers to the possibility of people of different c ultures l iving t ogether a nd m ixing i n h armony, by v irtue of our essential monocultural core, then multiculturalism is true, but trivially so. The whole history of humankind is the history of mass migrations and the mixing-up of cultures. If ‘multiculturalism’, on the other hand, is meant to denote some sort of ‘identity politics’ according to which different c ultural groups are locked up in conditions of opaque otherness from one another, I cannot treat it here – for reasons of space – with more than Voltairean irreverence. Suffice it to say that perhaps the most inflated non-issue absorbing time and energy in the academic climate of the last few decades has been that loose amalgamation of anxieties that marches under the banner of postmodernism. While motivated by genuine concerns for the disempowered and voiceless, it basically deprives those same people of the ability to gain power and voice by isolating them in silos of imagined otherness. Brothers and sisters are turned into aliens. Postmodernism in the broadest sense, with its anti-realist and anti-universalist escapades, has exercised a baneful and stupefying influence on educational discourse. It is sad to see it promoted, explicitly or implicitly, in equal measure by the nationalism of the political right and the identity politics of the political left – forming an unholy alliance. I realise that some readers may find this dismissal of moral anti-universalism curt and unfair, but I present it here simply as an assumption that readers can choose to embrace or reject (see further in Kristjánsson, 2002, chap. 2; Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 8).

14  An introduction to flourishing

The other assumption underlying my account of flourishing that bears mentioning here is that of moral progressivism. Although one would be unable to glean this fact from international news in the media – judging from which the world is going to hell in a handbasket – universal statistics tell a radically different story (Pinker, 2011; Rosling, Rosling & Rönnlund, 2018). The rate at which abject poverty is disappearing, for instance, is heart-­warming, though disappointing at the same time because it would have been fairly easy to make it disappear even faster. In educational circles, we now witness the slackening of the monopoly of mere grade attainment and employability as ultimate aims. The Centre where I work, which focuses on character education, is constantly being approached by educational authorities from across the world who search for ideas about what schools can achieve beyond PISA scores – although their ideas about what that ‘extra’ would ideally amount to often remain unhelpfully vague. In general, human associations across the globe seem to be moving in a morally progressive direction despite recent ‘post-truth’ blips: a direction that makes educational discourse ripe for accounts of human flourishing as the ultimate aim. Of course there is no guarantee that this progress will continue. We should never underestimate humankind’s penchant for shooting itself in the foot. Environmental and other self-inflicted calamities, not to mention natural disasters, can easily thwart our progress and sweep us back to square one. However, it requires no rocket science to predict that abject poverty will be eliminated from this world in the next few decades (perhaps culminating in the introduction of universal basic income) and that new technologies will provide human beings with much more time for leisure and the cultivation of personal talents. Many contemporary academics exhibit a great deal of nervousness about endorsing a belief in moral progress: what Steven Pinker (2018) calls ‘progressophobia’. I do not. Without the belief in moral progress, and the possibility of its continuation, I could scarcely have summoned the motivation to write this book. More than that, its core message would seem curiously idealistic and untimely.

Rehearsal of some basics about character and virtues To complete a satisfactory preliminary overview of the contours of flourishing, I need to address two more topics: one about the difference between good character and the flourishing life, and the other about what educating for flourishing could really mean and what it might potentially add to standard (Aristotle-inspired) character education. The first topic necessitates a foray into a neo-Aristotelian account of character and virtues, requiring quick rehearsals of points made in my earlier work on character education (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 1). Readers who are familiar with that book or are otherwise well versed in the basics of ‘characterology’ might be best advised to skip the current section and pick up the thread again in the final section

An introduction to flourishing  15

of this chapter, in which I begin to sketch how a flourishing account goes beyond a mere good-character account. Good character, on an Aristotelian view, involves the cultivation and execution of virtues as specific human excellences. What sort of capacities are the virtues? Unfortunately, most of the general terms that have been used to describe them carry potentially misleading connotations. The closest answer is perhaps ‘traits’, but in psychology the term ‘trait’ typically refers to attributes that are (at least partly) inherited. The virtues, however – or so the Aristotelian story goes – are acquired, first through upbringing (especially habituation and role modelling), and later through one’s own repeated choices, coalescing into stable patterns. ‘Habits’ is another possible answer, but ‘habit’ carries the connotation of mere behavioural traits, which virtues are not. ‘Dispositions’ is a more neutral term and perhaps apt here – because the virtues can be said to form complex dispositional clusters – although the idea of self-cultivated dispositions is not common in psychology. It is perhaps no wonder that many theorists have given up on technical psychological language and simply use the Greek term ‘hexeis’, namely ‘states of character’, which may sound vague but can at least be fortified with meaning. At all events, let us say here that the virtues constitute stable dispositional clusters concerned with praiseworthy functioning in a number of significant and distinctive spheres of human life. Each virtue is typically seen to comprise a unique set of components: of perception/recognition, emotion, desire, motivation, behaviour and comportment or style, applicable in the relevant sphere, where none of the components (not even ‘correct’ behaviour) can be evaluated in isolation from the others. The person possessing the virtue of compassion, for example, notices easily and attends to situations in which the situation of others has been undeservedly compromised, feels for the needs of those who have suffered this undeserved misfortune, desires that their misfortune be reversed, acts (if humanly possible) for the relevant (ethical) reasons in ways conducive to that goal, and exudes an outward aura of empathy and care. Full virtue, as described by Aristotle, is, an idealisation, and not always a helpful one at that. Curzer’s (2016a) radically componential view of Aristotelian virtue, which identifies up to 6,000 sub-components, may at first glance appear as a tongue-in-cheek (and rather disheartening) reductio of the very idea of systematic character development. Yet, on closer inspection, Curzer’s hyperbolic attention to detail contains a positive educational message. Character education need not be about pushing moral learners wholesale from one ‘stage’ to another. Rather, progress in this area is piecemeal and often uneven. When a child learns mathematics, it does not progress from one stage of expertise to another in leaps and bounds; it learns one small method in this sub-area, perhaps forgetting another in another area, but gradually and cumulatively moves in the right direction, if all goes well. When things go badly morally, we grow base by degrees – virtue does not drop at once bodily

16  An introduction to flourishing

like a mantle; similarly, when things go well, we normally grow virtuous by small increments. So any small improvement in virtue understanding or emotional sensitivity may count as real moral progress, even though it falls short of the overall actualisation of full virtue qua idealisation. That is surely an upbeat message for educators. The Aristotelian view of character offers the additional benefit of an attractive account of virtue architectonics: the golden-mean structure. Each moral virtue thus constitutes, in Aristotle’s schema, a specific medial character state (e.g. courage), flanked by the extremes of deficiency (e.g. cowardice) and excess (e.g. foolhardiness). There is only one way – the medial way – to be ‘correct’: to be inclined to act in the right way, towards the right people, at the right time. But there is a plethora of ways in which to be ‘bad’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 44 [1106b25–36]). From my experience, the aspect of Aristotelian virtue theory that teachers find most initially appealing is precisely this golden-mean structure. A very similar architectonic can also be found in Confucian virtue ethics (Yu, 2007), so one may wonder whether this aspect taps into deeply entrenched public conceptions. There is more to a life of good character than just cultivating the moral virtues such as compassion and honesty. Another subset is formed by the so-called civic virtues, such as citizenship and volunteering, which focus on the moral effects on society at large. However, other virtues are also necessary to achieve the highest potential in life. For example, all developing human beings will need to possess a host of intellectual virtues, such as curiosity and critical thinking, which guide their quest for knowledge and information. One of those intellectual virtues, namely phronesis or practical wisdom, occupies a special position in Aristotelian character theory and builds a bridge between the moral and the intellectual, as explained below. Finally, there are the performance virtues, such as co-operative skills and resilience, which enable us to manage our lives effectively and achieve our goals, whatever they are (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2017; cf. Baehr, 2017). Diametrically opposed to the virtues are the vices: consistent states of wanting and doing evil, albeit typically under some euphemistic description like ‘taking care of one’s own interests’. Vice can be characterised as deep alienation from virtue (Annas, 2011, chap. 7), rather than simply the absence of virtue. It is, therefore, misleading to talk about young moral learners as possessing ‘vice’; nor can one attribute ‘full virtue’ to them. Young people are on a trajectory: developing towards virtue or vice. Alternative contemporary accounts of character and character education often highlight the extrinsic benefits of virtuous living or, at best, make fleeting and cryptic references to the final end of the good life. Aristotelian character theory does not underestimate the complementary instrumental benefits of good character in terms of higher grades and increased employability. However, it has the distinct advantage of upholding a clear view of the intrinsic value of virtuous character traits: that virtue is, so to speak, its own

An introduction to flourishing  17

reward, and that it is constitutive of flourishing rather than just conducive to it. This assumption, which is crucial for the remit of the current book, neatly and flatly contradicts the latter-day prevalent technicism and instrumentalism in education. That is perhaps the reason why it is sometimes difficult to convey the idea of intrinsic value to policy-makers and politicians. Teachers, however, generally understand that there is more to education than exams, exams and more exams. They realise that schooling should prepare students for the real exams that life throws at them. Somewhat sadly, however, the work on good character that has received most public attention of late, and tends to be highlighted by policy-makers, is work that over-emphasises the value of what I called earlier ‘performance virtues’, such as resilience and grit (Tough, 2013; Duckworth, 2016). I have criticised those works heavily in the past (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 1; Arthur, Kristjánsson & Thoma, 2016). From the perspective of flourishing accounts of education some of those criticisms may seem overly harsh, for surely people need a considerable dose of performance virtues to be able to lead a flourishing life. However, what I have harped on before, and would not want to recant here, is that the resilience of the repeat offender does not make up good character (cf. also Baehr, 2017) and that without good character one cannot lead a flourishing life. Even in the context of the most pragmatic discussions about the developmental conditions of living well, we cannot decouple practical concerns from moral concerns. The Aristotelian view of character and character education pays more attention to the adjudication of virtue conflicts than most other approaches. Some less sophisticated forms of character education depict young people as consistently being faced with choices between virtue and vice. I believe, however, that the typical dilemmas that young people face are between conflicting virtues, which cannot easily be juggled. For instance, teenagers often experience conflicts between loyalty to friends – which surely is a virtue in its golden-mean form – and honesty to authority, for example at school (see e.g. Walker et al., 2017). In Aristotelian character education, the demand for reflective holism is stringent and clear. In the case of fully developed adults, their conduct does not count as virtuous unless it is chosen for the right reasons from a firm and unchanging state of character, is motivated by the right emotions and has been overseen and adjudicated by the intellectual meta-virtue of phronesis (practical wisdom), which acts as a moral integrator when two virtues, such as loyalty and honesty, clash. However, making full sense of the nature and development of phronesis remains tantalisingly elusive. Indeed, I consider the conundrum of the nature of phronesis one of the two profoundest problems affecting Aristotelian character education, along with the measurement problem that I mention later in this section. Aristotelian theory does not only propose to explain the difference between merely habituated and phronetic virtue, but also how young people can be reasonably developed morally, at least for their age, without having

18  An introduction to flourishing

reached the level of full phronesis. Being self-controlled, for example, involves taking the right moral decisions, albeit reluctantly and with effort, even possibly with resentment or boredom. Although this is not the ultimate moral ideal to aim at, according to Aristotle, we can consider a rebellious teenager well on the way to moral virtue if she succeeds in keeping reasonable tabs on her rebelliousness. I will go further than Aristotle, however, and argue that a person can be considered to lead a flourishing life, in the ‘satis-concept’ sense explained earlier, if she remains consistently self-controlled. I say more about that possibility in the following section. Apart from the thorny issue about the nature and development of phronesis, the question of how to measure progress in moral virtue constitutes character education’s ‘profoundest problem’. I have explored it at great length elsewhere (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 3) and will only add a few scattered observations here. The first point is that we should not exaggerate the problem. It is, indeed, fairly easy to measure progress in some components of moral virtue, especially those having to do with a cognitive understanding of the virtues and the ability to apply virtue concepts correctly to episodes of one’s own life: namely, what has been called ‘virtue literacy’ (Carr & Harrison, 2015). Moreover, if the focus is only on ‘formative’, rather than ‘summative’, assessment of progress and on the evaluation of school interventions on attitudes and ethos, rather than on the cultivation of stable character traits in individual students, various tried and tested methods can be suggested that can be used individually or in tandem to good effect (Harrison, Arthur & Burn, 2016). The measurement problem does not begin to rear its ugly head until we aim at measuring the overall or all-round cultivation of moral character in individual students. Any instrument designed for that purpose must be a multi-componential one (such as that crafted by Morgan, Gulliford & Kristjánsson, 2017, for the virtue of gratitude) because of the componential nature of virtue, explained earlier in this section, and it must ideally go beyond mere self-reports because of human beings’ essential non-self-transparency. Fair enough; but even if such an instrument succeeded in homing in on progress with respect to individual variables, questions would still remain as to how they should be aggregated and about the extent to which they would be causally linked in the correct way to constitute a true virtue compound. For example, it is not enough to show progress in reasoning on virtue V and progress in behaviour in the sphere of V, separately, for us to be able to conclude that a student has become more virtuous with respect to V. Because of Aristotle’s stringent demand that we act for the right reasons in order to be truly virtuous, we will need to be able to show that the progress in virtuous behaviour has come about because of the progress in virtuous reasoning; and that is a tall order. On a more sanguine note, there is something deeply counter-intuitive about the claim that we cannot pass reasonable judgements about people’s overall moral characters. We do this every day, with respect to our friends,

An introduction to flourishing  19

colleagues and other ‘neighbours’, and the success we generally have in facilitating smooth human associations based on those verdicts seems to indicate that we are quite good at such evaluations: namely at the recognition of good or bad character. As the great Chinese moral educator Confucius put it: See what a man does. Mark his motives. Examine in what things he rests. How can a man conceal his character? How can a man conceal his character? (Confucius, 1971, p. 149). The quest for valid – and scientifically validated – measures of good character continues, but a modicum of common sense already goes a long way in steering us in the right direction.

What does a flourishing account add to an account of good character? One way of reading Aristotle is to say that possessing a good character – in the sense of having actualised the virtues – is both a necessary and a sufficient condition of flourishing. The additional conditions that I suggest later as necessary for flourishing, beyond good character, would then be reconceptualised as preconditions of good character itself. At any rate, it is clear that Aristotle thought that the virtuous person could never become totally ‘miserable’ (1985, pp. 25–26 [1100b5–1101a10]), a claim to which I return in Chapter 2. This is not the place to enter exegetical debates about Aristotle’s texts, however. Suffice it to say here that my view is that (fully) realising the virtues is neither necessary nor sufficient for flourishing. More generally speaking, flourishing as a concept both is more capacious than good character and follows a different logic. A reasonable entry point to explaining those conceptual differences is to focus on the level of pluralism that each concept allows. Aristotelian character theory readily acknowledges the context-dependence of virtue attainment and the relativity of good character to various individual and social variables. While not a relativist, Aristotle was a pluralist about good character. MacLeod (2015, p. 1083) is thus mistaken when he claims that the positive-­ psychology view that ‘different people have different profiles that they should develop’ separates it somehow from Aristotelian theory. The variables that Aristotelian theory acknowledges include personal constitution (e.g. extravert vs. introvert), developmental level (e.g. young vs. old), social status (e.g. Bill Gates vs. a beggar) and societal context (e.g. peaceful village vs. a war zone). Nevertheless, the contours of a standard moral virtue would be recognisable across all those contexts. For example, compassion would always involve

20  An introduction to flourishing

pain at another’s undeserved bad fortune, although its manifestation or display would assume different forms in different contexts. Compare that to the situation of a young computer nerd in our social-media age versus that of a budding pyramid worker in ancient Egypt – and to consideration of what a good teacher could do to help those two young persons achieve their potential and flourish as human beings. The directions in which these two would need to move in order to flourish are so different that, at first glance at least, it is not easy to pinpoint any significant commonalities of the two routes to flourishing. In that sense, Kinghorn’s (2017) recent critique of overly uniform conceptions of the flourishing life is in order, although he unfortunately conflates that critique with scepticism about the uniform features of (moral) virtues. Acknowledging the extensive relativity of flourishing, above and beyond the relative forms that displays of standard virtues can assume, does not undermine the earlier endorsement of moral universalism. Flourishing is contingently rather than essentially relative. If the computer nerd and the pyramid worker could communicate beyond the limits of time and space, they would, in principle, be able to understand what flourishing for the other person consisted in, as it would also involve the realisation of interhuman capacities. There is no essential incommensurability, epistemological or moral, at issue here (cf. also Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 8). It is simply a case of convergent human nature being realisable in more divergent ways than can be captured simply by the context-sensitivity of virtue actualisation. The resulting flourishing pluralism also has obvious educational implications, as I mention briefly later in this section. When I say that virtue (and I am in particular thinking of moral virtue here) is not necessary for flourishing, some caveats are in order. I do agree with Aristotle that, because of their inherent psychological disunity, the morally vicious cannot prosper. I rehearse that Aristotelian point in Chapter 3. That moral vice prevents flourishing does not imply, however, that moral virtue (understood as full phronesis-guided virtue across the board) is necessary for flourishing. Though far from being the cardboard idealist, and indeed best seen as being on a great flight away from Plato’s idealism, Aristotle does retain an unfortunate Platonic habit of wanting to define concepts with respect to their most fully realised instances. This makes some of his characterisations appear like pretty ill-attainable idealisations. For example, his notion of (full) virtue includes such strict demands of intrinsic motivation, autonomous reason-­g uided adjudication and flow-like enjoyment that it turns the image of the fully virtuous phronetic agent into something of a rarefied ideal. This makes it understandable why a writer such as Besser-Jones wants to ‘scale back’ from those demands (2014, p. 27) and offer more practicable blueprints. I am more sanguine than Besser-Jones about people’s abilities to satisfy the conditions of full virtue, if they set their minds to it (Kristjánsson, 2015, pp. 26–27). However, I do not think they necessarily need to do so in order to

An introduction to flourishing  21

achieve a flourishing life (cf. Snow, 2008). Indeed, Aristotle himself describes the situation of a discrete group of people, the megalopsychoi, whose sociomoral requirements to comply with certain highly demanding moral virtues of magnificence and philanthropy undercut their ability to lead well-rounded lives (I say much more about them in Chapter 4). What I have in mind here, however, are more mundane and typical cases of great human achievers: artists, sports people, explorers, scientists and other of that ilk, whose focus on their specific talents requires such concentration of motivation and effort that displays of moral virtue – in their most fully realised instances at least – will get squeezed out (see examples in Haybron, 2016, pp. 35–38). They will, for example, not have time to be at the beck and call of others in ways that standard virtues of care and compassion would require. Again, however, I need to emphasise that lives of the great achievers, in so far as those can be described as flourishing, do not give them a licence to indulge in vice. They need to cultivate sufficient self-control, or what Aristotelians call ‘continence’, in order to avoid falling prey to vice. Indeed, I consider continence to be a somewhat morally under-estimated character trait in contemporary virtue ethical and character educational literatures – although it obviously falls short of full virtue. People who are ‘merely continent’ may initially be tempted to pursue life’s amoral avenues and ignore the need to act morally in an overall way. But realising that this is not a rational move, they force themselves to act, and may even, through learnt strategies of emotion regulation, manage to induce profound moral reflection in themselves. The motivation to do so does not come naturally and spontaneously to them, however, as it does to the virtuous. It is a sort of ‘fetish’, albeit a morally commendable one. In other words, moral situations do not motivate continent persons non-derivatively. They motivate them only via the realisation that if they were virtuous, they would feel and act in a certain way; and because they have an independent motivation for trying to simulate the virtuous person by adopting a moral identity, they become motivated (through a derivatively elicited emotion) to feel and act in the same way. Because of a lack of full motivational integration, however, the continent person’s link between moral judgement and moral emotion remains an arm-length’s, calculating one (see further in Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 5). So while the virtuous act ‘for the sake of the kalon [the noble]’ (Meyer, 2016, p. 50), and the motivation to seek the phronetic option is built into their very judgement that an ethical issue is at stake, the continent have to rely on a derivative source (e.g. an existential decision they may have taken of wanting to possess and actualise a moral identity) in order to force themselves to seek the overall best moral outcome. This process can be ‘painful and difficult’ (Meyer, 2016, p. 63). Yet it does not need to be so; the ease and grace by which many well self-controlled people go about their moral business may make it more appropriate at times to speak in terms of ‘limber elegance than of crude effort’ (Steutel, 1999, p. 133). The continent can exercise their

22  An introduction to flourishing

integrative efforts with grace and ingenuity, although they are far from being motivationally unified to the extent of the virtuous. The important thing to note is that incontinence and continence are, for Aristotle, not natural developmental levels between habituated virtue and phronetic virtue; Aristotle’s is not a Kohlbergian stage theory where all stages need to be traversed in the same order. Incontinence and continence are rather aberrations or second-best tacks for those who for some reason take a different turn in the developmental trajectory towards phronetic virtue, but still retain a vision of the right moral ends, ingrained in their moral identity. They, then, try to force themselves, unsuccessfully (the incontinent) or successfully (the continent), to comply with the right moral ends. Importantly, these happen to be the levels at which most ordinary people exist (Aristotle, 1985, p. 190 [1150a15]). As Steutel (1999) points out, continence can be a relatively stable state; it is not destined to degenerate into vice or mature into virtue (although it may do so in the case of some individuals). It is, so to speak, not just the Poundland version of phronesis. In a nutshell, my general claim is that continence suffices for flourishing (on the satis-concept understanding). It does not mean that the flourishing person can make do without any moral virtues; it simply assumes that such a person does not need to possess full phronesis-guided virtue in the Aristotelian sense. This claim makes my account of flourishing less morally demanding than Aristotle’s account of good character (and less prone to accusations of elitism; see further in Chapter 2), although it remains demanding in the sense that the continent but not fully virtuous agent will need to have good reasons for prioritising other life goals over that of achieving full virtue. My account is, on the other hand, more demanding in other ways by positing that, in addition to not being necessary, full virtue is not sufficient for flourishing either. The crucial caveat here in my definition of flourishing is that the activity must be ‘relatively unencumbered’. While Aristotle posits various necessary conditions for virtue to be actualised (see Chapter 2), the threshold for virtue may in many cases be lower than that for flourishing. Consider health. A person suffering from persistent ill health or serious disability may be fully able to develop good character: comprising moral, civic, intellectual and performative virtues. However, it would be odd to claim that a person such as Stephen Hawking (who happened to pass away in the week when I was writing this paragraph) had led an overall flourishing life. As he himself noted in various interviews, he faced insurmountable obstacles to performing some of the functions that make up a life well lived, from the most general ones such as moving his body, to the more specific ones, such as being able to engage with his children in physical play. Or take political oppression. A dissident smarting under the brutal force of a political regime may – paradoxically perhaps – be in an ideal position to demonstrate mastery of the virtues, most specifically the moral and civic ones. However, the encumbrance on her freedom to speak and act in the way she deems fit will be too great to consider

An introduction to flourishing  23

her life an overall flourishing one. Obviously, these two lives may be seen as flourishing in some domains, however, and even if individuals are prevented from experiencing all-round flourishing, the aim of making them flourish as much as possible remains. In Chapter 2, I also argue that a flourishing life requires a greater sense of purpose than does the mere commitment to lead a life of good character. The goody-two-shoes may be an admirably virtuous person, with a strong moral identity, but in default of a clear vision of how her good deeds fit into an overall coherent life narrative, aimed at making her all in all the best person she could possibly be and at enacting certain clearly specified changes in her environment, just being a person of good character will fall short of the ideal of flourishing. This claim may not seem to constitute a departure from Aristotle; after all, his discussion of the super-moral megalopsychoi (which I briefly mentioned earlier and discuss further in Chapter 4) is an object lesson in how a life devoid of contemplative activity fails to pass muster as truly eudaimonic. However, the ideal of a sense of purpose is a modern conception that cannot be equated with acts of contemplation. Therefore, I consider myself to be making stronger demands on flourishing here than Aristotle did. Not only that; I do think Aristotle’s own conception of good character is too constricted in some ways: namely, in ways that I call ‘disenchanted’ and take to task in Chapter 5. Finally, a few preparatory remarks are in order about education. The ways in which education for flourishing is a more capacious aim than education for (good) character follows readily from some of the above considerations and is in many ways easier to explain. Consider the perfectly respectable debate about whether character education should be taught as a discrete subject or integrated into the whole curriculum. That whole debate is pretty obviously out of place in the discussion of education for flourishing. Such education is, by its very nature, an integrative activity that ideally informs all school subjects. I have already mentioned the extent to which education for flourishing allows – and indeed calls for – a greater plurality of, and greater context-sensitivity to, the ways of being that actualise the relevant aim than does character education. Teaching a virtue such as honesty or compassion to kids in Mexico City or Manchester will, to be sure, require the teacher to take account of various situational factors. However, honesty and compassion remain essentially the same virtues wherever you go, and there are classic films and novels available that convey the message of the salience of those virtues in ways that seem to transcend the boundaries of time and geography. In contrast, the possible roads up the mountain of an individual’s human flourishing are much more culture-and-person dependent and may differ significantly between Mexico City and Manchester. Moreover, given how flourishing requires a larger set of enabling conditions than does good character, as suggested above, and also given the natural role of teachers as spokespersons for the rights and interests of the children they teach, taking

24  An introduction to flourishing

on the role of a flourishing educator places heavy politico-moral demands on teachers as activists and agents of societal change: a role that few theorists have previously ascribed to teachers as mere ‘character educators’. I say more about the demandingness of this role in Chapter 2. I will be making a number of specific remarks about the pedagogical side of teaching for flourishing over the course of the following chapters. Somewhat paradoxically, however, most of the general message about what such education would comprise is already known, and some of this knowledge – which I rehearse briefly in Chapter 2 – is as old as the hills. Much of it will sound obvious and mundane to followers of what is traditionally known as ‘liberal education’; yet it continues to pose a threat to what in most countries is the – standardly un-argued-for – educational status quo. The million dollar question in educational circles remains the one of why the proof always rests with the prosecution when the defence (of the status quo) typically provides such scant support for its case. From the opposite direction, so to speak, it could be argued – and already has been done with considerable force and gusto (Wolbert, de Ruyter & Schinkel, 2018a) – that the problem is not so much the obviousness or mundaneness of the educational message of flourishing theories but rather their idealised blue-sky thinking, and their insensitivity to practical barriers that need to be overcome. While I acknowledge some of the thrust of this objection in Chapter 2, and endorse the need for a feasible account of educational flourishing to be ‘non-ideal’ in a certain sense, I cannot altogether shake the impression that some past and current accounts have suffered from lack of ambition and a vision of radically alternative possibilities of how classroom teaching could be conducted. The success of a theory of flourishing in education rests largely on its capacity to navigate serviceably the Goldilocks Zone between the ideal and the practical: between what theory tells us about the need to unlock the potential of our students and what good teaching can actually achieve in that regard. There has never been any canonical formulation of what education for flourishing entails, not even an Aristotelian one. In this opening chapter, I have offered some initial thoughts, and subsequent chapters constitute variations, from different perspectives, on this overarching theme. In Chapter 2, I begin with a look at some recent theories about education for flourishing.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 Is education for student flourishing not simply the implicit uncontested goal of good education of which all competent teachers already have an intuitive grasp? Is there really anything new that ‘a theory of flourishing’ can add to what is already known? 2 Do you agree that educational philosophy cannot do its job well unless informed by facts and experience from classroom practice? If you do,

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have you found theories of education that you have come across so far sensitive to this condition, or do they suffer from horror mundi: fear of the real world (here, the real world of the school)? What can be done to facilitate collaboration between educational theorists and educational practitioners? 3 Do human beings really have something that could helpfully be called ‘a natural function’, or is that an outdated way of thinking? If you believe in something that we could call ‘common human nature’, how do you mediate the space between that commonality and the unique individuality of each student in your work as an educator? 4 When you help students cultivate moral or intellectual virtues, such as compassion or critical thinking, do you see its value as lying in prospects of greater external life success, such as higher grades and increased employability, or do those virtues have value in themselves? Does the term ‘value in itself ’ (aka ‘intrinsic value’) have any practical sense, say for classroom purposes, or is it just a meaningless mantra? 5 Do you agree with the above claim that the defence of the educational status quo has provided scant support for its case? Or are standard ways of classroom education, and the traditional arrangement of school subjects, based on the accumulated experience of generations, thus making all radical educational experiments hopelessly romantic and doomed to failure?

Chapter 2

Theories of flourishing in education From the ideal to the practical

The new flourishing bandwagon in education In recent years, a number of educational philosophers have developed theories of flourishing as the overarching aim of education (see e.g. Brighouse, 2006; White, 2011; de Ruyter, 2004; 2015; Wolbert, 2018). Brighouse states unequivocally that ‘the central purpose of education is to promote human flourishing’ (2006, p. 42). White wants schools, above anything else, to be ‘seedbeds of human flourishing’ (2011, p. 3). De Ruyter focuses on the hopes of parents that ‘their children will lead a flourishing life’ (2004, p. 377), with those hopes being directed both at the present, namely that the children are flourishing here and now, and at the future, namely that their overall lives as adults can be considered flourishing ones (2015, p. 85). Most recently, Wolbert argues that student flourishing should instantiate human flourishing ‘in a broad sense’, referring to ‘living an optimal life in which people are free (enough) to make their own choices, fill their time with meaningful and successful activities and relationships, and feel happy or satisfied with that’ (2018, p. 2). A 2015 special issue of the Journal of Moral Education (edited by Darcia Narvaez) was devoted to flourishing as an educational concept; such special issues tend to represent the next canary in the coal mine – be that understood in a negative or a positive sense. Books on flourishing in education now appear at a rate that is impossible to keep up with; for example, a new volume edited by Cherkowski and Walker (2018) appeared on the day I handed in this manuscript! An impression can be gleaned from the writings of many of the above authors that education has somehow become perverted from its essential purpose to edify in a whole-person sort of way. Yet they are mostly free from the sense of dystopian doom and gloom that sometimes pervades critiques of contemporary education; rather, the writers tend to convey a positive message about changes that are feasible – essentially a non-utopian message. For example, Wolbert (2018, p. 91) believes that ‘there is in fact broad, intuitive agreement that one of education’s main purposes is to help children to be better able to cope in the world and live a life of well-being’, although, ‘in a

Theories of flourishing in education  27

world preoccupied with efficiency, improvement and protocols this is sometimes forgotten, or interpreted in a too confined way’. I say more about possible tensions between the ideal and the practical in the closing section of this chapter. Prior to that, the initial question to be asked is what makes these theories of education, individually and collectively, theories of flourishing. Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2015) identify the following ‘formal criteria’ of any correctly designated flourishing theory: that it sees flourishing as intrinsically worthwhile; as the actualisation of human potential; over a whole life; a dynamic state; heading towards objective goods. There is less emphasis here than in Aristotle’s original account of flourishing as eudaimonia (recall the third section of Chapter 1) on the exercise of reason, although it may be implied, and Aristotelians might grumble at the reference to flourishing as ‘a state’ (2015, p. 86), albeit a ‘dynamic’ one, rather than an ongoing activity; otherwise, most of what they say sounds recognisably Aristotelian. It is also worth noting that what we are seeing here are full-blown theories of education, not just supplementary accounts or partial remedies. Consider, for example, Sarid’s overarching characterisation of a theory of education: Education is a continuous practice consisting of purposefully structured learning processes, which are either individually or socially directed, formally or informally governed, aimed at the realisation of ends that are derived from a certain conception of the ‘good’ along two central dimensions: (1) conservation vs. change and (2) self-flourishing vs. universal well-being (Sarid, 2018). All the flourishing theorists mentioned above can be seen to take a stand on the general issues that Sarid’s overarching definition identifies: namely, populating all its variables. For example, following the Aristotelian tradition, it seems to be assumed in the flourishing theories of late that ‘self-flourishing’ cannot be separated from ‘universal well-being’, because exercising some of the core features of one’s own flourishing, especially the moral and civic virtues, simply cannot be done without affecting other people’s well-being positively. Notice also that my theory of flourishing in education, as sketched in the first section of Chapter 1 and elaborated upon in the third section, satisfies both the general criteria for an educational theory and the more specific criteria above for a theory of educational flourishing. My initial criterion of the flourishing activity having to be ‘(relatively) unencumbered’ is not explicitly stated in the characterisation by Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2015), but I do not take that omission as a sign of a major difference of opinion. There are limits to how much you can squeeze into a handy minimal definition such as theirs, and, as will be noted in the following section, considerations of possible barriers to flourishing are included in all the recent incarnations of flourishing theories.

28  Theories of flourishing in education

To prevent initial misunderstandings, two quick observations are in order about the newly emerging theoretical paradigm of flourishing in education. First, it must not be conflated with an earlier deficit-based well-being paradigm, at the close of the 20th century, of the emotionally vulnerable child, which essentially psychologised, therapeutised and instrumentalised student well-being through initiatives such as the self-esteem and emotional-­ intelligence movements (see a trenchant critique in Ecclestone & Hayes, 2009; cf. Thorburn, 2015). In contrast, the flourishing paradigm takes a strengthbased approach to student well-being; it is all about furthering assets that students already possess in nascent forms and helping them continue to develop the personal qualities that are intrinsically related to (i.e. constitutive of ) flourishing (Walker, Roberts & Kristjánsson, 2015). This fact should allay the fears of traditionalists that the flourishing paradigm is just one more attempt to smuggle a Trojan horse of touchy-feeliness into the classroom in order to undermine more rigorous standard procedures. In my view, however, Wolbert (2018, p. 6) wrongly connects a strength-based approach to well-being to ‘a strong focus on the “effort side” of flourishing, as opposed to “the luck side” ’. A strength-based approach offers an antidote to approaches that focus on student weaknesses and how to ameliorate them. However, a strength-based approach may, or may not, be sensitive to the inter-dependent and fortune-dependent development and sustaining of strengths; similarly, a deficit-based approach may focus on deficits either as personal faults through lack of effort, or as faults that are the result of bad luck (genetic or social). Wolbert seems to be conflating two distinct conceptual issues here, although she might want to argue that there is – say, in current psychology – an empirical correlation between holding a strength-based view of human beings and holding a view of individuals as masters of their own destiny. All this said, while the flourishing paradigm is conceptually distinct from the earlier deficit paradigm, the way this work is taken up by educational policy-makers, subsumed within particular educational policy discourses and translated into educational practice may not necessarily be all that practically remote from earlier incarnations of the emphasis on children’s well-­ being. That is a matter for no surprise; educational interventions often differ less in their execution than in their theoretical rationales (see examples in Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 9). A second, but related, observation is that although the flourishing paradigm is sometimes connected to, or even equated with, a focus on the ‘whole child’ – a focus motivated by discontent with the current school system’s onesided emphasis on grade attainment (see e.g. Wolbert, de Ruyter & Schinkel, 2015) – education for flourishing is typically supposed to include traditional subject knowledge (but see White, 2011, for a slightly more radical alternative) and other practical benefits of a well-rounded education. It is not meant to supplant anything, except perhaps the obsession with high-stakes testing, but rather to enhance and add new layers to already existing school practices.

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As I spoke above of ‘current psychology’, let me explain briefly why I leave out of consideration here the two psychological theories mentioned briefly in Chapter 1 as moving towards flourishing specifications of well-being: positive psychology and self-determination theory. Despite their recent flirtations with Aristotelianism, neither the positive psychological PERMAmodel nor SDT-theory makes a fully harmonious bedfellow with an account of objective well-being as encapsulated by Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel’s (2015) minimal criteria. The mainstream position on well-being in positive psychology is still seen by many theorists as subjectivist (Tiberius, 2016), although the variables associated with SWB are increasingly of the eudaimonic kind (Seligman, 2011). Rather than focusing on flourishing itself, with pleasure as a happy fortuitous side-effect, as any Aristotle-related conception of flourishing would recommend, most positive psychologists still seem to understand this connection the other way round. Moreover, despite the Aristotelian leanings of Ryan, Curren and Deci’s recent work (2013), SDTtheory continues to understand flourishing essentially in terms of need satisfaction (Besser-Jones, 2014), rather than through an exercise of practical reason; hence a vital Aristotelian ingredient of ‘intellectualism’ is missing (cf. Hills, 2015). I deliberately evade here the question of whether PERMA and SDT may be seen to offer alternative accounts of flourishing (qua objective well-being) or irreducibly mixed accounts (see further in Chapter 3); at all events, they are too far removed from the assumptions of Aristotle-related flourishing to merit further scrutiny here. Closer contenders as Aristotelian successors are the current educational philosophers who are setting in motion the recent flourishing bandwagon – despite their reluctance to be characterised as card-carrying Aristotelians. Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel correctly point out that Aristotelian flourishing is ‘just one conception of human flourishing’ (2015, p. 119). Yet they acknowledge that the criteria for the concept are best derived from Aristotle’s work. To return to the educational philosophers in questions, White (2011) understands flourishing as autonomous, wholehearted and successful immersion in worthwhile pursuits, both activities and relationships (although he leaves room for individual flourishing in societies that do not value autonomy). It would take up too much space here to unpack all the variables in this specification and compare them with those of Aristotelian flourishing. Suffice it to say that White does not depart explicitly from anything that a neo-Aristotelian would want to say (cf. e.g. Snow’s 2015 specification of Aristotelian flourishing as wholehearted, embodied engagement with life), at least if we understand ‘autonomy’ to cover the reason-instantiating element of Aristotelian flourishing. Brighouse (2006) defines flourishing quite similarly as referring to a worthwhile life that contains objective goods and is ‘lived from the inside’ (2006, p. 16), in the sense that the agent identifies with the pursuit of those goods. Brighouse is also an avid defender of autonomy

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as an essential component of flourishing, but he is perhaps less sensitive than Aristotle and White would be to the need for internal and external factors enabling the relevant activity to ‘succeed’. De Ruyter believes that human flourishing consists of ‘generic goods that are objectively identifiable and the meaningful interpretation of these goods by the person herself ’ (2004, p. 384), who, in the process, is able to ‘make the most of her qualities and live her life to the full’ (2015, p. 92). To be sure, all these recent authors may be seen to be offering accounts of (student) flourishing that are more in tune with the mindset of Western liberal democracies than Aristotelian flourishing (for obvious historical and philosophical reasons); however, none of them proposes the sort of all-youcan-eat-value-buffet subjectivism into which contemporary liberalism often tends to collapse, and although they foreground self-chosen pluralistic values more than Aristotle did, there is reason to suppose that Aristotelian flourishing is compatible with a (moderate) form of value pluralism (Kristjánsson, 2015). It is important to note here that in addition to value-neutral or subjectivist forms of liberalism, which resent any comprehensive theories of the good to be promoted by the state and in public schools, there also exists a strong tradition within liberalism of what Mautner (2018) calls ‘the liberalism of flourishing’, with roots in the writings of John Stuart Mill and the Germanic Bildung approach. According to this tradition, the good life is one in which an individual develops her capabilities, and it is the role of the state to create the background conditions that allow this to happen. In so far as current flourishing theorists in education are arguing for a liberal take on flourishing, they seem to be doing so from within this particular tradition of ‘social liberalism’ or ‘liberal socialism’ (Mautner, 2018, p. 31). However, a side-effect of the liberal focus on autonomous students in the recent flourishing theories means that the examples they take tend to draw more on secondary or even tertiary education than on the education of young children who have not yet mastered autonomy (cf. Fattore, Mason & Watson, 2017, for a more explicit focus on young children’s understanding of, and development towards, flourishing). All in all, a straight and almost uninterrupted road leads from Aristotelian flourishing to recent theories of flourishing as the ideal aim of education. No fundamental, irreconcilable differences emerge; if one wants to be pedantic, however, perhaps the current theories do not allow quite the same space for the mediating role of phronesis in adjudicating conflicts between potentially disharmonious components of eudaimonia as Aristotle does, although autonomy is probably meant to do part of that job (cf. de Ruyter, 2004, p. 385, on ‘reflective decision-making’). Moreover, none of the current theorists seems to ascribe the same importance to emotions and emotional attachments (as constituents of the good life and of education for flourishing) as Aristotle did (Kristjánsson, 2007; 2018). Notably, in following chapters I will also be departing from the standard Aristotelian blueprint in various ways.

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To retrace my steps, the point that I am intent on making is that I am interested in the recent educational flourishing theories because they can be considered – collectively alongside mine – as variations on Aristotelian themes about the nature of objective well-being qua eudaimonia. For present purposes, their differences from one another and their departures from the original script are less important than the fact that they can all be grafted onto an original Aristotelian stem. The current educational advocates of flourishing share my worry – repeatedly broached in Chapter 1 – that the ideal of flourishing may, at worst, be understood as a ‘bland statement of the obvious’ (White, 2011, p. 2) or devalued through arbitrary and indiscriminate uses to cover whatever ingredients we may want to include in our conception of children’s well-being (Wolbert, de Ruyter & Schinkel, 2015, p. 126). In order to convey just how specific, rich and illuminating this ideal can be, it is instructive to elicit its details, as presented by current advocates in educational theory; and I proceed to do so in the remainder of this chapter. The worry about the ideal of flourishing just reproducing commonplaces – which make it sound inconsequential or pedestrian – surfaces in particular when the discussion turns to the pedagogical details of education for flourishing within the classroom. It so happens that most of the general message about what such education would comprise is already known, and some of this knowledge is as old as the hills (see e.g. Narvaez, 2008; Curren, 2013; Knoop, 2016). There would be a general consensus among all the flourishing theorists that education for flourishing must, for example: • • • •

fulfil students’ potential for competence, relationships (in particular, for what Aristotelians would call ‘civic friendships’), self-efficacy and intrinsic engagement; be fun and stimulate flow and wonder; aim at the essential goods of truth, understanding, knowledge, good judgement and self-governance; take place within learning environments of co-operation, warmth and trust.

I could add various bullet points to this list, but the ‘obviousness’ of the items on it already – and how closely they follow the criteria of what has traditionally been known simply as ‘liberal education’ (de Nicola, 2012; Curren, 2013) – may raise, once again, the worry that a theory of education for flourishing can do little more than regurgitate platitudes or, at best, offer old slogans in new, respectable trappings. In response to that worry, two quick rejoinders suffice here. One is that I propose to go beyond traditional wisdoms by arguing that the pedagogy of education for flourishing requires the facilitation of awe and epiphanic experiences in students in ways that are not accounted for in

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previous Aristotelian or quasi-Aristotelian pedagogies of flourishing. The other response is that whatever the theoretical consensus may be, millions if not billions of learners worldwide are not exposed to educational settings that satisfy, even in a minimal sense, the criteria suggested above (see e.g. Knoop, 2016, p. 454) but, rather, experience settings that elicit demotivation and unlearning. As I stated in Chapter 1, education for flourishing is meant to permeate the whole curriculum and influence every salient educational decision taken within the school. How far-reaching the practical implications of such a change of compass would be is a moot point, however. Brighouse (2006) mentions a revised role for schooling: building the general potential of individuals rather than fitting them into potential slots in the economy. He also invokes four new kinds of educational experiences that students need to have in schools for flourishing: classes to learn about parental life, learning about work–life balance, learning about saving and investing, and learning how to make good use of their leisure time. Otherwise, Brighouse does not seem to foresee a radical overhaul of the timetable of academic subjects. For him, education for flourishing is more about the general approach to, rather than the specific content of, the curriculum. The same goes for de Ruyter; for her the most prominent feature of education for flourishing lies in teachers passing on knowledge in such a way that children learn to understand what is conducive to human flourishing (2004, p. 385). White is by far the most radical of the three, perhaps motivated by his fear of the potential ‘blandness’ of the ideal of flourishing in leaving everything as it is. Not only does White want to see a change of emphasis in schooling from comprehensiveness to active engagement with particularities, he also thinks that education for flourishing necessitates tearing up the whole curriculum, as it is now carved into discrete subjects, and restructuring it along the lines of general educational aims. Despite his radicalism, White is optimistic that the ‘advent of the well-being school may be closer than we think’ (2011, p. 145); and in such a school, children will be absorbed in ‘self-chosen worthwhile activities’ (White, 2011 p. 220). More specifically, in White’s (2011) view, the required changes call for a radically new educational ‘vision’ and a substantially changed curriculum in which we would abandon outdated ‘totems’ of academic rigour, traditional subject-based learning and examination star ratings. If we really want schools to become ‘seedbeds of human flourishing’, he believes, it calls for nothing less than a complete rethinking of the school’s traditional role (pp. 1–3, 95). I hesitate to draw such radical curricular implications from a shift towards flourishing education. Let us not forget, for instance, that education for character has historically been one of the school’s most fundamental missions. The ‘de-moralisation’ of the school is a fairly recent aberration from that historical tradition. Giving considerations about students’ virtue-based flourishing pride of place in the visions of our schools

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would herald not so much a revolution as a retrieval of the time-honoured truth that it is not for the benefit of human beings to gain the whole world if they lose their souls. Notably, in ancient and medieval times, when this truth permeated school curricula, it was not to the detriment of the standard school subjects. Flourishing cannot be achieved without basic knowledge in reading, writing, mathematics, the arts and the sciences. An overall emphasis on student flourishing, however, may help teachers identify what educationist DarlingHammond calls ‘the teachable moment’ (1997, p. 97), when students are in flow and intrinsically geared towards worthwhile activities. ‘I want a revolution in world education’, psychologist Seligman enthuses (2011, p. 63). I am not sure it is the same kind of revolution for which White pines – but I hope it bears some resemblance to the kind of reawakening that I would like to see in schools (cf. also Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 10). In my view, such a reawakening has less to do – pace White – with a change in subjects and topics taught than with how they are taught – witness my examples of science education for wonder and awe in Chapter 5. Even though all the recent flourishing theorists offer hints about the practical implications of the new paradigm, it is not always easy to pin down exactly what those implications would really mean for current classroom practice and how radical they would be. More work remains to be done in that area, and I return to this topic in Chapter 8.

The first precondition of flourishing: external necessities According to Aristotelian flourishing, and indeed to all the contemporary theories also, flourishing consists of many components (Aristotle, 2007, pp. 188–189 [1360b9–18]); hence, there is a need to work out the various ‘criteria’ of flourishing (see e.g. Wolbert, de Ruyter & Schinkel’s criteria, 2015, repeatedly referred to above). It is not always clear in Aristotle’s own text which components are to be understood as constituents of flourishing and which as its preconditions; indeed, commentators disagree on this (for a quick review, see Yu, 2007, p. 188). For present purposes, and in order to develop my Aristotle-inspired theory further, I assume that flourishing has two main preconditions: external necessities, which I explain in this section, and a sense of meaning and purpose, which I explain in the following section. While the latter precondition is to great extent an addition to original Aristotelian theory, the external necessities are firmly grounded in Aristotle’s own work; Philippa Foot has even coined the term ‘Aristotelian necessities’ to describe them (2001, p. 15; cf. also Nussbaum’s 2011 related term, ‘basic capabilities’). The word ‘external’ must be understood quite broadly here to cover various psychological, physical, societal/political and economic aspects of what philosophers call ‘moral luck’: favourable enabling circumstances that are largely beyond the agent’s own direct control. Some of those necessities may,

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however, be ‘internal’ to the agent (e.g. a healthy constitution), and some of them may be amenable to some personal control (e.g. exercising to improve stamina; attending a workshop on cognitive behavioural therapy to enhance resilience). In their moral educational incarnation as ‘character education’, ideals of education for good character often come under attack for their apolitical, individualist stance: for assuming that facilitating flourishing is all about fixing individual students without paying any attention to their social habitus (see e.g. Suissa, 2015). This objection hits hardest at instrumentalist accounts of good character that foreground performance virtues. For example, in Duckworth’s (2016) book on grit, there is no mention of the need to remedy any structural problems in society. In her defence it might be said that this silence does not necessarily mean that she treats socio-political issues with levity; her book is simply not about those issues. Yet this silence may encourage the following illicit romanticisation of hardship: If grit provides the pathway to success, and it stems from persevering through hardships, then the best way to produce grit is to secure continued hardships. Let us not forget either that a common move in classic accounts of theodicy within the monotheistic religions is to argue that an all-powerful, omni-benevolent God allows suffering in the world precisely in order to provide opportunities for humans to cultivate certain virtues of care, courage and compassion. Although Aristotelian character education forecloses some of the ‘anti-­socialstructures’ moves when the message about the need for just societies from the Politics is superimposed on the message about justice as a personal virtue from the Nicomachean Ethics, it remains a question open to respectable debate to what extent adverse social conditions facilitate or hinder the development of certain moral and civic virtues. Moreover, we should not close our eyes to the fact that some (un-Aristotelian) forms of character education have historically been mired in conservative political agendas. When the discussion turns, however, from mere character education to education for (overall) flourishing, any recourse to the ‘facilitating’ effects of adverse social conditions on flourishing will be calamitous – at least if it is meant to draw in any way upon Aristotle’s original account of eudaimonia. Indeed, Aristotle is acutely sensitive to the background conditions that enable or disable flourishing. It is particularly noticeable how much more demanding the Aristotelian account is in this respect than another flourishing theory with which it is often compared nowadays: Confucianism. Both Confucius and his disciple Mencius believed that straitened circumstances had very little bearing on the good life of the individual (see various references in Yu, 2007, p. 187). In that sense, they were more Socratic (with his the-goodperson-cannot-be-harmed thesis) than Aristotelian. In contrast, well-being ‘also needs external goods’, Aristotle says; those who maintain that we can flourish ‘when we are broken on the wheel, or fall into terrible misfortunes, provided that we are good […] are talking nonsense’ (Aristotle, 1985, pp. 21

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and 203 [1099a32 and 1153b19–21]; my italics). To return to the topic of grit, just teaching under-privileged kids, ‘broken on the wheel’, grit may be useless at best, counter-productive at worst (Arthur, Kristjánsson & Thoma, 2016; Morton & Paul, 2019, p. 203). What are those resources or goods of fortune that we need to stand a chance of flourishing? Aristotle provides extended lists of them (see esp. 2007, pp. 56–61 [Book I, chap. 5]; cf. Curzer, 2012, chap. 18), but I will only briefly mention six categories. (1) Close parental attachment and good upbringing/ education. Many commentators even complain that Aristotle is too pessimistic here about children brought up in bad habits ever being able to mend their ways (Aristotle, 1985, p. 292 [1179b11–31]; cf. Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 5). (2) Good government, ruling in the interests of the people, and a just constitution. Aristotle thus politicises the good life explicitly and even warns specifically against the dangers of excessive inequalities – surely an object lesson for current times (cf. Homiak, 2007). (3) Enough wealth to make sure we do not come a cropper. Aristotle has no time for idealisations of happy-go-lucky poverty; rather, he thinks it dissipates and degrades. (4) A complete life: namely, a life in which we do not die prematurely. Aristotle wants people to reach a good old age, not for the sake of being able to rest on their laurels, but for life to be long enough to come to some sort of fruition (cf. Curzer, 2012, p. 414). (5) Health, strength and even minimal physical beauty. The last element may seem anachronistic, but think of the frequent shaming and bullying of fat or ugly people on today’s social media, and you get Aristotle’s point. The component of ‘strength’ will include various beneficial psychological qualities, such as grit, which are instrumentally related to flourishing rather than having intrinsic worth. (6) Friends and family. Aristotle thinks we need those, inter alia, in order to hone and display our virtues. He goes even further and adds having (good!) children to the list. I am tempted to follow neo-Aristotelians such as Hursthouse (1999, pp. 219–20) here and modify this condition to being in a position to ‘contribute to the continuation of the species’; a childless person can do so in many ways by helping care for, raise and educate other people’s children. In the case of some of those items, the distinction between preconditions and constituents of flourishing becomes tenuous or blurred. For example, in one sense, we can think of friends as ‘instruments’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 21 [1099b1–2]) that confer benefits upon us, necessary in order for us to prosper; in another sense, bonds with our best ‘friends for character’ become indispensably constitutive of (as distinct from conducive to) our flourishing, so much so that the friends become parts of our own self hood as ‘second selves’ (1985, p. 246 [1166a29–32]; cf. Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 6). Similarly, for health, it is not easy to distinguish between health as a precondition of flourishing and as an essential ingredient in it. It is worth noting at this point that the literature on the actual or potential association between a well-being focus in schools and a mental health agenda is huge (see e.g. Chapman, 2015)

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and cannot be delved into in this book for reasons of space. Suffice it to say here that while some moral virtues (such as gratitude), qua ingredients in a flourishing life, are known to be positively correlated with mental health, the precise causal connections are open to debate. To stay with the topic of health for a while, it provides a case in point to demonstrate how tenuous the distinction can be between a precondition the lack of which actually precludes overall flourishing and one that simply makes flourishing more difficult to achieve. Recall from Chapter 1 that flourishing is a ‘satis concept’; the crucial question is whether a certain deprivation of a precondition prevents the outcome from ever being ‘good enough’ to qualify as flourishing. I used Stephen Hawking’s disability as an example of an extreme debilitating condition that prevented his life from being an overall flourishing life (notably, on his own view). However, as I was about to complete the manuscript for this book, my own life took an unexpected turn for the worse: I woke up one morning in August 2018 irretrievably deaf in one ear after a violent virus attack. Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (‘ssnhl’) is a traumatic syndrome. Apart from the unilateral partial deafness itself, which is annoying but not unbearable, it left me with an intrusive tinnitus in the affected ear, as well as incurably distorted sound perceptions and a sense of general psycho-physical disorientation that lingers on. It is still too early to say whether this disability will disqualify me from satisfying the ‘satis’ criteria for flourishing (relegating me to the category of those whose lives can only approximate flourishing) or whether it will simply make flourishing more difficult for me to achieve. I would hypothesise that a lot hinges on the extent to which I will eventually succeed in overcoming the sense of ‘unhomelike being-in-the-world’ (Svanaeus, 2011) in a body that I currently sense as a protruding object that is not fully part of ‘me’. Because Hawking did not feel ‘at home’ in his body, it robbed him of the experience of overall flourishing. However, we are entering a territory here that does not yield well to an Aristotelian analysis, because the conceptual repertoire needed to make sense of its existentialist features developed largely in the 20th century through philosophers such as Heidegger (Thórarinsdóttir, Björnsdóttir & Kristjánsson, 2017). What I can opine at this point is simply that there seems to be very little truth in the Nietzschean cliché ‘What does not kill you makes you stronger’. My weakened health has not brought with it any noticeable compensations in terms of corrective strengths (yet cf. Jayawickreme & Blackie, 2014). An attack on any of the preconditions of flourishing is likely to make one weaker as a person overall, not stronger. What I have said above about the salience of the preconditions of flourishing must not be understood to indicate that good fortune is in any way sufficient for flourishing. However many ‘lemons’ life provides me with, only I can turn them into ‘lemonade’ through my concerted effort. Thus, I cannot just sit pretty on my assets, but I need to do something with them; for ‘Olympic prizes are not for the finest and strongest, but for contestants, since

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it is only these who win; so also in life [only] the fine and good people who act correctly win the prize’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 20 [1099a1–7]). Abundant ‘moral luck’ even places extra demands on us, both because the higher the ape climbs, the more he is liable to show his tail, and because a person blessed with external riches has the potential to become not only a phronimos (a paragon of ordinary virtue), but also a megalopsychos (a paragon of extraordinary virtue) whose privileged position commits him ethically to the role of a public benefactor (see further in Chapter 4). One always needs to cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth, large or small, in order to flourish. What I have said above must not be understood to imply either that we are all simply victims subject to the vicissitudes of good or bad fortune. Aristotle’s position is here, as often, an intermediary one (see Curzer, 2012, p. 419). While lack of external resources disrupts and blocks flourishing in many ways, the human being is not a ‘chameleon, insecurely based’. Rather, a person’s character leaps to the fore when external necessities are missing, in that good people will at least bear misfortune with ‘good temper’ and – though not ‘blessed’ – will never become totally ‘miserable’ by engaging in ‘base actions’ (Aristotle, 1985, pp. 25–26 [1100b5–1101a10]). These considerations allow Curzer to offer a four-level theory of Aristotelian flourishing, ranging from misery, to lack of flourishing, to flourishing, to the top level of blessedness (2012, p. 421; notice that Curzer prefers to call flourishing and lack of it simply ‘happiness’ and ‘unhappiness’). I return to this multi-level theory of flourishing in the second section of Chapter 4. Although I have concentrated here on Aristotle’s own rich account of the external necessities of flourishing, much the same concerns animate latter-day theories. This can be best seen from White’s informative chapter on what he calls simply ‘basic needs’ in his book (2011, chap. 4). Not only does White offer much the same considerations as Aristotle would have, he asks penetrating questions about what the school can do to help meet children’s basic needs. He also argues that ‘educational reform has to be premised on reforms in the wider society’ (2016, p. 223). Brighouse observes how the ‘low status and stress that accompany relative poverty, and the lack of control over one’s conditions of life, diminish people’s ability to flourish’ (2006, p. 45). Similarly, de Ruyter talks about the circumstances in which a person lives that may make it impossible for her to flourish (2004, p. 383; 2015, p. 95). Wolbert (2018, esp. pp. 6 and 89) seems to worry that some current theorists of educational flourishing under-estimate the essential fragility of flourishing – its precariousness and vulnerability – because of the abstract and idealised nature of their theorising. I return to that question in the final section of this chapter, but it suffices for present purposes to point out that if they do, this would be a serious aberration from their Aristotelian heritage. If we take on board – as I do – Aristotle’s stringent demands on the external preconditions necessary for flourishing, it will clear that any reasonable account of student flourishing will be strongly politically laden. Anyone who

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wants to pay more than just lip service to the ideal of flourishing will need to let her political actions speak as loud as, or even louder than, her words. The fundamental question we need to ask ourselves when casting a vote in an election, for example, is which candidate or party is most likely to create the conditions necessary for human flourishing. I am not going to explore that general political territory in any great detail here – it would require a separate book – although I revisit it briefly in the fourth section of this chapter. As a Scandinavian, it is not surprising that I happen to be partial to the political implications that Martha Nussbaum (1990) has drawn from Aristotle’s theory, culminating in the ‘fascinating convergence’ she envisions between Aristotle’s ideals and the policies of modern Scandinavian social democracies. The nuances of her highly contentious interpretation are outside the purview of the present study. However, what is relevant here is her insistence that an Aristotelian theory of the goods required for human flourishing will require the state to take a firm stand on many educational and cultural issues often eschewed by liberal authorities. It will, for instance, have to support educational programmes aimed at fostering basic human capabilities, and it must make sure that the content of these programmes is conducive to human flourishing. I direct readers to the writings of other capability theorists, such as Amartya Sen (2011), who are beginning the discussion of how to flesh out in practice the relationship between moral/educational ideals, on the one hand, and political/economic ideals, on the other, given current world conditions – which are of course radically different from those in Aristotle’s time (cf. Curren, 2000; 2013). Furthermore, although I want to avoid turning this book into a general political manifesto on flourishing, I cannot shirk a more specific question about the required political engagement of a teacher who whole-heartedly endorses a flourishing agenda. Indeed, White’s question about the contribution of the school towards basic needs (2011, chap. 4) brings us right to the issue of the socio-political role of the teacher. It goes without saying that on any viable conception of flourishing as the aim of education, teachers will be seen as facilitators of students’ flourishing, not least in their inescapable role as in loco parentis (Arthur, 2003). When we inquire, however, about how far that role should go beyond helping students develop their excellences, issues of fiendish intricacy arise. In particular, when addressing the ideal role of teachers in the provision of essential external necessities, we quickly enter shark-infested political waters. In the wake of the economic collapse in Iceland, some head teachers decided to offer children free porridge when they arrived in the morning, knowing that little learning takes place on an empty stomach. Such examples sound sweet but simplistic. The more incisive question is how far those efforts should go. Here is an area where fundamental political views clash, even among those theorists who consider the role of teachers to be an irreducibly moral one. For example, Elizabeth Campbell, a passionate advocate of the moral dimensions

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of teaching, claims that ‘ethical teachers should be good moral agents and moral models, not moralistic activists’ (2008, p. 612), and she considers social justice education for teachers (along currently fashionable lines at least) a ‘distraction’ from the core commitments of teaching. The parenthetical qualification in the last sentence is crucial, because a careful reading of Campbell’s latest (2018) diatribe against a social justice agenda in teaching and teacher education indicates that she understands such an agenda in a blatantly un-Aristotelian sense to constitute a euphemism for identity politics and political correctness, which she, in turn, considers to be forms of postmodern halitosis. So Campbell may in the end not be the sworn enemy of a social justice agenda in education – understood along Aristotelian lines – that she appears to be at first sight. Nevertheless, she explicitly rejects the moral requirement that teachers need to see themselves, and to act, as agents of social change. Dissenting from such a view and representing the opposite extreme stance on this issue, Alasdair MacIntyre (1987) maintains that teachers should ideally be overt agents of social change. He nostalgically pinpoints a period in history, during the Scottish Enlightenment, when teachers were agents of social change, and he seems to suggest this as an ideal at which to aim (see MacAllister, 2016). At the same time, MacIntyre is not sanguine about the capacities of contemporary teachers to overturn current free-market liberal theory and oppressive capitalist structures – the real reasons, in his view, why the basic necessities of many children are not met in today’s world. As a matter of fact, he thinks that the teacher’s dual role, preparing students for real life and helping them develop their potential, places competing and incommensurable demands on teachers, turning them into no less than ‘the forlorn hope of the culture of western modernity’ (1987, p. 16): a truly tragic predicament. This sticking point is given surprisingly little attention by current flourishing theorists. Even White, whose political viewpoint is essentially left-wing, concedes quite readily that a number of the external necessities are ‘beyond the school’s control’ (2011, p. 30). While that may seem incontestable, it leaves open the question of whether teachers should just bow down to the force of adverse external circumstances affecting student learning or whether they should take up arms on students’ behalf. As could be expected, many overt neo-Aristotelians envisage a considerably active political role for educational agents (see e.g. Curren, 2013), but a pessimistic MacIntyrean could ask, in response, if they are simply trading in unrealistic expectations (cf. also Higgins’s 2003 warnings against the ideal of the selfless ascetic teacher – a recipe for burnout – and van Kessel & Burke, 2018, on teachers using the profession as a compensation for existential terror). Do we really want to pile further moral pressure on an already overburdened profession? Not batting an eyelid when their own students’ interests are undermined by external forces seems to go against the very grain of a moral ideal of teacher professionalism. In that sense, it is difficult to envisage how a committed

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teacher can avoid being an agent of social change (cf. Grant, 2012) and still retain the important educational virtue of trustworthiness (D’Olimpio, 2018). Much wider questions remain, however, about the extension of that moral commitment to the whole world’s student population. A modest estimate, given today’s economic inequalities, is that 20% of children in the world do not enjoy the basic necessities required either to attend school or at least to make their schooling a flourishing experience. From the point of view of Aristotelian flourishing, the question of whether a committed professional teacher has a moral duty to make her voice heard about such injustices – beyond the parochial interests of her (possibly privileged) own classroom or school – is eerily reminiscent of the question of whether it is in order to swallow a camel while straining at a gnat. Perhaps that does turn teaching into a ‘forlorn’ profession, as MacIntyre suggests, but it could be argued that it is better to be forlorn than morally disengaged and aloof. The special commitment, as an educational professional, to make one’s voice heard about the lack of external necessities affecting young learners does not necessarily turn every teacher into a social justice activist of the sort that Campbell deems professionally supererogatory or even distracting. Perhaps a teacher in a privileged Western school could reasonably argue that the interests of young people in the world are best served by devoting all her energy to educating her own students as morally engaged agents, intent on making the world a better place. Yet an argument of that sort can easily degenerate into an unsavoury libertarian breadcrumbs theory, according to which the required external necessities will gradually fall to the poor as breadcrumbs from the tables of the rich. Any viable theory drawing on an Aristotelian conception of flourishing will, arguably, call for a more active political contribution from teachers and other educational agents in order to make sure that the first precondition of student flourishing is universally met. Otherwise, efforts at education for flourishing, merely tailored for individual students in individual classrooms, may terminate in a dead end. As civil-rights activist Dorothy Height put it: ‘If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time’ (cited in Grant, 2012, p. 930).

The second precondition of flourishing: a sense of meaning and purpose Some theorists understand the quest for flourishing simply in terms of a quest for purpose/meaning, or at least fail to make a clear distinction between flourishing and meaning-making (e.g. Flanagan, 2007). I suggest we eschew this equation as unhelpful, both because meaning and purpose are much less demanding ideals than flourishing, and because they constitute necessary but not sufficient conditions of flourishing. De Ruyter explicitly agrees with the latter reason at least; yet she persists in including meaning and purpose as constituents of flourishing (2004,

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pp. 383–384). There is no inconsistency in holding that position, but it is slightly odd from an Aristotelian perspective. On an Aristotelian account, the constituents of flourishing are intrinsically valuable, and as such they need to satisfy strict moral constraints. Despite empirical findings that doing moral deeds lends most purpose to people’s lives (e.g. Hoffman et al., 2014), a sense of meaning and purpose can easily be amoral or even immoral; Hitler had a distinct, ‘higher’ purpose to his actions. For this reason I prefer to view the sense of meaning and purpose as a precondition of flourishing – ‘internal necessities’, if you like: a box that we need to be able to tick for flourishing to materialise. In that sense, meaning and purpose are more similar to performance virtues such as resilience and grit than to moral virtues such as honesty and compassion; and I have taken strong exception elsewhere to giving performance virtues pride of place in education (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 1). Han (2015) has made a bold attempt to elevate purpose to the status of a moral virtue. While he argues convincingly for the amenability of purpose to the formal architectonic of an Aristotelian virtue, he achieves the aim of designating it as a moral, rather than a performance, virtue by (a) moralising its content unduly and (b) giving it a meta-virtuous directive role that is already occupied in Aristotle’s system by phronesis. Yet Han’s article serves as a forceful reminder that if we assume a common understanding of the concept of purpose as relating to something valuable beyond the self, this understanding puts a strain on both the proverbial moral-versus-nonmoral and instrumental-versus-intrinsic dichotomies. The quest for (personal, individual) meaning and purpose is very much a 20th century concern, motivated by approaches such as existentialism in philosophy, attributivism in psychology and a focus on self-concept and self-efficacy in education. Such approaches tend to share an ontological commitment to what can be called hard anti-self-realism: the view that personal selfhood is nothing but personal self-concept – the set of beliefs or attitudes one harbours about oneself (critiqued in Kristjánsson, 2010). This view may seem alien to older approaches, not least ancient ones. Yet Aristotle anticipated some of those concerns by assuming that in order to lead the blessed life of a megalopsychos, one needs not only to be worthy of great things but also to think oneself worthy of them (1985, pp. 97–104 [1123a33–1125a35]). Hence, while remaining a (soft) self-realist, Aristotle incorporated part of self-concept in his very specification of self hood. Also part of Aristotle’s stock-in-trade is the assumption that the phronimos needs to have at her disposal a clear theory of the telos (purpose) of human life, which will include her own telos as an individual. The implication that a person’s eudaimonia cannot be adequately judged independently of the agent’s own understanding, and that she can ‘do well in life’ only by living in accordance with her own understanding of ‘doing well’, thus introduces an element of irreducible subjectivity into Aristotelian theory (Segvic, 2009, pp. 166–169). All that said, while it is not outlandish to add the demand for a sense of personal meaning and purpose

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to a theory of Aristotelian flourishing, my considerations motivating this purported precondition of flourishing are very much informed by modern sensibilities and must be seen therefore as an extension, rather than a reinterpretation, of Aristotelian flourishing. In many contexts, the concepts of meaning and purpose can be used interchangeably, as I do mostly in this section. However, Damon provides a helpful clarification of the subtle difference between them when he specifies purpose as ‘a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self ’ (2008, p. 33). This means that purpose is always directed at a specific, specifiable end, which may or may not be constituted by the means towards it, whereas meaning is more loosely directed at any significant activities. Hence, every ‘purpose’ includes ‘meaning’, but not vice versa. Some researchers seem to be interested in ‘meaning’ only in the sense of ‘higher’ or ‘ultimate’ meaning, even equating that with ‘meaning’ per se (see e.g. Flanagan, 2007). However, that is an unhelpful restriction of the concept, not least in so far as it is applied to young people. Philosophical accounts of meaning abound. I will briefly mention one here, a simple and often-cited characterisation by Susan Wolf according to which meaning arises when ‘subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness’ in an inexorable bond (2000, p. 9). This definition of meaning as ‘fitting fulfilment’ helps fend off cases that we would hesitate to ascribe meaning to, both of apparently important actions performed with boredom, alienation or listlessness, and of subjectively valued but objectively worthless activities such as someone deriving satisfaction from drinking saucers of mud. Wolf makes the correct conceptual point that the objective worth underlying meaning need not be moral worth; her normative claim that non-moral meaning often can and should trump moral meaning is more contestable, on the other hand, and is indeed taken to task by one of the commentators in her book (2000, pp. 90–91). More recent efforts do not seem to be improvements, however. For example, Metz’s (2013) preferred characterisation, according to which meaning in life ‘is a matter of positively orientating one’s and others’ rational nature towards fundamental objects’ (p. 239), smacks of a tendency to replace ordinary meaning with a focus on superior, idealised instances. Given the nature of the meaning concept, there is reason to favour an approach such as that of Wolf ’s of highlighting the basic concept, according to which the concept requires only – in the ‘satis concept’ sense explained in Chapter 1 – a combination of some subjective attraction and objective attractiveness. This explains why meaning is rightly seen as a necessary but not a sufficient condition of flourishing (see e.g. White, 2011, p. 109; kudos to him for driving this point forcefully home). A young firefighter who loses her life in rescuing a child from a burning house is a paradigmatic example of someone engaging in a meaningful activity; and it would be unfair to refuse to call her life, however short, meaningful. Yet if we characterise her life,

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given up at an early age, as flourishing overall, we are – as Aristotle would put it – ‘speaking nonsense’. The lower demandingness of meaning also explains why the lives of young children can typically be seen as over-saturated with meaning. In every simple game they play, subjective attraction and objective attractiveness seem to meet admirably. Unhappily, however, this simple fact about children is not always reflected in their work when they enter school. It is almost a truism that for many students, school work fails to become a flourishing-instantiating activity simply because it does not carry meaning for them. Instead, they become ensnared by anxiety, emptiness or apathy. Notably, this condition does not seem confined to low-ranking countries in international league tables for grade attainment. For example, Kwon’s careful ethnographic study of highschool classrooms in South Korea – a country that usually occupies one of the top spots in PISA comparisons – revealed high levels of disaffection and disengagement, as well as a school ethos permeated by an oppressive militant culture (Kwon, Kristjánsson & Walker, 2017). William Damon is the preeminent current scholar on meaning and purpose in classroom contexts. Bent on identifying differences between students who are flourishing and those who are floundering, Damon (2008) and his colleagues surveyed over twelve hundred young people between the ages of 12 and 26, interviewing a quarter of them in depth. The findings (2008, p. 60) revealed that only 20% of the interviewees were fully purposeful. Approximately 25% were dreamers, with purposeful aspirations but little effort to act upon them; about 30% were dabblers, who had tried to imbue their school work and life with meaning in various ways but without ever finding their niche; and 25% were disengaged, showing virtually no purpose or meaning-­searching aspirations. In a 2009 BBC film (to which Dr Karen Bohlin directed my attention) called An Education, sixteen-year old Jenny Mellor explains to the headmistress at her prestigious boarding school why she is leaving school to marry a suitor twice her age. She says she has found school boring: ‘It’s not enough to educate us any more, Mrs. Walters. You’ve got to tell us why you’re doing it’. Insensitive to this call, the headmistress simply repeats platitudes about studying being ‘of course hard and boring’, but still worth doing for the benefits: an object lesson in how modern teachers should not respond to students’ call for a justification of meaning. However, the question still remains what the ideal role of the teacher should be in helping students satisfy this relevant precondition of flourishing at school. More specific questions beckon nowadays about how teachers can best prepare students for life in a ‘post-work world’ in which most menial jobs will have been taken over by robots and the majority of people need to look for purpose in non-work-related activities (Harari, 2017). Damon thinks that the main drawback on the teacher’s role here may be that the ‘phenomenon of purposelessness is not widely enough recognized

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by those to whom young people look for guidance’ (2008, p. 21), with questions about meaning and purpose being systematically squeezed out of the school day (2008, p. 111). A more cynical view would be that teachers often cannot help students find meaning in school work because what is being studied actually does not have objective worth: say, cramming for exams. Part of the problem may also be that teachers often feel uncomfortable and lacking in confidence when talking to students about personal values and ways of meaning-making (Formby & Wolstenholme, 2012). It does not help either that educational research on how to make classroom experiences meaningful is scarce, and the little of it that exists indicates that subjective meaning often does not align well to objective meaning in classroom contexts (Reber, 2018). Damon provides a long list of suggestions for teachers, ranging from placing the ‘Why’-question explicitly at the front of every school subject to bringing in exemplary figures, potential role models, to spark interest (2008, pp. 149, 173). To end on a positive note, Bundick (2011) reports on the significant impact of an apparently simple intervention of a one-time interview with students about purpose, leading on average to benefits for the goal-directed component of purpose nine months later. If the conceptual requirements of meaning are as undemanding as suggested above, it may be that helping students find meaning in school work is not as daunting a task as some teachers seem to think it is. However, as repeatedly highlighted already, finding school work meaningful is not tantamount to being a flourishing student. It is just a first step.

Paternalism and elitism? If we accept the political implications of Nussbaum’s take on Aristotelian flourishing, briefly mentioned and endorsed earlier in this chapter, those will be far-reaching. Instead of state neutrality on major issues, the job of the state’s governing bodies becomes ‘broad and deep’ (1990, p. 214). This is because judgements about how a country is doing, and how well its government is performing, will depend to a great extent on how its citizens are (made) able to function in central human ways. The chief aim of the state thus becomes distributing to individuals the conditions under which a flourishing human life can be chosen and lived: to move each and every person across a threshold of capability into circumstances where the necessary preconditions of flourishing have been satisfied. These political implications open up cans of worms, however. Is the danger not, then, that state technocrats will start to impose ‘their own definition of the good life onto “the man and woman in the street”?’ (Evans, 2018, p. 25). What about the standard liberal motto that ‘the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate’ (Locke, 2016, p. 129; written in 1689)? It remains to say something here about two major politically motivated criticisms to which

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eudaimonic accounts in general, as well as their more specific educational incarnations, are typically subjected, namely that they are paternalistic and elitist (see e.g. Noddings, 2003; Siegel, 2015). To start with the first criticism, ‘paternalism’ can mean a number of different things, and different versions of it are varyingly difficult to counter. It is fairly easy to dismiss claims along the lines that parents do not want schools to convey a substantive conception of the good life to their children. Repeated surveys show that parents want schools to cater to the needs of the good life of ‘whole child’, not just the child qua learner, and even if they did not want that, there is simply no logical alternative to schools ‘imposing’ a conception of well-being on students before they become mature enough to decide upon one for themselves, because their characters cannot be held in a limbo until adolescence (see further in Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 2). For example, through their everyday reactions, teachers constantly enact and express certain conceptions of well-being that serve as examples to students. A whole-school decision to focus exclusively on exam preparation represents nothing less than a certain conception of what it means for a student to achieve well-being (MacAllister, 2018). And even if a school deliberately decides to convey the message that no objectively true conception of the good life exists, that position represents a certain controversial stance – which could then also be deemed paternalistic. Opting for some answer or another to the question what student well-being consists in is thus inescapable; if it is not Aristotelian flourishing, then it is some other contestable conception of well-being, because instantiations of well-being or ill-being are the form that human life takes, and no substance can opt out of its form, on the Aristotelian picture, except by deciding not to exist (cf. Rabbås, 2015). Education is, as Aristotle would have reminded us, a form of political activity (Machura, 2018). There is no way out of this predicament, and Brighouse (who is far from being an anti-liberal paternalist) goes as far as claiming that schools are failing in their duties if they do not draw, in their work, upon the most reliable scientific information about student flourishing (2006, p. 52). Slightly more complex versions of the paternalistic objection concern the way in which theoretical conceptions of flourishing are often designed: namely, top-down from academic towers rather than bottom-up from the public, and also the limited extent to which a eudaimonic conception of well-­ being can be sensitive to individual differences. It so happens that Aristotelian flourishing, upon which my theory in this book draws and expands, has unique resources to rebut both those criticisms. The Aristotelian method of deriving the criteria of flourishing is based upon a reflective equilibrium between the views of the ‘many’ and those of the ‘wise’ (Flanagan, 2007, p. 121; cf. Aristotle 1985, p. 173 [1145b1–7]). A view that flouted lay conceptions of what flourishing comprises would, from Aristotle’s perspective, be a nonstarter. Furthermore, Aristotelian flourishing is singularly well equipped to tackle well-being pluralism (with respect to individual differences), as distinct

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from well-being subjectivism, through Aristotle’s insistence that virtue, and hence flourishing, is relative to individual constitution. The golden mean of virtue is ‘not the same for everyone’ and ‘in the object’, but rather is ‘relative to us’. For instance, a diet conducive to flourishing for me is not the same for Milo, the athlete (1985, pp. 42– 43 [1106a26–b7]). I mentioned this feature of Aristotelian theory in Chapter 1, and it links well to the insights of what Mautner calls the contemporary ‘liberalism of flourishing’, harking back to Mill, that human flourishing is always unique to a particular person and that no instantiations of human flourishing are the same (Mautner, 2018, p. 60). Alleging that this approach to flourishing is essentially paternalistic is simply ‘baseless’ (2018, p. 3). None of what I have said so far excludes the possibility that a conception of Aristotelian flourishing can be taught by a state, a school or a teacher in ways that are paternalistic and even infantilising. I agree to a certain extent with Evans’s (2018) contention that a politics of well-being can be potentially illiberal, scientist, simplistic or just plain patronising. Many of the same considerations that Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2018b) helpfully invoke in their discussion of the appropriate parental attitude towards children’s future flourishing will apply, mutatis mutandis, to schools and teachers. Young people’s autonomy must be respected, and the attitude towards their future flourishing should be one of ‘ultimate hope’ rather than narrowly pre-determined expectations. What I want to drive home here is that focusing overtly on student flourishing need not, in principle, involve paternalistic attitudes or homiletic interventions. As the sceptic Evans (2018) himself acknowledges, an Aristotelian focus on phronesis development is simply not compatible with such attitudes and interventions. There is thus nothing in the nature of making student flourishing the explicit aim of schooling that renders it essentially paternalistic or indoctrinating. The devil lies in the details of the execution, rather than in the aim as such (cf. also Hand, 2018, for some helpful general advice on how to avoid indoctrination, although he is not a flourishing theorist and has a much more restrictive view than I do on what education in values may legitimately involve). Aristotelian flourishing is certainly elitist in a certain sense, by presupposing that a flourishing life is available only to a given select group of people, if we take on board Aristotle’s view on the nature of women, slaves and manual workers. However, those are typically disposed of rather quickly as empirical anomalies in contemporary versions of Aristotelian flourishing, so little may seem to remain of this objection. Yet if we assume that an account of well-being is elitist if it in fact excludes certain people from attaining flourishing, then Aristotelian flourishing is certainly elitist in at least two distinct ways. It acknowledges that the winds of misfortune, as well as our own misdemeanours, will exclude many of us from leading flourishing lives, and it also presupposes that lives are amenable to differential qualitative evaluations in virtue of their respective attainments of the

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criteria of flourishing. These may appear to some readers as rather innocuous representations of elitism, but they may, nevertheless, suffice to render any version of Aristotelian flourishing unpalatable to followers of some moral paradigms, such as, for example, hard-core Kantians. I return to the charge of elitism in a different context in Chapter 4. In sum, neither the paternalistic nor the elitist objections are fatal to an Aristotle-inspired theory of human flourishing, but responses to them do involve concessions that will not be to everybody’s liking. If they did not repel anyone, the distinctiveness of Aristotelian flourishing would probably be lost in any case; we would end up with the ‘blandness’ that White warned against if we adopt too bloated a conception of flourishing. That said, it is not entirely clear whether the modern educational flourishing advocates such as White, Brighouse, de Ruyter and Wolbert do share the Aristotelian stance towards elitism. What is clear, at any rate, is that none of them believes that every student will somehow automatically achieve flourishing, irrespective of educational interventions and their own efforts. In that sense, flourishing as an ideal aim of education remains a tall order.

An ideal or a non-ideal theory of flourishing? Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2018a) have recently written an intriguing article exploring what kind of theory on education a flourishing theory should be – and critiquing (many) current theories for not falling into the most serviceable category (see also Wolbert, 2018). The issues raised by these three authors merit a discussion at the end of this chapter on theories of flourishing in education. To cut a long story short, I do share some of the sensibilities motivating their argument, but I also consider the fundamental distinction they wish to make in their article to be undercut by its lack of conceptual clarity. Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel distinguish between ideal and non-ideal theories of flourishing and argue that because of the ideal nature of most, if not all, of the theories that I have canvassed in this chapter – including possibly my own – they fail to impact educational discourse and practice in the way they should. If by ‘ideal’ they simply meant ‘(too) abstract’, I would second their underlying assumption whole-heartedly. I argued in Chapter 1 and have done so in more detail elsewhere (see e.g. Kristjánsson, 2013; 2018) that when trading in issues such as psychological well-being and educational practice, theorists need to stick their heads above the philosophical parapet and be unafraid to engage with messy empirical realities. By all means, let us avoid the poker face of academic philosophy here. However, the claim that the three flourishing theorists make is more specific than simply being about the gap between abstract theory and concrete practice. It has to do with certain conceptualisations in the flourishing discourse that foreground idealisations of actual school/classroom/student situations.

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Again, my general sympathies lies with the three authors. One of the most frustrating features of Aristotle’s moral and developmental psychology is how, even though he wants to distance himself from Plato’s ivory-tower idealisations, he retains his master’s habit of defining concepts with respect to their most fully realised instances. For example, he focuses on the phronimos (the fully virtuous person with ironclad traits of character) as the end-product of successful character education, while acknowledging that, in actual fact at any given time, most people find themselves somewhere between the levels of incontinence (moral awareness but lack of self-control) and continence (self-control) (1985, p. 190 [1150a15]) Not only that, but when Aristotle talks about those who have reached the level of the phronimos, he describes people who are fully virtuous rather than ‘virtuous enough’ (in the ‘satis concept’ sense). Aristotelian philosopher Howard Curzer (2017) has mounted a powerful critique of idealisations in virtue ethics, including those offered by Aristotle himself, for being epistemologically, ontologically, normatively and motivationally problematic. I endorse every word in Curzer’s critique, and I am sure that Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel would, too. Again, however, the targets of Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel’s (2018a) critique are more specific and more unique to the flourishing discourse. Their claim is that most current flourishing theories in education are ideal in the sense of trading in idealisations of students, teachers, schools and their situations, rather than non-ideal in the sense of referring to the actual situations and offering action-guiding, policy-relevant advice on how to transition from the ideal to the practical. A distinction can be made here between ‘utopian idealisation’ and ‘realistic idealism’ (Wolbert, 2018, pp. 10–11). Plato’s theory of education and Aristotle’s theory of the flourishing of the ideal phronimos would presumably count as examples of the former. Examples of the latter are given by referring to the theories of White, Brighouse and de Ruyter (in her earlier work). Those offer realistic ideals or blueprints of flourishing schools and students, but they do not involve ‘full integration’ of the theoretical into the practical because the theory is not ‘constructed around the actual’ (Wolbert, de Ruyter & Schinkel, 2018a). At first sight, this criticism seems to be misplaced in the case of someone like John White, whose (2011) book very much reads like a practical guide on how to implement a flourishing agenda in actual UK state schools. However, even in the case of White, the remaining worry expressed by the three authors is that his advice is built around the assumption that ‘if the minimal criteria (e.g. White’s “basic needs”) are met, then children can be equipped for flourishing in such and such a way’, rather than addressing head-on the (moral-cum-political) question of how those minimal criteria can be met in the real world of today’s Britain. There is some ambiguity in the article by the three authors about whether my own (at that time) under-developed theory of flourishing in education (from an article predating this book) is to be tarred with the same brush as White’s. On the one hand, by distinguishing, as I did earlier in this chapter,

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between preconditions and constituents of flourishing, I anticipate being liable, like White, to the charge of taking for granted that the preconditions can be satisfied and spending most of my efforts on the potential cultivation of the constituents, especially the virtues. On the other hand, the authors take my thoughts about the political role of the teacher as an agent of social change as representative of an agenda that is all too often missing in the flourishing discourse because of the narrowly ideal, theoretical nature of this discourse. The ambiguity about my ‘theory’ arguably belies a certain lack of conceptual clarity in their article about the precise distinction between a theory that is ‘realistically ideal’ and one that is ‘non-ideal’. The former term is a bit of an oxymoron, in any case. I am not sure how a theory can be ‘realistically ideal’ without offering some translation of the ideal into the actual. Looking at this from the opposite direction, a non-ideal theory of flourishing presumably needs to draw on theoretical insights in order to count as a theory in the first place, rather than just an accumulation of helpful empirical observations. If I were to offer a detailed critique of White’s (2011) book, I would probably complain about its being too practical in places and not elaborating sufficiently on its philosophical underpinnings. At all events, if a theory of flourishing does not count as ‘non-ideal’ unless it takes a stand on every possible socio-political issue that needs to be put in order before educational reform can be successfully implemented, this seems to amount to a new demand for idealisation: the idealisation of the non-ideal – one more oxymoron. There is a lot more to be said about the thought-provoking distinctions made in the article by Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2018a). However, I cannot shake the impression that it is bedevilled by a deep ambiguity about the boundary between the ‘realistically ideal’ and the ‘non-ideal’. A simpler and more unambiguous stance on many of the same issues is on offer in Ruth Cigman’s recent book (2018). Although that book is not explicitly about flourishing, but addresses the (arguably related) concept of ‘cherishing’ (a mode of human connection and commitment, to be practised and cultivated at school), Cigman’s engaging text takes no prisoners, and she exercises, with considerable gusto, the philosophical prerogative to act as the curmudgeonly controversialist. Her main target is, like that of Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2018a), certain idealisations in educational discourse, characterised by what she calls ‘unpopulated philosophy’ and bypassing ‘individual dramas’ (Cigman, 2018, Introduction). What she is particularly focusing on are under-explored scenarios and brief examples of stock characters used to illustrate conceptual and educational points (as I go on to do, for example, in Chapter 3). As in the case of Wolbert and her colleagues, I do have sympathies with the general suspicion of under-developed educational idealisations. But the way Cigman frames her criticism of ‘unpopulated’ scenarios is so sweeping in compass that it seems to target a whole distinguished tradition of argumentation in philosophy, based on the Wittgensteinian assumption that there are clouds of philosophy within each drop of grammar, and that even truncated

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snapshots of situations and characters can reveal relevant distinctions that may otherwise be missed. What is the alternative? Cigman seems to favour thicker, more engaged descriptions derived from great works of literature, for example. However, we must be mindful of Borges’s famous point that a truly complete map of a place is nothing less than a replica of the place itself, and even detailed character descriptions from Tolstoy and others of his ilk will always remain under-determined to a certain extent. I strongly recommend Cigman’s book and the critique by the three authors of idealisations in the flourishing discourse as important food for thought. However, I have decided to end this chapter by looking, so to speak, at the other side of the coin. If we understand the concerns expressed by Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2018a) to be most directly about the lack of overt political and policy-driven agendas in the flourishing discourse, there may actually be a simpler reason than they suggest for the relative absence of those topics from the literature, and that reason has to do with authors being too practical rather than too idealistic. If I had a couple of hours to spend on enhancing flourishing in school contexts, I would much rather spend them with a group of secondary-school students in a classroom, discussing the implications of Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’, than on giving a talk to civil servants or politicians. Evelyn Waugh’s idea of hell was being tied down in a jungle clearing, forced to listen to the collected works of Charles Dickens being read over and over to him. My idea of hell would probably be giving a talk about flourishing at a party-political conference. The lack of a ‘realistic, policy-driven’ agenda, in the flourishing discourse on how to change schooling, may thus be due to the practical orientation of many of the agents in that discourse, who are more used to offering down-toearth advice to individual schools and teachers than to suggesting blueprints for the overhaul of societal structures. This orientation is not just a political cop-out. Unlike Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel, I admire White’s work on flourishing for the bold imaginative leaps it takes in an idealistic direction by proposing the disbanding of school subjects and the complete rethinking of school curricula (although my own ‘idealism’ would be less radical than his). Idealism in the flourishing discourse should not be ruled out of court. In general, I think we need more, not fewer, idealists in education – and in Chapter 7, I go on to argue that one way to learn about flourishing is to try to model ourselves on exemplary ideals of a flourishing life, as distinct from emulating individuals who are flourishing in exemplary ways.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 Does the invocation of a flourishing agenda in schools require the tearing up of school subjects, as John White thinks, or would less radical measures suffice? If the latter, what would those measures involve, in practical terms?

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2 Do you agree with Alasdair MacIntyre that teachers, representing the interests of students worldwide, have a moral duty to act as agents of socio-political change? Or is Elizabeth Campbell right that this role lies outside the responsibilities of the teacher? Is there any tenable middle-ground position here? 3 Would you expect research in the country in which you are working to reveal the same disconcerting findings as Damon’s research in the USA: that only 20% of young people are ‘fully purposeful’? What would be the best way to find this out, methodologically? And if the findings are as bleak, what can be done to remedy the situation? 4 How might the idea of flourishing as the ideal aim of education be implemented in schools in ways that are paternalistic and indoctrinating? Can such ‘ways’ be avoided, or is there something in the nature of this ideal that makes it liable to paternalistic interventions? 5 Are the theories of flourishing in education described in this chapter too idealistic for their own good? Should we, rather, aim at non-ideal theories of flourishing, and if so, what would such theories look like?

Chapter 3

The flourishing–happiness concordance thesis Do these two always go hand in hand?

Subjective versus objective well-being Are flourishing students always happy? Is being happy a sure sign of flourishing? A positive answer to those questions would make life much easier for theorists of flourishing in education. However, unfortunately, I do not think we can answer these questions positively except by succumbing to the sort of ‘utopian idealism’ against which Wolbert, de Ruyter and Schinkel (2018a) rightly warn. Real life is messier than that. As an advance warning, let me note that the lessons of this chapter may seem disconcerting for flourishing enthusiasts. However, in my view, they seem so only if we romanticise flourishing too much. I hope, rather, that this chapter serves as a reminder of the need to keep one’s aspirations within the parameters of Owen Flanagan’s ‘minimal psychological realism’: the principle asserting that theorists must ensure, when constructing a theory or an ideal, that the character, decision processing and behaviour prescribed are ‘possible, or are perceived to be possible, for creatures like us’ (Flanagan, 1991, p. 32). The aim of this chapter is, more specifically, to explore, and ultimately cast doubt upon, aspirations to bridge the traditional divide between subjective and objective accounts of well-being (and to deconstruct the standard debate between their proponents) through a psychological concordance thesis, according to which objective and subjective well-being will, for psychological reasons, go hand in hand. More theoretically speaking, the concordance thesis holds that the regions of subjective and objective well-being – when correctly conceptualised and measured – penetrate each other so thoroughly that neither can be set against the other as its anti-thesis. While the background to this debate is well-rehearsed of late, the angle from which I propose to investigate the concordance thesis bears explanation; hence, some context-setting is in order at the outset. Human well-being has recently been studied with more vigour than ever before. It helps that a number of economists and educationists have joined the standard line-up of psychologists and philosophers on the well-being bandwagon: a result of increasing disillusionment in economic circles with GDP

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as the be-all and end-all proxy for well-being, and in educational circles with grade attainment as the ultimate prize of successful schooling. Considerable consensus exists across philosophies, cultures and religions in seeing well-­ being as the ungrounded grounder of all human strivings. In some theories, ‘well-being’ is simply defined as ‘whatever ultimately grounds any other (subsidiary) human aims’, in which case the claim that well-being is the final goal of human life becomes a truism. It then encompasses views as diverse as Kantianism and religious fundamentalism, according to which the ultimate goal of life is unpacked as obedience either to the ‘moral law’ or to ‘God’, respectively. More parsimoniously and informatively, however, well-being is seen to lay the basis for consequentialist or teleological world-views, for example of the utilitarian or virtue ethical kind, that explicitly incorporate the terms ‘well-being’, ‘happiness’ and ‘flourishing’ into their substantive accounts of the ultimate source of value. While recent research on well-being may seem to take us in a bewildering variety of directions, with conceptualisations and interpretations running rampant (see e.g. Vittersø, 2016), the different accounts typically seem, on closer inspection, to congeal into one of the two anti-theses of subjectivism or objectivism. I explained the difference between those in very simple terms in Chapter 1, but that explanation bears some repeating and elaborating here. The subjective accounts focus either on pleasure, understood as high positive affect and low negative affect (making up so-called hedonic accounts), or on life satisfaction, with the two often combined in measurements as subjective well-being (SWB). In contrast, the objective ones tend to hark back to the Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia – constituting flourishing or eudaimonic accounts. Each type of account comes with its own familiar pathology, as I reviewed briefly in Chapter 1. Moreover, debates between proponents of those different accounts seem repetitive to the point of having grown stale. Unfortunately, there are no immaculate perceptions here or Archimedean starting points. The current stalemate is compounded by two further factors. One has to do with the terminological disarray in the field. For example, the word ‘happiness’ is sometimes used synonymously with ‘well-being’, is sometimes used as a translation of Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, and is sometimes applied to subjective well-being only. In order to avoid overusing the unwieldy terms ‘subjective well-being’ and ‘objective well-being’, I henceforth refer to the former as ‘happiness’ and to the latter as ‘flourishing’. Although this may perhaps be seen as a controversial stipulation of meaning, I do consider the term ‘happiness’ in ordinary language to correspond reasonably well to the technical term ‘subjective well-being’ (cf. Tiberius, 2006, p. 494). Similarly, ‘flourishing’ captures satisfactorily the content of most objective-well-being accounts, although some of them depart substantially from Aristotle’s original notion of eudaimonia, as we have seen in previous chapters. The flourishing theories in education that I have explained and explored already – including

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my own – all depart to a certain extent from Aristotle’s, although I would argue that those departures are better characterised as ‘significant’ than as ‘substantial’. In any case, because the heterogeneity of designators confuses newcomers to the field no end, some simplifications may be warranted. The second compounding factor relates to the diverging research interests of psychologists, on the one hand, and philosophers, on the other. Their explorations of well-being sometimes seem to run on parallel lines without convergence, thus confounding readers who wish to peruse both academic sources. The problem is not so much that the majority of philosophers may incline towards flourishing and psychologists towards happiness (albeit with some notable exceptions), it is rather that they do not seem to be looking at these concepts through the same lens and often do not cite each other’s work. This standoff has a varied methodological, theoretical and motivational origin (cf. Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 10). Philosophers often prioritise conceptual rigour (and the study of conceptual relations) over predictive value (and the study of empirical relations). Moreover, they tend not be as hung up over the ‘fact–value distinction’ as are psychologists, who often equate it with the ‘is–ought distinction’ (in my view wrongly, see Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 4). What this boils down to is some degree of mutual annoyance. For example, psychologists fail to understand why philosophers are not conversant with the latest empirical findings, or even do not seem to take them seriously. Philosophers are baffled why psychologists ignore established philosophical distinctions, like Mill’s (1863) qualitative distinction between types of pleasures on grounds of their fecundity and depth, such that no quantity or intensity of ‘lower pleasures’ (e.g. eating chocolate) can ever compensate for the loss of a ‘higher pleasure’ (e.g. a loving relationship). All this said, it is easy to over-egg the extent to which philosophers and psychologists plead ignorance of each other’s work on well-being (see e.g. Tiberius, 2006; MacLeod, 2015, p. 1074). In his 2015 article, MacLeod argues persuasively that the mutual lack of engagement is mostly unwarranted, as philosophical and psychological accounts of well-being can – conflicting terminologies notwithstanding – be plotted along the same continuum of views, ranging from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism. His ‘unifying rather than adversarial’ approach (2015, p. 1083) shows that, far from being as different as chalk and cheese, psychologies and philosophies of well-being are basically addressing the same fundamental questions about the nature of the good life. I follow MacLeod in the present chapter in seeing psychologists and philosophers as engaged in the same problematics, and I refrain from distinguishing between their views on grounds of their disciplinary origins only. As already noted, the flourishing–happiness debate seems deadlocked. Yet these supposed anti-theses are protean and treacherous, often pretending to be one another. Furthermore, efforts have been under way for a long time to heal the schism in question with various hybrid or mixed accounts. For example, the insights of Ryff’s (1989) account of psychological well-being and

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Ryan and Deci’s (2001) self-determination theory make conciliatory moves in the direction of flourishing–happiness hybridity. Although both accounts tend to be categorised on the objective side of the spectrum – because they depart from a happiness-only orthodoxy in psychology – they do incorporate subjective elements also and thus support the idea of some sort of flourishing– happiness complementarity. So far my context-setting has been conducted at a relatively high level of abstraction. The practical question that beckons is if it really matters whether well-being is measured subjectively or objectively: do the outcomes differ significantly? Would those differences matter for flourishing education at school, for example? The short answer is that the empirical evidence here is both mixed and complex. Notice first that advocates of well-being as happiness unhesitatingly acknowledge the existence of various objective factors, such as education and income, as predictors of happiness, and the existence of other objective factors as predicted by happiness, for instance health (see e.g. Diener, 2012), but they do not consider those factors to be constituents of well-being themselves (unless they understand health, for instance, in terms of ‘feeling healthy’). It is more instructive, therefore, to look at instruments of (putative) objective well-being. Consider, for example, Ryff’s well-known psychological well-being (PWB) scale. As a whole, it correlates well with scales of SWB (on average r = 0.32; see Keyes, Shmotkin & Ryff, 2002). Interestingly, in a large European study, the correlation between life satisfaction and flourishing (as defined there) turned out to be exactly the same, namely 0.32 (Huppert & So, 2009, p. 6). However, the devil lies in the detail. There are some dimensions on Ryff’s scale that do not correlate well with SWB, especially positive relations with others, personal growth, purpose in life and autonomy (Ryff & Keyes, 1995, p. 723). Ryff takes this finding to indicate that key aspects of positive psychological functioning – that she takes to represent objective well-being – are not captured by standard measures of SWB (Ryff, 1989, p. 1077). Here is the fly in the ointment, however. Ryff’s scale of objective well-­ being, and most other similar scales (including the one from Huppert & So’s European study, 2009), aspire to measure the putative objective factors (say, relationships, engagements, the exercise of capabilities/virtues) not objectively but rather through self-reports of ‘eudaimonic experiences’. On Tiberius and Hall’s plausible characterisation of an objective account as holding that ‘there are at least some components of well-being whose status does not depend on people’s attitudes toward them’ (2010, p. 213), Ryff’s scale scarcely passes muster as a measure of objective well-being. To the sceptical philosopher, it would be no surprise that a person’s self-reported positive experiences of subjective and objective factors correlate well with one another. What matters to the philosopher – especially if she happens to subscribe to a flourishing account of well-being – is whether flourishing, measured objectively, correlates with SWB. This is not to say that subjective (self-report)

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measures of objective well-being cannot yield important information above and beyond SWB measures. For example, Huppert and So’s European study (2013) shows significant and salutary differences between different countries in terms of self-reported flourishing. Moreover, the instrument designed for this study is based on the ingenious idea of identifying and measuring mirror opposites of the symptoms of common mental disorders. What classic flourishing theorists in the Aristotelian tradition will complain about, however, is that this instrument does not measure flourishing objectively and that it misses crucial components such as the exhibition of moral and intellectual virtues (see below). This is a serious complication. Indeed, it is not only that there can be both objective and subjective measures of objective well-being; people’s notorious lack of self-transparency (what Haybron, 2008, calls their ‘affective ignorance’), coupled with temptations of social desirability, means that people can also be subjectively wrong about their own subjective well-being. As I noted in Chapter 1, students sinking into depression may, for example, often be the last to realise that they are not as happy as before and may continue to score high on standard SWB self-report measures, although their friends and family would have begun to rate their ‘real’ happiness as low. Haybron (2008, chap. 10) makes heavy weather of this often un-accounted-for feature of happiness measures, although he does seem to think that discrepancies between subjectively and objectively measured happiness are likely to wash out over large samples. He also nourishes the fond hope that ‘most people’ are not ‘that delusional’ (2016, p. 50). So to return to the original question about flourishing–happiness correlations, more will potentially be gained by exploring associations between flourishing, measured objectively, and happiness. There is quite a long tradition of measuring supposed objective features of well-being objectively; MacLeod (2015, p. 1075) cites the UN Human Development Index as an ‘extreme example’ that judges the ‘well-being of nations’ exclusively in terms of years of education, gross domestic product and longevity. Comparisons of well-being understood in this radically objective flourishing-sense and happiness are far and few between, however. Oswald and Wu (2010) constitute an interesting exception, with their state-to-state comparisons of objective data about flourishing indicators in the USA and average scores of SWB. The indicators include factors such as temperature, sunshine, national parks, environmental ‘greenness’, commuting time, violent crime, air quality, spending on education and cost of living. Astoundingly, Oswald and Wu demonstrate a correlation of 0.6 between a weighted average of those factors and a state’s average SWB score – an outcome that vastly exceeds the norm in behavioural science. Nevertheless, flourishing theorists, especially of the Aristotelian type, may continue to grumble that this study does not really measure associations between flourishing and happiness, but only between some of the

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preconditions of flourishing and happiness. Thus, as we saw in Chapter 2, in Aristotelian theory a reasonably clear distinction can be made between the preconditions of eudaimonia (including many of the factors that Oswald and Wu identify) and the constituents of eudaimonia. The latter include, most prominently, the exercise of moral/civic and intellectual virtues, guided by the integrative meta-virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom. Although the distinction between preconditions and constituents of flourishing can be tenuous and difficult to sustain – either in Aristotelian theory or in educational practice – some attempt must be made to measure the constituents if the aim is to provide empirical ballast for a flourishing–happiness harmony thesis. Notably, given their avowed Aristotelian provenance (Fowers, 2016), the most glaring omission in almost all current measures of flourishing is the absence of virtue-related constructs (as correctly pointed out by Proctor & Tweed, 2016, p. 280; cf. VanderWeele, 2017). When Huta (2016, p. 216) lists the core elements of flourishing, she talks about ‘authenticity’, ‘meaning’, ‘excellence’ and ‘growth’ in terms of a eudaimonic orientation, and although ‘excellence’ includes ‘striving for high standards and quality in one’s ethics’, the virtues as such are not given pride of place in this classification. The virtues are however, according to Aristotelian theory, the most significant constituents of flourishing. Moreover, for those to pass muster in measurements of flourishing, what must be captured is not only self-reported virtue (as in the currently popular VIA measures, based on Peterson & Seligman, 2004) but rather objective indicators of virtue (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 3). So, the most significant objective components of Aristotelian flourishing are either not measured at all, or they are just measured subjectively. To sum up, if the hope was that questions of flourishing–happiness harmony could be settled by dint of empirical evidence, that hope has not borne fruit yet, specifically because of the lack of suitable objective instruments to measure flourishing on a standard (Aristotle-inspired) conception. The only available recourse at the moment is, therefore, to return to theory. MacLeod (2015) helpfully refers to accounts that somehow want to harmonise subjective and objective features of well-being as ‘sobjectivist’. I propose to go beyond MacLeod and divide well-being ‘sobjectivism’ into two main categories: harmony as complementarity and harmony as concordance. The mixed accounts of Ryff, Ryan and Deci, and the later (2011) Seligman, already mentioned in various places, will fall into the former category. They aim at weaving the warp and weft of objective and subjective well-being together by measuring both and adding the findings together. While the idea is that flourishing and happiness feed into or condition each other in various ways, and can be difficult to separate in practice, they can be held separate in theory. A good life is a life that has an abundance of both. The concordance thesis goes a step further by assuming that flourishing and happiness (when correctly conceptualised) are two sides of the same coin. Because an impediment to one will also be an impediment to the other, and they form an interlocking

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psychological set, it is in principle enough to measure one to know the state of the other. I will not say more about complementarity in this chapter but will focus on the stronger thesis of flourishing–happiness concordance. In the following section, I approach it from two sides: that of a psychologist (Sheldon, 2013), who thinks we can know all there is to know about flourishing by tapping into happiness, and that of an Aristotelian philosopher (Annas, 2008; 2011), who thinks that we can account for (true, proper) happiness on the grounds of the constituents of flourishing only (more specifically, the virtues). I will spend more energy on dissecting the Aristotelian argument, both because that is more relevant to the aims of the present book and because it makes, psychologically, more radical claims than Sheldon’s. In subsequent sections, I then explore possible counter-examples to the concordance thesis and elicit their implications.

The concordance thesis: two varieties Psychologist Kennon Sheldon (2013) has written a sweeping, provocative chapter that takes swipes at the idea of flourishing as a uniquely identifiable psychological state that stands in need of its own measure. Sheldon is not simply rooting for SWB – in which case his paper would be just one more piece of happiness rhetoric or rebuttal of a weaker complementarity thesis. Rather, Sheldon argues that what interests flourishing advocates can, for psychological reasons, be wholly and satisfactorily captured by SWB. Sheldon challenges large discursive traditions in a relatively short paper; his brisk presentation may, therefore, create the impression that he is too eager to cut the Gordian knot. However, it is easy to see where he is coming from and how his argument could be developed further. Sheldon’s thesis relies on what he calls an ‘organismic perspective upon human nature’. The processes that make us grow and attain psychologically positive outcomes do not come in two separate boxes called ‘the objective’ and ‘the subjective’. Rather those processes operate at a deep level of personality and encompass the whole person. In normal (or at least ‘optimal’) moral functioning, there is ‘self-concordance’ within the individual among goals, the satisfaction of universal needs (which Sheldon understands more or less along self-determination-theory lines) and happiness. In other words, if the individual is able to pursue goals that accurately represent her unique developing interests, values and dispositions – say, in a classroom context – her needs are satisfied and happiness follows naturally. Because it promotes psychological need-satisfaction, self-concordance therefore predicts SWB. This means that the psychological qualities that flourishing theorists call ‘eudaimonic’ and want to measure separately are actually part of ‘happiness itself ’. The remainder of Sheldon’s paper is spent providing evidence for the claim that the predictors of SWB turn out to be exactly the kinds of things

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eudaimonists cherish. Most important, Sheldon thinks that SWB measures do already in fact – contrary to common objections – discriminate well between lower and higher forms of happiness. They do so simply by recording that people who are on a self-concordant life trajectory actually score higher on SWB than those (e.g. crass materialists or addicts) who are not in the process of satisfying their deep psychological needs. If we acknowledge this repeated finding, the self-imposed division of subjective and objective measures collapses; why add additional measures if SWB already does the job well enough? In the long run at least, SWB ‘cannot be made from anything but the right ingredients’; objective thriving and subjective experiences go hand in hand. Sheldon’s concordance thesis is methodologically quite radical for two reasons. The first is that he does not seem to think that current SWB measures need any adjustments to do the job of capturing what MacLeod (2015) would call ‘sobjective well-being’; they do so admirably already. Second, Sheldon’s thesis is reductionist in the sense that although he has no qualms about using the concept of ‘flourishing’ or ‘objective thriving’ on an everyday understanding, he does not think that it serves a useful role in psychological theory or measurement. However, for reasons that become clearer shortly, Sheldon’s concordance thesis is not as radical psychologically as Annas’s Aristotelian view that I discuss below. Sheldon is, after all, talking about ‘optimal functioning’, and as a psychologist, he is trading in psychological correlations that, even if strong, allow for statistical outliers and other anomalies. Therefore, pointing to an odd case of someone – say, a secondary-school student – who seems to be having her relevant objective needs satisfied but fails to score high on SWB does not, in and of itself, refute his concordance thesis. Such cases can be treated as bugs or noise, rather than devastating counter-examples, as long as they are not too frequent. The second, and more psychologically radical, variety of concordance theory that bears exploration here is that of Annas (2008; 2011). She attacks the flourishing–happiness division, so to speak, from the opposite direction to Sheldon’s. She argues that flourishing is necessarily associated with a certain sort of happiness. If we can ascertain that a person is flourishing, on an Aristotelian understanding, we know that she is also, in the relevant sense, happy. Annas does not use common Aristotelian phrases of pleasure ‘adorning’ or ‘crowning’ flourishing. She thinks of the relevant enjoyment as ‘not something extra to be added’ but rather as part of the way in which the flourishing-­constitutive activity is performed (2011, p. 76). Thus, flourishing (in the sense of living virtuously) is a sufficient condition of living happily (2011, pp. 167–168). This would not be precisely my own take on Aristotle (as I briefly explained my understanding of his thesis in Chapter 1), but the subtly different exegeses do not matter for present purposes. Annas’s thesis is less methodologically radical than Sheldon’s in the sense that she does not assume that current measures of either flourishing or happiness can do the job of confirming the relevant concordance; in fact, she does

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not say anything about those measures, and she is not, in any sense, a reductionist. Moreover, Annas is not talking about happiness in the broad sense encapsulated as SWB, but rather a certain kind of ‘Aristotelian happiness’ – involving pleasure in complete, uninterrupted activities – that she argues (in 2008 and 2011, chap. 5) corresponds admirably to the concept characterised in contemporary positive psychology as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Because Annas does little, in her own view, other than elaborate upon Aristotle’s own concordance thesis, I will in what follows refer directly to Aristotle’s thesis. Aristotle’s well-being theory seems explicitly to incorporate a certain component of a subjective account (namely, a certain kind of pleasure) in its very definition – or, as he puts it, to ‘weave pleasure’ into eudaimonia (1985, p. 203 [1153b14–15]; see further in Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 2). For although Aristotle renounces the equation of happiness with pleasure as ‘slavish’ and fit only for ‘grazing animals’, he is also quick to observe that those who live well – the virtuous – necessarily enjoy the activities that make them flourish. Pleasure ‘completes’ their activities ‘like the bloom on youths’ (1985, pp. 7 [1095b19–20], 276 [1174b30–35]). Those pleasures are the natural accompaniments of virtuous activities; experiencing them is partly constitutive of flourishing. Not any old pleasure will do here, however. The pleasures experienced by the virtuous in the exercise of their virtues are pleasures in things that are pleasant ‘in themselves’ and ‘by nature’; and they are the ‘soul’s pleasures’ as distinct from pleasures of the body (1985, pp. 20 [1099a14–15] and 80 [1117b29–30]). Aristotle’s view is, more specifically, that we humans have a natural psychological propensity to take a certain kind of pleasure in being single-mindedly absorbed in unimpeded, self-realising and intrinsically (non-instrumentally) valuable activity. As motivationally unified (or what Sheldon would call highly self-concordant) beings, the virtuous enjoy the pleasures proper to virtuous acts. Those pleasures cannot be pursued directly, however, any more than the bloom on the cheeks of youths can be genuinely created by cosmetics; they must come from within. These pleasures are un-self-conscious in the sense that we are rarely, if ever, phenomenologically aware of their warm glow while we engage in the activity. While engaging in it, we have just one occurrent desire: the desire to engage in the activity for its own sake. Only in retrospect do we realise how rewarding the activity was. However, because we actualise our end (telos) in our complete virtuous activities, such activities are not complete without (and cannot, pace MacLeod, 2015, be defined independent of ) the accompanying experience of pleasurable engagement. Readers who are acquainted with the concept of flow will not have failed to spot the similarity between Aristotle’s description of pleasure in unimpeded activities and typical descriptions of flow-like experiences (as Annas, 2008, is quick to point out; cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). However, contra Csikszentmihalyi, Aristotle does not seriously consider the possibility that anyone except the truly flourishing (namely, the virtuous) can experience

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this type of supervening happiness – which is, after all, not pleasure simpliciter, but the feeling of complete non-frustration and lack of inner conflict. As he puts it, ‘we cannot have the just person’s pleasure without being just’ (1985, p. 272 [1173b30]). Conversely, Aristotle does not envisage the possibility that one can truly flourish without the experience of flow-happiness. He thinks, therefore, of flourishing–happiness concordance in terms of strict psychological necessity – which makes him, in MacLeod’s (2015) terminology, a ‘sobjectivist’ rather than an ‘objectivist’ (cf. Grönroos, 2015, p. 147). This is a much stronger thesis than the common psychological one about a correlation between virtues and happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2014; cf. Snow, 2008). However, there is an important caveat here that is sometimes overlooked in Aristotelian scholarship. It is not the case ‘that the active exercise of every virtue is pleasant; it is pleasant only in so far as we attain the end [of the virtue]’ (1985, p. 79 [1117b15–16]). This caveat may seem to place an extreme limitation on Aristotelian concordance. After all, there are, arguably, a number of flourishing-constituting activities that cannot be ‘completed’ in a strict sense. Staying healthy, becoming better educated, keeping a beautiful home and having a happy marriage are life-long ‘open tasks’ that can never be brought to a completion (Harðarson, 2017). Uses of the term ‘complete’ here import the danger of equivocation. In one sense it can mean ‘finished for good’; in another sense it can mean ‘having remained uninterrupted for an extended period of time’. Aristotle must be taken to mean the latter for his concordance thesis to remain plausible. Yet, even on that reading, we need to remember that short bursts of flourishing-constituting activity do not suffice to guarantee happiness; lack of concordance in such cases would not undermine the thesis. There may be reason to argue that Aristotle is making a strong conceptual claim: that since (true) happiness is defined as the feeling that accompanies flourishing activities, flourishing entails happiness as its necessary and sufficient logical condition. I will make do here, however, with a weaker reading of Aristotle’s concordance thesis as one of (armchair) psychology: flourishing is, as a matter of psychological fact, necessary and sufficient for happiness, although it cannot be defined independently of happiness as its necessary outcome. Nevertheless, even on this psychological reading, Aristotle is making a more radical claim than Sheldon. He is talking not about strong correlations here, but rather about ‘psychological necessity’, and his view of the ‘motivational unity’ of the virtuous agent (critiqued by Carr, 2009) is arguably even more demanding than Sheldon’s conception of the self-concordantly functioning individual. Lorraine Besser-Jones (2012) has mounted a strong counter-argument against Annas’s concordance thesis. It is not always entirely clear when she is challenging Annas’s reading of Aristotle and when she is simply arguing that Aristotle’s own view is psychologically wrong, but I will interpret her as wanting to say the latter. Not all virtuous activities are – Besser-Jones argues – of

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the sort that we take pleasure in independently of their logical connection to ‘virtue’. Some rare ones may be (such as acts of bravery that elevate us to a state of flow), but most of the virtuous activities that Aristotle sees as flourishing-constituting are pretty dull and uninspiring in themselves. Keeping one’s promise when one does not care much for what has been promised, considerately picking up papers someone has dropped on the sidewalk, raising money for disaster sufferers and so forth are true virtuous activities. Yet they are not likely to produce flow – unless we think of them, consciously and hard, as conducive to a virtuous end, but then they are no longer intrinsically motivating, as Aristotle’s concordance thesis demands. However, as the virtuous person develops a state of well-being through engaging in those dull activities, while not enjoying them, they constitute a counter-example to the concordance thesis (Besser-Jones, 2012, p. 106). The most plausible Aristotelian response to Besser-Jones’s argument is to invoke the completeness caveat, explained above. Aristotle’s variety of the concordance thesis does not require that all individual (flourishing-constituting) virtuous acts produce happiness qua flow, but only those that are engaged in for significant periods of time, without interruption. Consider the person raising money for disaster relief. The thesis does not demand that each time she knocks on a door, she is in a state of flow. However, if she engaged in money-raising activities for a long time without experiencing the concomitant feelings of happiness, this would mean, psychologically, that her heart is not in it. If her heart is not in it, she is, according to Aristotle, not virtuous and motivationally unified, but perhaps just self-controlled in the service of a good end. In that case, she would not be engaging in a flourishing-constituting activity, so although happiness does not supervene upon it, there is no threat to the concordance thesis. I have now explored two varieties of the concordance thesis – coming from the psychological and philosophical sides, respectively. One is more radical methodologically and the other psychologically, but they both imply that pure subjectivism and pure objectivism fail to do justice to the nature of human well-being, and that a mere complementary thesis does not go far enough towards synthesis. Consequently, much of the debate about the divergent contours of well-being and different ways to measure it will be deemed misguided and superfluous. That, in itself, is a radical claim. But does it hold water?

Flourishing without happiness Let us now consider some possible counter-examples to the concordance thesis. While those may not be fatal to Sheldon’s version of the thesis, even if we accept their force (I return to that issue in the concluding section), they will at least threaten to undermine Aristotle’s radical variety. In this section I explore cases of unhappy flourishers; in the next I turn to

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happy non-flourishers. Because of the complexities and individual variations in young people’s developmental paths, I will in the present section and the next go against the grain of Cigman’s advice (2018), which I briefly introduced in the final section of Chapter 2, and offer what she would call ‘truncated snapshots’ of the lives of adult persons as counter-examples. However, the lessons to be drawn from those counter-examples are meant to carry significant implications for student flourishing and the aims towards which educational theories of flourishing can realistically aspire. It is almost de rigueur to invoke Wittgenstein as an example of an unhappy flourisher. His famous last words, ‘Tell them that I’ve had a wonderful life’ (Monk, 1990, p. 579), are typically taken to mean that he considered himself to have flourished in life (see e.g. Tiberius & Hall, 2010, p. 215). However, by all accounts, he was a grumpy and miserable person with a serious happiness deficit. He does not even seem to have enjoyed writing his great works. Instead of being lifted to the heights of flow, he evidently experienced the writing process as draining drudgery. The company of friends and students, who showered him with attention and affection, does not seem to have alleviated his lingering dissatisfaction with life. Obviously, most of what we know of Wittgenstein’s ‘inner life’ (a designation that he would, by the way, have resented) is derived from hearsay and anecdotal evidence. Perhaps he was not as curmudgeonly ‘on the inside’ as he made himself out to be. Perhaps he possessed what Cheshire Calhoun (2017) calls the virtuous state of being ‘content with imperfection’, although he was not happy. Or perhaps he was just clinically depressed, in which case the concordance thesis need not be ruled out of court (for it is not about mentally ill people). However, if using Wittgenstein as an example grates on readers’ ears, I ask them to replace him with some other Miserable Thinker of the betterto-be-an-unhappy-Socrates-than-a-happy-pig type, and there are plenty of those around, not all of whom can be dismissed as being in a pathological condition. As a significant departure from Aristotle, I would even be tempted to argue that some of the virtues that make up flourishing are essentially ‘burdened’ (to borrow a phrase from Tessman, 2005) – namely, come with such a high psycho-moral cost for its bearer that her happiness will almost certainly be compromised – although I would refuse to go as far as Brighouse in claiming that unhappiness itself qua unhappiness can produce greatness of flourishing (2005, p. 61). A more promising riposte is to argue that Wittgenstein did not really lead a flourishing life, despite his assertion to the contrary. He never ‘completed’ his activities in the sense of bringing them to a satisfactory end. He constantly felt that his philosophical output was incomplete, and he never produced the definitive philosophical masterpiece that he hoped for. I refer to my earlier discussion of the two senses of ‘complete’. To be sure, in one sense Wittgenstein did not complete his philosophical journey, but that is a sense in which many flourishing-constituting activities can never be

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completed anyway. In a more reasonable sense – to which Aristotle’s caveat must be understood to refer – Wittgenstein did have extended uninterrupted periods in which to engage in intrinsically valuable activity; yet flow does not seem to have ‘followed naturally’, as it is supposed to do according to the concordance thesis. Another version of this riposte would be to argue that Wittgenstein did not flourish because of lack of psychological unity. True, the argument would go, he actualised the supreme intellectual virtue of contemplation to the highest degree, but he did not exercise the more mundane moral and civic virtues that are necessary for a flourishing life. In response, we do know that Wittgenstein’s social skills left something to be desired. Yet he seems to have been capable of reciprocating friendships, and despite well-known bouts of bad temper and tactlessness, there is no good reason to taint him with a sustained dearth of moral virtue. If we refuse to impute flourishing to Wittgenstein because he was not equally well developed in all areas, we are setting the bar too high. Flourishing is, after all, on Aristotle’s own account, a ‘satis concept’, and one does not need to be perfect on all counts to cross the relevant threshold. Let us consider another counter-example: that of the Philistine Do-Gooder. Nick Hornby’s novel How to Be Good tells the story of David, a married man who, at the beginning, is described by his wife as ‘the definition of aggrieved. Permanently’ (Hornby, 2001, p. 3). That description is well deserved: David is a miserable whinger whose attitude towards others is standoffish and disdainful. After undergoing a marriage crisis, however, and meeting a spiritual healer who sucks all wrath out of him, David undergoes a conversion and becomes a newborn do-gooder. His wife realises the change when David suddenly decides to give eighty pounds to a homeless child. From then on, David is a radically generous do-gooder who spends most of his time and money on trying to relieve the world’s misery. Yet his efforts come to nothing and do not even give him any long-lasting inner feelings of warmth and accomplishment. He may be momentarily happy, but he is neither happy enough nor happy for long enough to satisfy the concordance thesis. There are aspects to David’s post-conversion character that may drain his case of its initial plausibility as that of a virtuous person without (sufficient) happiness. His generosity seems, for example, to be extreme rather than ‘medial’ as it should be on the Aristotelian model to constitute virtue. Yet, let us forget those aspects of the actual story and simply focus on someone who, like David, aspires to practise virtue with the utmost seriousness of purpose, yet fails to reap the rewards of flow. Perhaps the Philistine Do-Gooder is not really flourishing because he is spending all his energy on practical issues while lacking in intellectual depth. In other words, David may not be flourishing because he is a philistine. This riposte, however, sets the bar of flourishing too high. David is not stupid, although he is not a deep thinker, and there is no reason to suppose that he

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is not exercising intellectual virtues to a satisfactory degree. In that sense, his predicament is quite different from that of Aristotle’s great-hearted persons (the megalopsychoi) that I discuss in the next chapter. David may not be flourishing to the supreme extent that Aristotle (1985) describes in Book 10 in terms of pure contemplative activity, but he is surely flourishing in a sense that suffices to put a damper on the idea that happiness necessarily supervenes upon flourishing. The worry may still obtrude that the Philistine Do-Gooder is not flourishing because his ‘heart is not in it’. He may be obsessed with doing the right things to satisfy his own sense of (Kantian) moral duty, or even to appear virtuous to others, but deep down he is not driven by virtue, and therefore it is no mystery that fecund happiness does not emerge. No doubt, do-gooders of this kind exist; however, David is not one of them. There is not a hint of vanity in his motivation and he is not a Kantian agent. He is truly intrinsically motivated to do the good: a consideration that seems in his case not to be co-tenable with the concordance thesis. To avoid the pathology objection mentioned earlier, I leave out of consideration in this section a third possible counter-example, in addition to the Miserable Thinker and the Philistine Do-Gooder (explored below): that of the Disgust-Tainted Flourisher. By that description I mean someone like Nietzsche’s budding Übermensch who may start out following ‘slave morality’ – and to flourish in an ordinary sense – but then come to the conclusion that flourishing in that sense is fit only for pigs, filling him with revulsion. I take it that the Disgust-Tainted Flourisher may seem to many readers to be teetering at the brink of madness; hence I will not press that case here. At the end of this section, residual concerns remain about the plausibility of the concordance thesis. The two counter-examples explored seem to militate against it. We are left with the impression that there are argumentative lapses in at least Aristotle and Annas’s version of the thesis, if not necessarily in Sheldon’s. We may be forced to fall back on a more popularly held view, encapsulated in Wollstonecraft’s famous words that the flourishing person (in her sense of ‘the virtuous man’) can be ‘either gay or grave’ (2014, p. 122).

Happiness without flourishing I will focus here on two putative counter-examples: of a not-unhappy-enough non-flourisher and a happy non-flourisher. Let us begin with the Happy Slave. That case has been invoked so often in the well-being literature that a brief reminder suffices. Obviously, Haybron’s (2008) earlier-mentioned observation about people being mistaken about their own happiness may apply here. So may the objection that even if the Happy Slave does experience some sort of ‘flow’ in her slavish activities, the feelings are not deep and fecund enough to count as the sort of happiness that would undermine the concordance thesis (although it is difficult to envisage accurate criteria for, and measurements

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of, the required ‘depth’). Thus, perhaps the Happy Slave is not terribly happy after all, and the very title may be a misnomer. Yet the point remains that the ‘Happy’ Slave is not as unhappy as she should be, ex hypothesi, according to the concordance thesis. This case is tricky, however, because of the possible levels of self-deception involved, which may border on the pathological (e.g. Stockholm syndrome). Rather than pursing this case further, I turn, therefore, to a putatively non-pathological case: that of the Torn Artist. In World Light, a major novel by Halldór Laxness (2002), we encounter the (anti)-hero Ólafur Kárason and follow his tragic trajectory through life. I go on to explain that trajectory in much more detail in Chapter 5 (which readers can now consult for further details if they so wish). For present purposes, however, I think it suffices to know that Ólafur satisfies neither of the two preconditions of flourishing posited in Chapter 2, and he does not come anywhere near to realising its constitutive parts either, especially the moral virtues; he remains at best morally torn, erratic and incontinent. Yet there is something exquisite about his overall state of wretchedness. Repeated ecstatic experiences of ‘the epiphanic resonance of the divine’ give his life meaning and unwavering purpose from time to time, and sporadic periods of deep poetic inspiration elevate him to the heights of hedonic splendour. The author’s account of the poet’s life and self-perceptions, throughout the novel, may perhaps be read as tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic. However, for present purposes, let us take Ólafur’s perceptions of his own life at face value and assume that his experiences of happiness were genuine rather than self-deceptive. Let us also presume that they had the sort of flow-like quality about them that Annas (drawing on Aristotle and Csikszentmihalyi) considers to be the natural concomitant of engagement in intrinsically valuable, flourishing-constituting activities (in this case, for example, the writing of poetry). But were they deep and long-lasting enough to pose a threat to the concordance thesis? There is little doubt about the former; indeed, Ólafur’s moments of flow were arguably more profound than many so-called paragons of Aristotelian virtue will ever experience. Whether they were long-lasting enough is another question. Ólafur seems to have experienced them mainly in short bursts of artistic creativity, which for him was real even though it may have lacked objective (or acknowledged) artistic value. Yet he also seems to have had opportunities for relatively extended, uninterrupted periods of artistic activity – and if we insist that the true flourisher is in a state of constant flow, we are clearly setting the bar too high. I cannot, therefore, but conclude that the case of the Torn Artist is a further chink in the armour of the concordance thesis. For the same reason as in the previous section, I shelve here a third possible counter-example: of someone who is happy precisely in virtue of not flourishing (in the standard sense). I am thinking here, for instance, of the Successful Sadist. I worry that this case will be too easily susceptible to a pathology objection.

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I need to say something at the end of this section about ‘the happy immoralist’, however: the person who is presumably happy despite being vicious. First, a brief foray into Aristotelian scholarship is required to explain why I refuse to go as far as acknowledging the claim that Bernard Williams’s famous ‘horrible person’ with a ‘bright eye and gleaming coat’ can be considered ‘dangerously flourishing’ and happy (1985, p. 46). I take refuge here in some pretty unambiguous and persuasive claims that Aristotle makes about the vicious in Book IX of the Nicomachean Ethics. He does not mince his words about their baneful predicament. The vicious ‘shun themselves’ because they cannot stand their own company, and deep down they are ‘full of regret’. Because their ‘soul is in conflict’ between appetite for the bad and wish for the good, ‘each part pulls in a different direction’, gradually tearing them apart (1985, p. 247 [1166b11–26]). Müller (2015) brings these comments to bear on various other passages in Aristotle’s corpus and argues that although, at the very moment they act, the vicious may not feel conflicted, the object at which they aim, namely immediate pleasure, is inherently unstable, and hence they soon begin to regret what they previously enjoyed. As a consequence, the vicious suffer from an ‘unprincipled pathetic mess of feelings’ (2015, p. 473). Grönroos (2015) argues, in a similar vein, that the vicious do not really wish what they aim for, even though they think they do – and that this lack of self-transparency makes them conflicted and miserable. For ‘vice perverts us and produces false views about the origins of actions’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 169 [1144a34]). As I read the relevant passages, they seem to be entirely consistent with Aristotle’s account of the golden mean of virtue, according to which we are ‘noble in only one way, but bad in all sorts of ways’ (1985, p. 44 [1106b35–36]). Not only is it true that the same extreme of a virtue can be exhibited in various sorts of ways; a vicious person also could, in principle at least, at the same time succumb to the extreme of excess with regard to some actions (say, foolhardiness vis-à-vis courage) and the extreme of deficiency (say, cowardliness vis-à-vis courage) with regard to others. So there is a certain inherent logical disunity about vice (as opposed to virtue), which is likely to result in severe psychological disunity. Second, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, it is not farfetched to hypothesise that, in order to succeed, vicious traits have developed in such a way as to confound other people. Criminals with consistent action tendencies are likely to be predictable wrongdoers and hence more likely to be apprehended than criminals who avail themselves of motives and means so diffuse that not even they themselves would be able to foresee them. It is thus, so speak, a ‘performance asset’ of vice to be disunified. This could be the reason why vices do not typically seem to cluster in any general sorts of way, as virtues arguably do (Gulliford & Roberts, 2018). Third, to invoke some compelling modern conceptions of evil that are as much aesthetically as morally grounded, I have always been taken with

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Edgar Allan Poe’s poetic observation that ‘beauty wages war upon vice […] on the grounds of her deformity – her disproportion’ (1902, vol. XIV, p. 273). Adding to this aesthetic sense of the inherent disproportionality of vice are even better-known comments by Hannah Arendt about the essential superficiality and banality of evil: It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never ‘radical’, that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is ‘thought-defying’, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its ‘banality’. Only the good has depth that can be radical’ (1978, p. 251). While these observations may seem to go beyond any position that could even remotely be described as ‘Aristotelian’, they do chime in nicely with Aristotle’s remarks about the psychological frustrations of the vicious who – unable to find any lasting solace of depth or satisfaction in what they are doing – are ultimately ‘at odds with themselves’ and may even ‘destroy themselves’ (1985, p. 247 [1166b7–13]). Fourth, accepting Williams’s claim about the flourishing and happiness of ‘the horrible person’ would elicit some counter-intuitive implications about the possibility of leading a flourishing life while treading on the toes of others and preventing them from flourishing. Consider Williams’s own much-discussed example of the post-impressionist painter Gauguin (in the chapter ‘Moral Luck’ in Williams, 1981). Even if we assume, as Williams does, that Gauguin succeeded in satisfying his strong personal and artistic ambitions during his sojourns in Tahiti, he seems to have done so callously, at the expense of his abandoned wife and children back home. He was, by all accounts, a man of vice. In view of Aristotle’s persuasive point about the psycho-­moral disunity of vice, I find it implausible to suppose that Gauguin was leading a flourishing life. Even the weaker claim, that though not flourishing, he was at least happy, does not ring true in the case of Gauguin if the standard biographical evidence about his life is to be believed. I do acknowledge that Ólafur Kárason seems to satisfy many of the unhappiness characteristics that Aristotle connects to the life of the vicious (1985, p. 247 [1166b11–28]). He suffers, from time to time, from self-hate and regret, and he destroys himself in the end. However, Ólafur – even when he succumbs to vile acts of pedophilia – lacks the sustained attraction to the bad that is characteristic of vice. He is much better described as incontinent. My reluctance to abandon the Aristotelian assumption that the vicious cannot flourish and experience genuine happiness explains why I would have resisted the case of Ólafur Kárason as a counter-example to the concordance thesis if I had considered him a vicious person. It is precisely because he is

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psychologically disunified in the sense of incontinence, rather than vice, that I think his case passes as a counter-example of someone who can experience happiness while failing to flourish. All that said, Aristotle may have had too idealised a view of the motivational unity of the virtuous (see e.g. Carr, 2009). As I argued in the preceding section, I do not believe that even the virtuously flourishing person necessarily possesses the sort of psychological unity that leads to sustained experiences of subjective well-being.

Just philosophical ‘armchair psychology’? I will not claim here that the counter-examples presented above constitute definitive refutations of the concordance thesis. However, at least they pose a serious threat to it, and I would go as far as saying that they undermine Aristotle’s radical version. There seem to be unhappy flourishers (such as the Miserable Thinker), not-happy-enough flourishers (such as the Philistine Do-Gooder), happy non-flourishers (such as the Torn Artist) and not-unhappy-­enough non-flourishers (such as the Happy Slave). I present the various permutations in Table 3.1, including the two cases that I refused to fully acknowledge for reasons explained earlier. Readers may wonder if, because of my self-ascription as a neo-­A ristotelian philosopher, I have committed some sort of an academic patricide here. That is not the case. Most so-called Aristotelian philosophers nowadays, at least those working within moral philosophy, moral psychology and character education, are critical reconstructors rather than deferential reproducers. It is no news to them that Aristotle needs to be updated and corrected in various ways for contemporary consumption. For example, as I acknowledged in Chapter 2, Aristotle may be accused of idealisations of actual people and objects in the world in which we live. He is, for example, commonly faulted for downplaying the extent to which even the truly virtuous may suffer from residues of pain and be afflicted with emotional ambivalence (Carr, 2009). The counter-arguments to the concordance thesis above are

Table 3.1  Flourishing and Happiness Permutations Flourishing Happiness

Not happiness

Positive concordance (in line with the concordance thesis) • The Miserable Thinker • The Philistine Do-Gooder • (The Disgust-Tainted Flourisher)

Not flourishing • The Torn Artist • The Happy Slave • (The Successful Sadist) Negative concordance (in line with the concordance thesis)

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perhaps little more than variations on the common theme of showing how Aristotle over-idealised the motivational unity of the virtuous. There are two reasons why my counter-examples may not cut as much ice with concordance theorists in psychology, such as Sheldon. First, they may consider my reliance on anecdotal evidence and fictional (literary) examples as symptomatic of the worst form of philosophical ‘armchair psychology’. Second, as I have mentioned at various junctures, Sheldon’s thesis is not couched in terms of psychological necessity, like Aristotle’s. So even if Sheldon happened to accept the relevance of my case stories, he could simply see them as statistical outliers. The concordance thesis could be strongly statistically significant, although there are a few Miserable Thinkers around, for example, for whom some slack must be cut. I venture to hypothesise that the counter-examples I have given are not just ‘bugs’ but are fairly common in daily life. Nevertheless, I freely admit to saying that in default of statistical evidence, simply relying on my own life experiences. Those experiences tell me that the world contains a significant number of unhappy flourishers and happy non-flourishers. As an educator, I have seen them in classrooms on a regular basis. As a follower of the Aristotelian naturalism explained in Chapter 1, however, I am no believer in an anti-empirical armchair psychology. I present these counter-examples here, rather, as ammunition for a hypothesis that needs to be tested empirically. There is already evidence of apparent discordance between flourishing and happiness, such as studies finding that while ‘most’ Americans take themselves to be ‘happy’, only two out of every ten adults are flourishing (cited in Crespo & Mesurado, 2015, p. 940). But because of the methodological misgivings expressed earlier about how flourishing is typically measured in such studies (e.g. by relying on self-reports and ignoring virtue-constructs), I acknowledge that my discordance hypothesis is still a hunch rather than part of a tested theory. Notice, however, that even if my ‘hypothesis’ were confirmed, the concordance thesis could still hold as ‘an ideal’. I find that likely; Aristotle, Annas and Sheldon have given us reasons to believe that, under ideal conditions, flourishing and happiness go hand in hand. However, an ideal association does not deserve the title of a ‘thesis’, either about psychological necessity or strong empirical correlations; and I remind readers of the educational perils of utopian forms of idealism, acknowledged in Chapter 2. Notice that nothing I have said in this chapter speaks against a weaker flourishing–happiness harmony thesis in terms of complementarity or hybridity. Perhaps there is no way to conceptualise or measure well-being adequately except by spreading our bets in the form of a mixed account and mixed measures of flourishing and happiness (however we may then decide to aggregate them). That consideration takes us right back to where we started: to the traditional objective– subjective well-being debate. If there is no shortcut through that debate, via a concordance thesis, then we simply need to continue to pursue it head-on,

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even if the incipient tensions between flourishing and happiness accounts get transformed into serious antagonisms or call for painful trade-offs. The concordance thesis constitutes a grand project, but from a philosophical perspective, there seems to be something too convenient about it. It is almost too good to be true that a historically significant debate about the content of the good life can be dissolved as a false dichotomy and a potential non-issue. My sympathies, as a philosopher, lie with Tiberius’s contention (2006, p. 497) that a theory of well-being – even when conceptualised essentially as an educational theory as I do in this book – cannot avoid being normative and taking a stand on an issue that is controversial: not because of the essential relativity of the good, but because of its plurality and diversity (see Tiberius & Hall, 2010, p. 219). The injection of some good old normative argument into well-being research cannot be avoided, because the question of the relative worth of flourishing versus happiness looks like a standard evaluative question. Yet it is one that springs up at us with redoubled force because it concerns nothing less than the question of what constitutes a good human life: a question with serious educational and political implications, as I repeatedly noted in Chapter 2. Self-concordance (Sheldon, 2013) may well be a valuable attribute, and those who attain it may achieve flourishing–happiness concordance in the bargain. But there are philosophical and psychological reasons to think that many achieve neither – and yet can either flourish or be happy. How worried should we be about that conclusion from the perspective of the kind of theory that the present book proposes to sketch, about flourishing as the aim of education? Apart from the reminder to keep our aspirations modest and realistic, I do not think we need to be overly worried. I myself have at times been frustrated as a teacher – earlier at the secondary-school level and later at university – to see students who seem to be flourishing objectively fail to turn their flourishing-constituting activities into states of fecund pleasures. I have also been genuinely surprised – sometimes inspired even – in my life to see people undergoing severe flourishing-hampering hardships experience profound pleasures. However, that is human life in all its complexities; these counter-examples do nothing to undermine the assumption that the best bet to secure a subjectively satisfying life is to enhance flourishing. Educational theories can, after all, only be true for the most part. We need to be mindful of the Aristotelian advice to look, in our theorising, for only as much precision as the relevant subject matter permits.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 Do you agree that in ordinary language, the terms ‘flourishing’ and ‘happiness’ capture reasonably well the distinction between objective and subjective accounts of well-being? If not, what other terms would you recommend for general lay use?

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2 How would you respond to the claim that the case of someone – say, a secondary-school student – who seems to be satisfying the relevant criteria for flourishing but fails to score high on SWB measures does not refute the flourishing–happiness concordance thesis? Can such cases be treated just as bugs or noise, rather than devastating counter-examples, as long as they are not too frequent? 3 Think carefully about the case of the Philistine Do-Gooder. Does it really serve as an apt counter-example to the concordance thesis? If it does, what lessons can be learned from it with respect to the goal of encouraging more young people to engage in social activism and charity work? 4 What do you think of Bernard Williams’s vivid depiction of a ‘horrible person’, with a ‘bright eye and gleaming coat’, who is nonetheless ‘dangerously flourishing’? Is this example realistic? If not, why not? 5 Is it a major blow for a theory of flourishing as the aim of education if it is true that flourishing as a student does not always come with the benefits of subjective happiness? Or can we just take that finding in our stride and continue to pursue the relevant aim?

Chapter 4

The limitations of even supreme moral virtue Why we need contemplation and wonder to flourish

‘An insightful mess’ In Chapter 2, I argued that young people need to be able to have the preconditions of ‘external necessities’ and ‘purpose’ satisfied in order to stand a chance of flourishing in life. Throughout the previous chapters I have harped on the constitutive role of moral virtue in flourishing, although I refused, in the preceding chapter, to grant the Aristotelian point that moral virtue has some psychologically necessary association with happiness. In this chapter, I take a somewhat different tack by arguing that moral virtue – even when augmented by grand-scale satisfaction of the above-mentioned preconditions – does not suffice for flourishing. I will argue this by looking at what Aristotle says about the people who have actualised the supreme moral meta-virtue of magnanimity or great-heartedness, namely the megalopsychoi, and why they still fall short of flourishing. Because neither the contemporary meaning of ‘magnanimity’ nor that of ‘great-heartedness’ captures the essence of the virtue of megalopsychia, I rely mostly on the original Greek terms below. The virtue of megalopsychia occupies a central position in Aristotle’s system of moral virtue: a fact that, interestingly enough, has rarely been acknowledged during the recent revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics (see Kristjánsson, 2002, chaps. 3–4). The most important characteristic of the megalopsychos – he who possesses the virtue of megalopsychia – is that he ‘thinks himself worthy of great things and is really worthy of them’. True to his famous architectonic of virtue as a mean between two extremes, Aristotle presents the megalopsychos as striking the right balance between two other character types: the vain, ‘who thinks he is worthy of great things when he is not’, and the pusillanimous, ‘who thinks he is worthy of less than he is worthy of ’ (1985, pp. 97–98 [1123b1–26]). The conditions of this virtue, and its respective extremes, thus appear as greatness and self-knowledge: that is, on the one hand the moral merits of a person, and on the other the person’s self-evaluation (realistic or not) of those merits. Aristotle clearly points out the unique position of this virtue as ‘a sort of adornment of the virtues’. Megalopsychia is a higher-order virtue – a kind of summation – which makes the other virtues greater and ‘does not

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arise without them’ (1985, p. 99 [1123a1–3]). As we see later in this chapter, megalopsychia requires having an abundant supply of riches at one’s disposal; it is, in other words, a privileged state of character, requiring certain preconditions of external necessities to be satisfied on an affluent scale. In a recent paper, Wilcken (2014) poses the question of whether magnanimity (understood as Aristotle’s megalopsychia) can be ‘made compatible with the 21st century’, and he gives an affirmative answer. Admittedly, Wilcken considers it necessary to relax some of the odd conditions that Aristotle places upon the virtue, such as being exhibited by men with stately movements and slow voices, and he thinks it particularly important to accommodate female megalopsychia in today’s (corporate and political) world. Yet after the necessary modifying and ‘modernifying’ (2014, p. 78), Wilcken takes megalopsychia to be particularly apt for conceptualising, understanding, identifying and (potentially) emulating some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs, benefactors and business leaders (2014, p. 82). My aim in the present chapter is considerably more modest than Wilcken’s. I do think that Aristotle’s depiction of the megalopsychoi provides a Goshen of sobering insights about the capriciousness of the human condition and the complexities of a virtue ethical approach to flourishing: insights that are at least as relevant today as they were 2,300 years ago. More specifically, whatever quarrels one may want to pick with the details of Aristotle’s account – and I am certainly not as eager to ‘unpick’ all of those as Wilcken – I propose to show in what follows that megalopsychia can illuminate and augment a number of contemporary discourses surrounding the nature of a flourishing life and how to achieve it. I argue in the second section that, within education, megalopsychia casts light on debates about the levels of moral development and of flourishing; the necessary individualisation of virtue and education in virtue; and the limitations of moral-exemplar methodology of learning to flourish. I argue in the third section that, within moral philosophy, megalopsychia helps crystallise issues about role moralities, in the context of flourishing theories, and the demands of noblesse oblige; the relationship between flourishing and happiness; and to what extent contemplation enters into flourishing. In the fourth section, I offer some thoughts about how megalopsychia stands in relation to the human condition in the 21st century and the potential for human flourishing. In the final section, I discuss the vital intellectual virtue that the megalopsychoi would need in order to flourish, namely contemplation, and the related emotion of wonder. All in all, this chapter provides a whistle-stop tour of a number of diverse, but related, topics relevant to flourishing and explains the lessons that Aristotle’s account of megalopsychia can teach us about them. It is equally important to flag here at the outset what this chapter is not meant to achieve. I do not propose to offer a general justification of megalopsychia as

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a moral ideal. Although I have come perilously close to doing so in the past (Kristjánsson, 2002), I now believe that the megalopsychoi can be considered neither objectively flourishing nor subjectively happy (albeit mostly through no fault of their own), not even by Aristotle’s lights. So I will not be trying, this time, to make the proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear. A potential ‘defence’ of megalopsychia would, in any case, be more surplus to requirements than it was a couple of decades ago. At that time, this alleged Aristotelian ‘virtue’ was typically written off in the academic literature, and the megalopsychoi were disparaged as repugnant, self-absorbed, snobbish, ego-bloated, arrogant, unneighbourly, priggish and puffed-up. A couple of important papers by Curzer (1990; 1991), in which he used considerable hermeneutical charity to counter the received wisdom, changed the state of play. Curzer pressed home the crucial Aristotelian point that the megalopsychoi are in possession of all the moral virtues; megalopsychia does not replace them or override them but rather makes them greater. Hence, if something is really morally wrong with the megalopsychoi, it must be so at a psycho-morally deeper and more tragic level than their just being obnoxious human beings. This chapter is not a contribution to Aristotelian exegesis. For example, I will make no attempt to rescue the formal status of megalopsychia as a moral virtue with a standard golden-mean architectonic. As Curzer correctly points out (2012, pp. 129–131), neither of the two main conceptual conditions of megalopsychia – to be worthy of great things and to think oneself worthy of them – fits that architectonic well. With respect to moral greatness, megalopsychia lies at the extreme, not in the middle; with respect to self-­ evaluation, it does lie in the middle, but it shares that position with a radically different character trait: the realistic self-evaluation of the ‘authentic loser’. I am not terribly bothered by this discrepancy. Like Curzer, I am a ‘drag-Aristotle-­into-current-debates sort of guy’ (2012, p. 7); and, like him, I believe that although Aristotle’s characterisation of megalopsychia is a bit of a mess, it is an ‘insightful mess’ (2012, p. 6). As already announced, I propose to use this ‘mess’ to think through a number of contemporary issues regarding human flourishing that stand in need of illumination.

Developmental levels, individualisation and role-modelling Character education is high on current educational agendas, and although some of it is blatantly instrumentalist, focused on performative and communicative skills that Aristotle would have designated as mere techné, efforts are also under way to retrieve Aristotelian forms of character education. I argued in Chapter 1 that although education for flourishing presents a more capacious goal than the education of character, it must include the latter as a sub-set.

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Now, famously, Aristotle claimed that the purpose of moral inquiry ‘is not to know what virtue is, but to become good, since otherwise the inquiry would be of no benefit to us’ (1985, p. 35 [1103b27–29]). In Aristotelianism, then, character education is not an extraneous addition to an understanding of morality or the study of moral philosophy – it is, rather, what such understanding and study are all about. This approach is quite different from that of many contemporary moral philosophers, even of a virtue ethical bent, who seem to think of potential engagement with moral education as, at best, a helpful addition to ethics. Although Aristotle makes no distinct moral educational claims in his discussion of megalopsychia, I use this section to reflect upon some developmental and educational lessons that I think can be gleaned from it. One of the reasons why Kohlberg’s (1981) erstwhile overarching and priestly paradigm of moral development fell into disrepute was its weakness in predicting actual behaviour. Aristotelians will find other more pressing faults with Kohlberg and his Kantian inheritance, because they are not all that keen on the goal of predicting behaviour in the first place. They are obviously keener on ascertaining whether a moral action is performed for the right reason and motivated by the correct emotions. That said, many moral educators – even those subscribing broadly to the Aristotelian character-­ education camp – clamour for the old days when moral functioning was considered fairly straightforward to conceptualise and measure, as falling into one of the discrete stages of Kohlbergian development. Thus, Sanderse (2015) has tried to offer a comparable Aristotelian stage theory of moral development, and I have nearly succumbed to that temptation in the past also (Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 2). Recent commentators (see in particular Curzer, 2017) have problematised a stage-theory interpretation of Aristotle and consider his descriptions of moral levels as shorthand idealisations rather than depictions of real people. On this anti-idealisation reading, each virtue comprises various different components, where individuals can be strong on one (say, proper emotion) but weaker on another (say, putting emotion into action). Rarely will all those components align in perfect harmony in a person; thus the multi-component view seems to cast doubt on the usefulness of a stage-theory model. That said, Curzer (2012, chap. 15) makes a stab at defining various levels of moral development, ranging from the many (hoí polloí) and the generous-­ minded (eleutherios) to the incontinent, the continent, those with natural (habituated but non-phronesis-infused) virtue, the properly virtuous and, above them, those with superhuman or heroic virtue. Notice that Curzer is not saying that everyone needs to progress through those levels in the same order, Kohlberg-style, without skipping any of them, or that most people’s moral functioning can be ‘operationalised’ so as to fall overall within a given stage. Nevertheless, being aware of those milestones may help in getting a

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handle on the normal trajectory of moral development. Incidentally, I do not agree with Curzer that ‘it is reasonable to equate the megalopsychos with the person of superhuman, heroic virtue’ (2012, p. 127), as specified by Aristotle (1985, p. 172 [1145a18–20]), although it shares some of the same super-virtuous characteristics. As I read it, megalopsychia is a characteristically human virtue – though confined to a privileged group of human beings. Hence, I favour Crisp’s interpretation of it as a higher-level phronetic virtue, but an essentially non-superhuman one (2006, pp. 163–164, 167). Significantly for the purposes of the present book, Curzer also identifies another multi-level theory in Aristotle’s account of moral development, having to do with possible levels of flourishing as functions of (a) virtuous character and (b) moral luck (as I explained it in Chapter 2). Those levels range, at the bottom, from the misery of those without good fortune and any compensating virtue, up to mere lack of flourishing for those with bad fortune but compensating virtue or good fortune without virtuous activity, further up to flourishing for those with sufficient good luck and virtuous activity, to the top level of blessedness for those with bonus goods of fortune and virtuous activity (Curzer, 2012, pp. 420–423). It might have been helpful to complement this level theory with a componential view of flourishing, according to which a person might be considered to have, so to speak, one foot at one level and another foot at another level. For example, although the megalopsychoi seem to be equipped with some of the psychological and material repertoire to reach the level of blessedness, other features will be holding them back, as I explain below, and even preventing them from leading flourishing lives. Somewhat surprisingly, in the Rhetoric (2007, p. 150 [1389a29–32]), Aristotle ascribes megalopsychia to the young, ‘for they have not yet been worn down by life’ and think themselves worthy of great things. Obviously, on his own theory of virtue development, the young cannot even be phronimoi, let alone megalopsychoi. Perhaps Aristotle is here simply reporting on the general view, or using the term metaphorically. In any case, there is good reason not to consider the Rhetoric a systematic moral treatise on a par with the Nicomachean Ethics. How do you prepare someone, through ‘education towards flourishing’, for leading a life as a megalopsychos? Aristotle is adamant about the relativity of the state of character to developmental level and individual circumstance. ‘Each state [of character] has its own special [view of ] what is fine and pleasant’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 65 [1113b31–33]). And a boxing instructor will not ‘impose the same way of fighting on everyone’ (1985, p. 295 [1180b9–11]). So ‘ought’ seems to imply ‘can’ for Aristotle just as for Kant. For some reason, however, this point – which I have raised at previous junctures in the book – is rarely foregrounded in contemporary versions of Aristotelian education for character and flourishing, which are often about imposing ‘the same way of fighting’ on a whole class of diverse moral learners.

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There is no better place to be reminded of the necessary individualisation of Aristotelian education for flourishing than in the chapter about megalopsychia. Aspiring megalopsychoi need to be a pretty unique bunch of young people. It is clear from Aristotle’s description that they need to be blessed with an abundance of moral luck, in the form of riches and other material wherewithal, to be able to do what will be morally expected of them in terms of exhibiting magnificence (grand-scale largesse) in ways that are brilliant and serve the public good. I follow Curzer (2012) here in understanding magnificence (megaloprepeia) and megalopsychia as complementary and synergic virtues that will be exhibited by the same group of people. However detached and self-sufficient the megalopsychoi want to consider themselves with respect to the external goods in question, their specific moral mission could never get off the ground without these goods. Although spectacular deeds of the kind expected of the megalopsychoi do not necessarily require enormous wealth and power (Curzer, 2012, p. 124), one clearly needs straw to make bricks; and I would argue that the strict demands placed upon the magnificent and megalopsychoi as public benefactors exclude the possibility of the majority of moral learners ever reaching the level in question. Although Aristotle does not mention this, except obliquely with his (humorous?) references to the walking styles and voices of the megalopsychoi, those also clearly need to be what Curzer calls ‘larger than life’ characters (2012, p. 121). Couched in modern ways of thinking, one cannot consider persons who score low on the Big-Five trait of extraversion or high on neuroticism to qualify as potential candidates for megalopsychoi. It requires a certain personality profile, and we know nowadays that such profiles are much more difficult to alter than moral character. For instance, although one’s Big-Five personality profile is not set in stone, it would take something akin to a miracle to change a consistent introvert into an extravert (see Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 3). So, all in all, educators will ideally need to single out potential megalopsychoi and subject them to special treatment. Does this make megalopsychia a privileged and elitist virtue? That is a double-­ barrelled question, and my inclination would be to maintain that whereas megalopsychia is, in a certain sense, a privileged virtue, it is not elitist, in an ordinary sense of the word. It is not elitist for the same reason that it is not elitist to single out persons with a special physique and train them to be Olympic athletes, while others, who we realise would never make the grade however hard they trained, are left behind. As Russell points out (2012, p. 142), all virtues require habits and skills suited to one’s individual situation. To be sure, having a certain social prominence, economic status and personality profile makes one a fit candidate for moral coaching as a megalopsychos, but this is a ‘privilege’ that comes with many burdens. Russell’s (2012) whole paper constitutes an extensive and compelling counter-argument against an elitist interpretation of megalopsychia. In my view, for training towards megalopsychia to count as truly elitist, the predicament of budding phronimoi

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without megalopsychia would have to count as inferior, in major respects, to that of budding megalopsychoi. However, although the former is inferior in some respects (with regard to potential honours, for example), it seems to be superior in other respects, for example in terms of the time the ‘mere’ phronimoi will have for contemplation and for the ordinary niceties of daily life (see the fourth section of this chapter). Indeed, if what we are after in life is ordinary flourishing and happiness, there may be good reasons for counting oneself lucky not to qualify as a potential megalopsychos – just as there may be good reasons for counting oneself lucky not to be a musical or athletic prodigy. The final topic, related to education, which I want to discuss in this section is about moral role-modelling, or what Aristotle (2007) specified as the emulation of moral exemplars. This topic has gained increased prominence of late. Moral psychologists such as Bill Damon and Anne Colby are reviving what they call ‘exemplar methodology’ (2015); philosopher Linda Zagzebski is developing a whole new moral theory of exemplarism (2017); and even a recent thoughtful bestseller (Brooks, 2015) draws on the lives of high moral achievers in the past and encourages moderns to follow suit. I will mostly shelve discussion of role-model education as part of education for flourishing until Chapter 7, but a few observations are in order here in the context of megalopsychia as a potential virtue to emulate. The problem with wringing guidance from Aristotle on this topic is that, although exemplar methodology is generally considered a staple of Aristotelian character education, Aristotle himself says little about its actual nuts and bolts, and neo-Aristotelians have rarely offered improved or updated accounts (yet see Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 7; Sanderse, 2013). This is a problem because, without clarity on what emulating moral exemplars in Aristotelianism really involves, the method is liable to fall afoul of standard limitations of role-­ modelling. Those include hero-worship, where the student uncritically imitates the role model; moral inertia, where moral exemplars are seen as standing so high above the learner that idolising them becomes disempowering rather than uplifting; and moral over-stretching, where the learner tries to follow in the footsteps of a role model, but falls at hurdles that the advanced role model would be able to surmount (see further in Chapter 7). Nowhere in the chapter on megalopsychia does Aristotle make the explicit claim that megalopsychoi make for useful role models. Hanley (2002, pp. 15–20), however, argues that, implicitly, megalopsychia is presented as a virtue to which the youth of Athens should aspire. I would resist this conclusion and maintain that, given what I said earlier about the unique psycho-social make-up of the megalopsychoi, they make, across the board, for pretty unhelpful role models. Wanting to emulate Bill Gates’s philanthropy may lead to moral inertia for someone who does not have the means to do so. Wanting to emulate Nelson Mandela may result in the perils of moral over-stretching for someone who does not share Mandela’s mild and mellow

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temperament. Perhaps a small group of learners are destined (with the right training and effort) to become megalopsychoi. But for most learners, ordinary phronimoi, and character types such as the Confucian junzi (Sim, 2012), seem more promising as general exemplars to draw upon in education towards flourishing. Notice that Aristotle cannot avail himself of manoeuvres that would have been available to Confucius or Plato: he cannot point out that what the learner should emulate is not really the persona of the role model but rather the ideal for which the role model stands. Such manoeuvres may avert problems of hero-worship (although they could, possibly, inflict some other problems of their own, see Chapter 7). However, Aristotle was a ‘people person’, and, having once been bitten by Plato’s penchant for high-minded ideals, he was thenceforward shy of it. Consequently, he does seem to limit the emotional trait of emulousness (zelos) to a disposition to emulate individual moral exemplars exhibiting admirable moral traits. For present purposes, I simply want to drive home the message that Aristotle did not specifically single out the megalopsychoi as helpful objects of emulation – and there may be a very good reason why he did not. If you want to learn how to flourish by emulating flourishing individuals, those role models have to be at a level of flourishing to which you can reasonably aspire.

Role-based moralities: blessings and burdens This section requires a brief foray into a technical discussion within moral philosophy on the nature of roles and duties. I ask readers to bear with me; the relevance of this discussion for the topic of flourishing and education towards flourishing will become clear at the end of this section and in the following section. The exact role of rules and duties in virtue ethical theories in general, and Aristotelian ones in particular, remains controversial. Many Aristotelians look down their noses at the very idea of a morality based on rules and duties and see it as going against the grain of virtue ethics. For example, Annas (2015) has argued strongly against understanding the role of virtues in terms of creating moral duties. She does accept the relevance of duties in specific, well-defined spheres of life, in particular within professional practice, but she calls it ‘duty creep’ (p. 10) when the language of duties and rules is transferred from there to the general moral realm of human association – where it is out of place from a virtue ethical perspective. She is not simply making a linguistic point, about the need to reinterpret duties as ‘required moral aspirations’, the absence of which signals moral failure. She thinks ‘duties’ have a perfectly legitimate (deontological) understanding in the realm of professional practice, but that this deontological baggage cannot simply be undone when speaking about ordinary moral ‘duties’. Therefore, duty-and-rules talk should be banished from a general virtue ethical discourse about the moral

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aspirations that the virtues represent and (presumably) from the characterisation of a flourishing life in contexts that are not specifically professional. Curzer (2016b) is more conciliatory towards rule-and-duty talk. Indeed, he thinks rules are lurking at various significant junctures within Aristotelian virtue ethics, or as he puts it, they are ‘sprinkled’ throughout the Nicomachean Ethics (p. 67). He does think, however, that rule assimilation is a late stage in the moral developmental process, and that instilling the right attitudes in moral learners ‘requires virtuous people and precedes the understanding of rules’ (p. 65). You cannot flourish without learning how to follow rules, but you also need to know when to flout them. I do not propose to enter this debate about Aristotle’s virtue ethics. I must admit, however, that I have no particular compunction about adopting Crisp’s (2013) language of considering the virtuous person having a ‘duty’ to do what is virtuous – as long as we are mindful of the fact that we are not talking about a Kantian duty here. I think ordinary language is pretty relaxed about what ‘duty’ can mean, and I am not sure it is helpful to avoid that flexibility in the service of theoretical purity. The point I want to raise here is, rather, that I am deeply sceptical of Annas’s attempt to separate rolebased morality, for instance within the ambit of professional ethics, from the morality of non-role-encumbered moral agents engaging with one another, guided by free-floating virtues only. Consider her example of the general virtue-based moral aspiration you should have to save a child from drowning in a pond (2015, p. 9). The way she illustrates the example almost trivialises it; you have sufficient time and opportunity to save the child at almost no cost to yourself (except by ruining your expensive new clothes). Yet even in this case, the status of the passer-by is not completely role-neutral; she occupies the role of a passer-by of a certain sort in a certain kind of situation. We only need to complicate the example slightly to bring this out more clearly. We always approach a moral situation from the vantage point of some sociomoral role: as a parent, child, friend, colleague, casual passer-by, etc. Someone might want to argue that the ‘role’ (if that is the right word) of the casual passer-by can defined only by the absence of the explicit roles that the person might have been occupying, as a doctor, say, or a close relative – and that, hence, the casual passer-by comes close to Annas’s conception of the non-role-encumbered virtuous agent. My counter-argument would be that what we expect morally from the virtuous passer-by also depends on the situation-dependent role in which she finds herself: Is she a swimmer? Can she save the child easily and without danger? – and so forth. Annas has already defined the ‘role’ of the passer-by in the way she sets up the story. A parent will be morally expected to tie the loose shoe-laces of her own child but not of all the children with loose shoe-laces in the neighbourhood. Similarly, if there were two children drowning in the pond, one of them her own child, and the passer-by could save only one of them, the virtuous thing to do would arguably be to save her own child, precisely because of her role

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as the child’s mother. Hence, all moralities are, in significant respects, role moralities – and it would be disingenuous of virtue ethicists, of all people, to try to suppress that feature of moral life. MacIntyre famously argued (1981, chap. 10) that there is something unique about heroic societies, such as those of ancient Greece and medieval Iceland, in this regard, where the (Hegelian) distinction between Sittlichkeit and Moralität has simply evaporated, and people – deprived of any moral ‘hidden depths’ – are not psycho-socially equipped to think outside of their well-defined social roles. I have argued elsewhere that MacIntyre overblows this characteristic of ‘heroic societies’ and that there are, for example, various examples in the Icelandic sagas of persons pondering deep moral quandaries about what to do (Kristjánsson, 1998). However, such examples of moral ambivalence need not indicate that people have stepped out of role morality altogether, but rather that moral roles commonly conflict and that it is often not clear which of the parallel roles that one occupies at any given time should take moral precedence. Although I see, therefore, nothing morally unique about these heroic societies, there is no denying the fact that the description of the role of the megalopsychos in ancient Greece provides an exceptionally clear example of the nature, blessings and burdens of occupying a clearly specified moral role. More specifically, they are the prime examples of the demanding duties – or required aspirations, if you prefer – of noblesse oblige. Because of the socio-­ economic status and personality traits of the megalopsychoi, they are cast in a certain role in society, and this role calls for specific actions from them, not supererogatorily, but directly and overridingly, precisely because of who they are. Whereas the ordinary phronimoi, given their means and abilities, can stick to their last and instantiate the virtues that are possible for them, the megalopsychoi must not dodge the column but rather must address their extra responsibilities head-on. Those involve building temples, sponsoring public ceremonies and rushing in where others dare not, or cannot, tread: tirelessly pulling chestnuts out of the fire for their fellow citizens. In doing so, they need, as Pakaluk puts it, to ‘pare away the small things that clutter up one’s time and occupy one’s attention’ and devote themselves, first and foremost, to ‘the larger and more important matters’ (2004, p. 266). Philanthropy, public benefaction and deeds of grandeur, requiring courage and spectacular effort, are their speciality. Meanwhile, however, the smaller virtues and the more subtle niceties of life fall by the wayside. The point is not that the megalopsychoi do not care to deign to them; they simply have no time for them. Or even if, strictly speaking, they do have time to perform lesser tasks, that time – between the outbursts of spectacular deeds – is better spent resting and recuperating for the next big effort. This does not mean that the megalopsychoi do not possess all the ordinary moral virtues. In fact, they possess them in ironclad form and to an unusual degree. However, possessing a virtuous trait and being able to display it are two distinct things. We are constantly faced with virtue dilemmas where

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one virtue has to be chosen at the expense of others. A significant function of phronesis is to orchestrate and oversee such choices. So, although judges often have to sacrifice compassion for justice, because of their role, and nurses or best friends must often forgo justice and opt for compassion because of their roles, it does not mean that these moral agents do not possess the other (suppressed) virtue also; it simply gets squeezed out or silenced because of the overriding role-relevant requirements. The megalopsychoi present an extreme case here. Because of the moral expectation placed on them to be constantly vigilant to cater to the greatest needs of their fellow citizens, they are forced to declutter and prioritise like no one else. This necessity can, however, easily be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Consider gratitude: a virtue that has come under the spotlight recently in philosophy and psychology (Gulliford, Morgan & Kristjánsson, 2013), even being given pride of place by some as the ‘parent’ of the virtues. That is probably an exaggeration, but there is no denying the standing of gratitude as an important social-glue virtue, representative of good character. Therefore, one of the most potentially damaging descriptions of the megalopsychoi is that they lack gratitude towards others: their disposition is simply to forget the gifts they receive (Aristotle, 1985, p. 101 [1124b13–14]). Roberts (2004; 2013) considers that disposition nothing less than symptomatic of a moral pathology, and he dismisses the megalopsychoi as control freaks and power addicts. He does not realise that in order to be selective enough – so that they can benefit as many people around them as humanly possible in noble, grand and spectacular ways (cf. Curzer, 1990, pp. 524–525) – they abandon gratitude, or, more precisely, it gets silenced by the requirement to do something grander with their time than beavering away at saying thank you to others, or cluttering their minds with thoughts of indebtedness (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 3). So far is this suppression of ordinary gratitude from being indicative of aloofness towards others, let alone a desire to dominate them, that the megalosychos finds it ‘proper’ to ‘ask for nothing, or hardly anything, but to help eagerly’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 101 [1124b17–18]). Moreover, control-freakish displays ‘of strength against the weak’ are written off by Aristotle himself as ‘vulgar’ and contrary to megalopsychia (1985, p. 102 [1124b22–23]). There is a serious sting in the tail here, however. The blessings of being one who is able to devote one’s life to the greatest and most urgent needs of one’s fellow human beings come with a burden. The requirement to be indefatigably at others’ beck and call makes it highly likely that one ends up emptying one’s psycho-moral coffers. The megalopsychoi are in a position similar to that of emergency medics and front-line soldiers – people who stand in acute danger of burn-out as a result of carrying an albatross of extreme moral aspirations around their necks. The sombre implication of this fact stares at the reader from Aristotle’s description of the megalopsychoi: they are simply not happy people (in an everyday subjective sense). I explain in more detail shortly why that is the case, but let me first make clear why I have not reached

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a recognisably un-Aristotelian conclusion here. Is subjective happiness not supposed to supervene on, and complete, the possession of the moral virtues ‘like the bloom on youths’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 276 [1174b32–35])? Yes, but as I have mentioned before in this book, a very important Aristotelian qualification tends to be forgotten. He explicitly says that ‘it is not true that the active exercise of every virtue is pleasant; it is pleasant only in so far as we attain the end’ (1985, p. 79 [1117b15–16]; cf. Curzer, 2012, pp. 38–42, 329–331). So grand and ambitious are the efforts aspired to by the megalopsychoi that not all of them are likely to bear fruit; and even if they do, the ineliminable tension between the exercise of the grand virtues and the demands of the niggling smaller niceties that must be decluttered will cast a constant chill over their lives. Therefore, the ‘end’ of virtuous activity will often not be reached, and the ‘bloom’ of pleasure will not appear. The problem may run deeper than simply that of internal tensions and running out of puff in the domain of the moral virtues. Famously, Aristotle’s claim in Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics is that exercising the moral virtues is not sufficient for full flourishing; we also (and more significantly) need the intellectual virtue of contemplation (theoria). I say more about that virtue in the final section of this chapter. For present purposes, it suffices to note that the megalopsychoi will have little if any time for philosophising at all, even about the true nature of ordinary things. It is, I submit, no coincidence that the most telling sign of the megalopsychos’s detached, world-weary and melancholy attitude to life is that ‘he finds nothing great’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 102 [1125a3]; see also the description of the megalopsychos as a kataphronetikos: a person who is, deep down, contemptuous of all worldly goods: 1985, p. 100 [1124a10–19]; cf. Pakaluk, 2004, p. 260). The megalopsychos finds nothing great because he is debarred from engaging in the sort of self-transcendent contemplative activity that uncovers the wonder-filled nature of true greatness. Again, because of his unique moral role, he has no time for it. It is not as if the megalopsychos is incapable of all self-transcendence. Quite the contrary, he is the paragon of what I go on to characterise in Chapter 5 as ‘horizontal self-transcendence’: merging his moral self-concept with that of other people. However, ‘not prone to marvel’ – that is, not prone to experience ‘wonder’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 102 [1125a3]) – he is incapable of ‘vertical self-transcendence’: embedding his self-concept in higher truths. Great-hearted he may be, but great-minded he is not, because of the resulting intellectual hollowness at the core of his being. Or, to put it more bluntly and provocatively, the megalopsychos is unhappy primarily because, by being unable to practise the perfection of contemplative reason, he is a philistine! The comment that the megalopsychos likes ‘fine and unproductive’ possessions (Aristotle, 1985, p. 102 [1125a12–13]) does not really speak against this interpretation. Presumably, because the megalopsychos ‘counts nothing great’ (1985, p. 103 [112514]), he is not a connoisseur of beautiful things. Rather, his collection of fine items sounds tokenistic: a declaration of contempt for

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ordinary, useful worldly possessions. At all events, ‘counting nothing great’ cannot be the characteristic of a flourishing person. It is surely not the goal of an education towards flourishing to encourage such an attitude in students.

Blowing the whistle on philistinism James Fetter (2015, p. 2) advances the hypothesis that Aristotle wrote his chapter on megalopsychia explicitly as an object lesson on the point that practising the moral virtues alone – even to an extreme and meticulous degree – is itself imperfect and inferior to a life that combines the intellectual virtue of contemplation with the moral virtues. I find myself in broad but uneasy agreement with the thrust of Fetter’s argument. Aristotle did not have a particular knack for dropping hints, so I think that if this is what he intended the chapter to show, he would have said it outright. However, even if he did not intend to expose the shortcomings of a life of mere moral virtue in this chapter, I agree with Fetter that this is implicitly what the chapter does. It blows the whistle on the perils of philistinism. Pakaluk detects the inklings of an interest to philosophise in the megalopsychos’s demeanour (2004, p. 267); I see none. Even when the megalopsychos does potentially have time, between his dazzling deeds, to contemplate, he has had no training in it and does not know how to practise it; hence he just remains idle, finding nothing sufficiently worthwhile to fill his time between the spectacular outbursts of moral energy (cf. Fetter, 2015, p. 24; Crisp, 2006, p. 175). Or, as Aristotle puts it, the megalopsychos is ‘inactive and lethargic except for some great honour or achievement’ (1985, p. 102 [1124b24–25]). The megalopsychos is curiously misdeveloped, therefore, from the perspective of education for flourishing. His hyper-sensitive moral wisdom has little theoretical wisdom to complement it; this is why, in the end, he cuts a rather sad, lonesome and tragic figure. In short, the megalopsychos has an abundant supply of the external necessities listed in Chapter 2. He also fulfils the other precondition of flourishing – that of having a clear sense of purpose – admirably. One could even say that the megalopsychos is obsessed with his sense of purpose as a public benefactor. Yet the clear lesson to be learned from Aristotle’s description is that the megalopsychos is not flourishing in an overall sense as a person. Megalopsychia is a divisive trait of character that scholars tend to either demonise or deify. Until recently, at least, the former voices were louder. In the haste, however, to throw out the bathwater, the baby may have gone missing too. I have argued in this chapter that there is a lot to learn for us moderns, both academics and laypeople, from the contours of Aristotle’s description of his crown of the moral virtues. I have not gone as far as Wilcken (2014) in wanting to ‘rehabilitate’ the virtue; I have a more measured view of it now than before (Kristjánsson, 1998; 2002). However, just as the concept of virtue itself has again come into respectable use of late, untethered from its

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unfortunate 19th century connotations (see Annas, 2015, p. 1), I hope that we can learn to appreciate megalopsychia afresh as a great reservoir of psychological, educational and moral truths, without necessarily wanting to accommodate it wholesale into neo-Aristotelian theory. Notice that even if we do not agree fully with the Aristotelian claim that being a public benefactor places such excessive moral demands on the megalopsychoi that their ability to cultivate intellectual virtue is compromised, the fundamental message from the whole discussion remains: moral virtue, even when exercised at the highest level, does not suffice for flourishing. Let me end by rehearsing two reasons why megalopsychia is of such modern appositeness. First, because of the relevant affluence of contemporary societies, but coupled with increased inequalities, more people than ever before have both the means and the ideal opportunities to practise magnanimity on a grand scale. Megalopsychia reminds us of the extensive moral aspirations that such people are required to take on, in order to remain virtuous, and the privileges involved in being a public benefactor. However, it also shows us the dark side of those aspirations, where being a grandiose goody-two-shoes can constitute a stiffening process – a sort of mental starch – that prevents the people involved from practising their more fine-grained moral virtues and engaging in the leisurely philosophising – the staring in wonder at the esoteric – that completes a good life. Megalopsychia thus brings home to us the delicate, and in many ways uneasy, relationship between moral virtue, on the one hand, and both flourishing and subjective well-being, on the other. Unlike Nussbaum (1986), I see no particular beauty in the essential fragility of the human condition. It would be so much better if the megalopsychoi could both satisfy the demands of their role and marvel in wonder at high-brow principles. But there are simply too many fires burning in today’s world, the orthodox Aristotelian would argue, and too many chestnuts to pull out of those fires. The vicissitudes of moral luck continue to play tricks on us, and the ‘gift’ of extremely good fortune can, in more senses than one, be considered a ‘Greek gift’ nowadays, just as it was 2,300 years ago. That said, megalopsychia does not constitute a full-blown counter-example to a thesis about a harmony between objective and subjective well-being, similar to the ones explored in Chapter 3. Although the megalopsychoi satisfy the main preconditions for an objectively flourishing life, namely external necessities and a clear moral purpose, as well as the substantive condition of possessing moral virtues (indeed in magnified forms) alongside the intellectual virtue of phronesis, they are not able to cultivate contemplation. It is not as if they are people who are fully flourishing, yet unhappy. Rather, a core ingredient in full eudaimonia is missing, and this is the main reason why they do not count as what we would call ‘happy’. Does this cancel out the advantage of being a megalopsychos? It may seem to do so until you consider the alternative: keeping your wealth in an offshore account and indulging in your own self-centred interests. Even if those interests happen to be

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philosophical, there is no hint in Aristotle of this being the better option. The advantages of intellectual wisdom do not kick in until you have done what moral wisdom requires of you (see e.g. Curzer, 2012, p. 394). I do think that Curzer slightly over-eggs this point when he says that the contemplative life, for Aristotle, is ‘ just a particularly reflective version of the ethical life’ (2012, p. 394). However, even if that were true, the megalopsychoi have presumably neither the time nor the training for such a reflective extension of their ethical lives. Second, megalopsychia is relevant today because of the burgeoning interest in Aristotelian forms of character education and education for flourishing. Large portions of this literature highlight the instrumental and extrinsic benefits of such education: for employability, positive emotions and pro-social ends. It is not only that the intrinsic value of good character seldom gets a mention; the burdens and pains that go with the virtuous life are systematically elided. In an attempt to make the cultivation of character more palatable, a one-sided romantic picture is painted. But human life is more complicated and ambivalent than that, especially a good human life. I propose to educationists to be more forthright about the blessings and the burdens of a life well lived, as they reverberate and resonate in our lives in the 21st century.

What is the missing virtue of contemplation then all about? As we have seen, on a plausible Aristotelian view, flourishing requires opportunities to contemplate. For those not well versed in the Aristotelian view of what contemplation is, a quick review is in order (see further in Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 5) before I go on to argue, more controversially, in Chapter 5 that even contemplation does not suffice as the orientation of a flourishing person towards the wonders of worldly existence. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics famously starts with a search for the supreme good for human beings, and while granting that it must be eudaimonia or flourishing, he correctly points out that interpretations run rampant on what flourishing really involves. Aristotle rules out certain proposals, such as that eudaimonia consists of money-making (getting and spending) and honour or hedonic pleasures, but the question is not fully settled before the discussion heads off in the direction of a life of moral virtue and how to achieve it. Many readers will be tempted to understand this expository logic as implying a suggestion of what sort of activities eudaimonia essentially incorporates – but that turns out to be an all-too-hasty inference. We gradually learn that eudaimonia consists of activities in accord with excellence, but there are many different excellences, most notably in virtuous living, practical endeavours and contemplation (theoria), and different sorts of possible lives devoted to such activities. Excellence in the sphere of doing things virtuously is phronesis, in the practical sphere of making things it is

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techné, and in the contemplative sphere of reflecting upon the supreme objects of knowing it is sophia or theoretical wisdom. Some Aristotelian exegetes, so-called ‘inclusivists’, have argued that in so far as Aristotle upholds any consistent view on the subject (which some of them question), he takes ‘the mixed life’ to be the best life: the life of a proper mixture of techné, phronesis and sophia. So-called ‘intellectualists’ retort, however, that for Aristotle the exclusive cultivation of sophia in the sphere of theoria is actually the best possible life (on this debate see e.g. Curzer, 2012, chap. 18). If there ever is good reason to speak of a definitive victory in the field of philosophical exegesis, I believe it was won with Richard Kraut’s (1989) intellectualist interpretation. After reading Kraut’s work, it is difficult to understand how anyone can seriously contend that Aristotle is ambiguous on this issue – and inclusivist interpretations that have appeared subsequently (for example Garver’s in 2006, which understands theoria as an ideal perfection of the morally virtuous life) seem to be increasingly strained. However surprising the argument in Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics may appear to readers (and however disappointing for some moral philosophers and character educationists!), it leaves scarcely any loose ends. Pure contemplation activates the most divine, continuous, self-sufficient, noble, intrinsically valuable and leisurely elements within us: the elements that are most ‘us’. This line of thought is then continued in Aristotle’s Politics (1941a), which repeatedly underlines that however admirable is the life of the statesman, who devotes his energy to the smooth running of the polis, it still involves self-sacrifice because it precludes the best possible life of contemplation. A life devoted to phronesis is admittedly a good life, but ‘in a secondary way’ (1985, p. 287 [1178a9]). Closely related to contemplation is the emotion of wonder. Aristotle makes frequent allusions to wonder (thaumazein) as aporetic amazement at the workings of nature, and he believes that all true philosophy starts with wonder and is sustained by the motivation to consider every ‘realm of nature’ as ‘marvellous’: Of things constituted by nature some are ungenerated, imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to generation and decay. The former are excellent beyond compare and divine […] Both departments, however, have their special charm […] Having already treated of the celestial world […], we proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the kingdom, however ignoble. For if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy […] Every realm of nature is marvellous: and […] we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something

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beautiful. Absence of haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in Nature’s works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of her generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful (Aristotle, 1941c, pp. 656–657 [644b20–645a25]). When Aristotle notes that the megalopsychoi are ‘not prone to marvel’ – that is, not prone to experience ‘wonder’ at the marvellous (Aristotle, 1985, p. 102 [1125a3]) – he is basically saying that what is missing from their lives is a certain intellectual attitude to the wonders of the universe and the emotional attachment that goes with it. I fully agree with Aristotle on this point. However, I propose to go even further than he does and to make heavier demands on the necessary ‘enchantment’ of a flourishing life. I work out that proposal in the following chapter, in which I begin to venture unapologetically past anything that Aristotle thought or said. In the following chapter, I also tease out some of the educational implications of the call to help students to ‘marvel’ in order to lead flourishing lives. Let it suffice to say here at the end that Aristotle’s call for contemplation and wonder is motivated by radically different concerns than, for example, Ben Kotzee’s recent liberalist plea for ‘intellectual character education’ (2018). Kotzee argues that schools should be perfectionist regarding children’s intellects, but neutralist regarding their morals, because otherwise the principle of liberal neutrality will be breached. What worried Aristotle was, of course, no such liberal principle, but rather that mere ‘moral character education’ would not be enough to secure a flourishing life – even given the best of background pre-conditions – because of the unique way in which the intellectual virtues satisfy our discrete human potential, above and beyond the moral ones.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 Pusillanimity – thinking oneself worthy of less than one is really worthy of – tends to be considered a major problem in today’s schools, not least among female students, although this will be conceptualised nowadays simply as ‘lack of self-esteem’. Aristotle seems to have been more worried about the other extreme: vanity – thinking oneself worthy of more than one is really worthy of. Can you think of any likely historical or social reasons why pusillanimity seems to be such a common malaise nowadays, especially among female students? 2 On an Aristotelian conception of megalopsychia, educators (parents and teachers) will ideally need to single out potential megalopsychoi and subject them to special treatment. At the same time, preparing those students for the role of public benefaction seems to imply that they are doomed to a life that deprives them of some central components of flourishing, because those will be ‘squeezed out’ for reasons of time. How does a good educator react to this situation? Or is Aristotle presenting us with

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a false dichotomy? In other words, is it possible both to devote oneself to philanthropic causes and to have enough time to cultivate one’s intellectual activities of contemplation and wonder? 3 Have you come across students who exhibit a detached, world-weary and melancholy attitude to life and who ‘find nothing great’? Is Aristotle right that those students tend to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths? 4 Curzer argues that the advantages of theoretical wisdom do not start to kick in until you have done what moral wisdom requires of you. Do you agree? Why or why not? 5 What can we do to help students who are ‘not prone to marvel’? How does one cultivate the emotional trait of wonder in students?

Chapter 5

Flourishing and awe Towards an extended, ‘enchanted’ Aristotelian theory

Venturing beyond Aristotle Notwithstanding my sympathies, expressed in preceding chapters, with an Aristotelian account of flourishing in general and some of its latter-day counterparts in particular, the aim of the present chapter is to venture beyond the current theories and Aristotle’s own, by arguing that both suffer from a kind of ‘flatness’ or ‘disenchantedness’ in failing to pay heed to the satisfaction of certain impulses that have been proven to give fullness to our lives: impulses having to do with emotional attachments to transpersonal ideals. I thus argue that while the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia is a necessary place to begin a study of human flourishing, it is not a sufficient one to conclude such a study; it needs to be extended and enchanted in order to do so. I began to do so with my inclusion of ‘a sense of meaning and purpose’ (on a contemporary understanding) as one of the preconditions of flourishing in Chapter 2; now I aim to recast and reconceive proper Aristotelian flourishing more thoroughly. In this chapter, I use AF to refer to standard conceptions of Aristotelian flourishing as explicitly or implicitly grounded in his works, and I use EAF to refer to the sort of extended, enchanted flourishing that I consider a necessary amplification of the standard conceptions. My hope is that these additional considerations will enter the bloodstream of contemporary flourishing theorists and quicken its pulse. At the same time, I hope that I can provide the outlines of a new, expanded neo-Aristotelian conception of flourishing and persuade readers that what is on offer in this book is a fairly novel and radical theory of flourishing as the aim of education, even though it takes its cue from Aristotle’s works. In the following section, I begin to pose searching questions about whether both traditional AF and the current Aristotle-inspired or quasi-Aristotelian theories fail to acknowledge certain core ingredients of the good life. The third section continues this exploration by probing whether acknowledging those extra ingredients in order to ‘enchant’ Aristotle forces us to abandon his naturalism and embrace supernaturalism – or, more specifically, theism. I answer that question ultimately in the negative. The fourth

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section illustrates the earlier points made through the example of ‘enchanted’ versus ‘disenchanted’ science education. The fifth section offers some concluding and summarising thoughts. Let me begin this journey, however, by returning to the case of the fictional poet Ólafur Kárason from Chapter 3. In World Light, the 1937 tour-de-force Hardy-meets-Cervantes-meetsDostoyevsky novel of the Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness (2002), we encounter the protagonist (anti)-hero Ólafur Kárason and follow his chequered trajectory through life. Abandoned by his mother and living in squalor with an abusive foster family, Ólafur remains bedridden through much of his childhood, suffering from a condition that would probably be diagnosed nowadays as a mixture of post-traumatic stress disorder, vitamin deficiency and hypochondria. After being cured by a mystical figure – at a juncture where the writing style of the novel subtly moves from social realism into magic realism – Ólafur embarks on a Quixotic journey of continued physical and emotional torments, ruinous love affairs, a tortured marriage, several children, shady dealings with crooked capitalists, supernatural encounters of varied provenance and a descent into pedophilia (which destroys his ambitions a teacher). Always the loser but never embittered or beaten, Ólafur strives to achieve his childhood vision of becoming a great poet, yet he never succeeds in achieving anything close to greatness, partly because of adverse circumstances, partly because of lack of any noticeable talent. In a life that seems to offer only recipes for disaster, Ólafur is sustained by one consolation: his quest for ‘the epiphanic resonance of the divine’, attained through glimpses, far and few between since childhood, and recurring flashbulb recollections of those glimpses, where he comes ‘face to face with the inexpressible’ and experiences ‘infinite chorus glory and radiance’. In those moments of exaltation, Ólafur’s whole sense of self dissolves into ‘one sacred, tearful yearning’ to be united with something higher than himself – transfigured by infinite truth and beauty. Symbolically, at the end of his life, he embarks on a final redemptive journey (at Easter) up to a glacier, the earthly representation of his vision of vastness and transcendence, where the mountain meets the sky and ‘becomes one with Heaven’. He disappears into the depths of the glacier, becoming one with it, in a place ‘where beauty reigns forever, beyond all demands’. Ólafur Kárson’s life is almost as far away from that of a phronimos (the person of full virtue in AF) as one can imagine. Deprived of moral luck and hampered by his own dearth of moral character and intellectual stamina, Ólafur’s life may, at first sight, seem to be best described as wretched rather than eudaimon. Yet there is something exquisite about its wretchedness, and this is why it served as such a helpful foil to the flourishing–happiness concordance thesis that I took to task in Chapter 3. The hope of ‘the epiphanic resonance of the divine’ gives his life meaning and unwavering purpose and imbues it with moments of extreme happiness. Some readers see World Light as a simple reminder of how a creative spirit can survive in even the

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most crushing environment and the most uncompromising human vessel. But there is, I submit, more to it than that. Imagine Ólafur as having been brought up by good people under fortunate life circumstances, yet retaining his ecstatic, enchanted encounters with the ideals of oneness and beauty, and you have a life that somehow seems to surpass that of the phronimos. Despite its abysmal failings, Ólafur’s life appears to retain something of the putative attainments of the human ergon (natural function) that Aristotle misses. If that is the case, then philosophers developing a neo-Aristotelian vision of human flourishing need to take notice. The same goes, more specifically, for current theories of educational flourishing, to the extent that they share Aristotle’s tendencies to foreground the mundane over the exalted.

Is Aristotelian flourishing flat and disenchanted? In his 1864 book on Aristotle, English literary critic and philosopher George Henry Lewes describes him as ‘utterly destitute of any sense of the Ineffable’. ‘There is no quality in him more noticeable’, Lewes observes, ‘than his unhesitating confidence in the adequacy of the human mind to comprehend the universe’, and this ‘unhesitating mind’ is utterly ‘destitute of awe’ (Lewes, 1991). Such grievances have been expressed not only by foes of Aristotle but also by his friends. Thus, Aristotelian philosopher Sarah Broadie complains that some sides of human nature are ‘largely unexplored’ by Aristotle, sides such that, in addition to being rational, we are also ‘spiritual beings, responsive to beauty, imaginatively creative’ (1991, p. 36), without awareness of which any account of human nature becomes deflated and incomplete. What many commentators consider one of the main attractions of AF as the aim of education and of life in general, namely its distinctive worldliness and its ‘affirmation of ordinary life’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 370), may easily degenerate into a philistine fetishisation of the mundane, possibly accompanied by a sense of ‘emptiness, or non-resonance’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 308). I see eerie signs of that in some neo-Aristotelian theories of late, and I do not exclude my own books (2007; 2015) there, even though they had mainly to do with the development of good character, rather than the more capacious goal of flourishing. Some of the most vocal criticisms of ‘flatness’ (or lack of ‘fullness’) in AF have come lately from religious (especially Catholic) thinkers, such as Charles Taylor (2007), who connects the charge of flatness with his critique of a ‘disenchanted’, excessively narrow, naturalistic view. In the present section, I focus on the charge of an excessive or misbegotten naturalism underlying AF, without invoking a supernaturalistic alternative, but I address the latter in the following section. As a matter of fact, Taylor himself does not so much attack Aristotle as a philistine Enlightenment stance that other theorists may, however, trace back to Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s idealism. Taylor objects to three components of disenchantment: scientism, mechanism and instrumentalism (2007, p. 773). Disenchantment is, for him, not just an abstract,

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theoretical peril: it is a practical evil that makes human lives humdrum and mediocre, consumed by the daily grind (cf. Dunne, 2010, p. 62). Underneath our daily travails, however, there will for most of us be moments of depth, joy and fullness which give us a clue that somewhere, ‘in some activity, or condition’, there ‘lies a fullness, a richness’ where life is ‘more worthwhile, more admirable, more what it should be’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 5). In default of this fullness – even for people who seem to be flourishing according to objective criteria – there looms a sense of ‘terrible flatness in the everyday’, an experience that is particularly rife in consumer society (2007, p. 309). In the background of those criticisms lurk some well-known themes from Taylor’s general moral philosophy, such as his notion of ‘strong evaluations’ of things we ought to value, by comparison to which typical neo-Aristotelian functional evaluations of the good of human beings, as analogous to that of plants and animals, will seem weak and insipid (McPherson, 2012). The reason is that the functional explanations (drawing on Aristotle’s insight that we should think biologically about how living beings flourish) arguably fail to make sense of our moral phenomenology, for instance of how we pass second-order moral judgements about our own first-order moral judgements (McPherson, 2015). It may well be that Aristotle has missed something fundamental about the human ergon. Latter-day theorists have identified those missing parts in human beings’ deep-seated orientation or urge – sometimes referred to as ‘a transcendent urge’ (Cottingham, 2012) – towards extraordinary, idealised experiences of the true, good and beautiful (see e.g. Flanagan, 2007, p. 187). This urge is revealed, inter alia, in the interhuman aesthetic impulse (Dissanayake, 1992) and a strong drive towards some sort of spirituality (Hardy, 1966). In a 2000 survey conducted in that pretty secular country, the United Kingdom, 75% of respondents claimed to be ‘aware of a spiritual dimension to their existence’ (cited in Evans, 2017, p. 6). One could even argue that the desire for getting high on drugs – especially psychedelic drugs – has the same psychological or biological provenance. Sensuous affinity for the landscapes and life-forms of the world, as well as for their representation in art, and awe before the immensity of the universe are examples of the sought-after experiences (Hay & Nye, 2006, p. 141). Incorporating these considerations into his (naturalistic) account, Flanagan describes the good life in terms of a complex ‘psycho-poetic performance’ (2007, pp. 16, 187). In contrast, despite his profound interest in the moral value of poetry, Aristotle did not see art as satisfying a transcendent urge. Accusing Aristotle himself of flatness may seem blatantly unfair at first sight. Even Taylor wants to exonerate him – as opposed to his naturalistic successors – from blame because of ‘the important role for contemplation of a larger order as something divine in us’ (2007, p. 27). Contemplation (theoria) is a touchy topic for many Aristotelian scholars, as noted in the previous chapter, and they are not sure what to make of it. It clearly involves some

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profound reflections on the telos of human life and also on the unchanging truths of mathematics, metaphysics, physics and divinity. It is even accompanied by a characteristic pleasure, like the successful display of all virtues. However, notice that Aristotle’s deistic God (who does not interfere in the workings of the universe) is a pure thinker, and the pleasure referred to is not active and ecstatic but rather an un-self-conscious pleasure in unimpeded activities. Despite Aristotle’s implicit exposure of his paragons of supreme virtue, the megalopsychoi, as philistines (recall Chapter 4), because of their lack of (time for) contemplative activity, we get no sense in Aristotle’s treatment of contemplation that it satisfies a deep urge for awe-struck transcendence. Aristotelian contemplation lacks, for example, the aesthetic dimension that one would find, say, in Confucianism and its reverence of ‘Heaven’ and ‘the Way’ – although Confucianism is often taken to be even more mundane than Aristotelianism (Sim, 2007, pp. 2–3). A short detour is required here into emotion territory to explain why Aristotle’s focus on the intellectual virtue of wonder does not suffice to show that he acknowledged the sense of mystery that human beings satisfy through the emotion of awe. Indeed, Aristotle never mentions awe (see further in Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). Wonder is an intellectual virtue in two distinct but inter-related senses. It (a) arouses the intellect and (b) directs it towards objects that are seen as intellectually understandable and decipherable, at least in principle if not always in immediate practice. It is crucially important to distinguish this intellectual virtue from the morally virtuous emotion of awe. To be sure, wonder often seems to function as a gentle and low-level relative of awe (and its common precursor), with awe then best being described as intensification of wonder; and it is difficult to determine exactly at what point wonder shades into awe proper. A careful study of lay uses of the words ‘awe’ and ‘wonder’ may hold the key here (Darbor et al., 2016). It indicates that whereas ‘wonder’ is associated with curiosity in trying to understand the world and contemplate its workings, awe is more related to observing it existentially – and hence is reflected in greater use of perception words. As Jules Evans puts it, drawing on Sam Harris, ‘we may wonder at Hubble photographs, but we are unlikely to lose control of ourselves, feel our egos dissolve in a love-connection to the cosmos, and come away with a sense of deep personal transformation’ (2017, p. 197) – as we would in awe. Incidentally, this distinction between lay uses of the two concepts corresponds substantially to a specification suggested by Martha Nussbaum (2001, p. 54), according to which wonder focuses on the value of the object, and is most likely to issue in contemplation but, unlike awe, without self-reflexivity (i.e. with the subject ‘being minimally aware, if at all’, of the object’s ‘relationship to her own plans’). Nussbaum explains this non-self-­ reflexivity in terms of wonder being ‘non-eudaimonistic’. I am not very happy with that term. I would argue that it would indeed impact negatively upon the eudaimonia of students of nature if they did not, at some juncture in the

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study process, experience wonder as an emotion, drawing upon and intensifying their attention, curiosity and contemplation. However, Nussbaum is right in that wonder may be experienced independent of, and without impacting, our personal projects or our moral-existential awareness. In that narrow sense, wonder is non-eudaimonistic. It is not about us as psycho-moral agents, nor is it about how we evaluate ourselves or how we act. In other words, wonder is not a moral virtue situated in the ethical sphere of human association and appraisal. Recently two conceptual analyses of wonder have appeared, conducted by philosophers. Tobia (2015) provides an exhaustive list of the necessary and sufficient conditions for experiencing wonder. Much of his rhetoric seems to indicate a strong affinity between wonder and awe, because he also connects experiences of wonder to a sense of mystery and immensity. Yet he specifically singles out some distinctions between awe and wonder, one having to do with awe not requiring ‘interest’ in the object (2015, footnote 4). Tobia may be right, in a certain sense, in that (unlike wonder) awe does not require interest in the experienced object, if by ‘interest’ he means ‘enduring intellectual interest’. It suffices that the object of awe captivates us momentarily like a thunderbolt and puts us into a spin. It is precisely this sort of ‘spin’ that Aristotle, unfortunately, has no time for. Somewhat differently from Tobia, Vasalou (2015) warns against too tight conceptual characterisations of, and distinctions between, awe and wonder. She proposes ‘loosening the tenacity’ of ‘taxonomic grids’ in the emotional sphere, mollifying their ‘steely unity’ (p. 26). While acknowledging that awe is thicker in ‘the depth of feeling’ than wonder (p. 32), she sees both emotions as ‘tied to a mastery of language that is inherently pluralistic’ (p. 33). I agree that ordinary language does not always distinguish clearly between wonder and awe, and that the feelings that accompany the two may often shade into one another. Indeed, Henderson’s (2017) recent popular book, on science as a journey towards marvels of wonder, often seems to apply the terms ‘wonder’ and ‘awe’ interchangeably. I return to that book later in this chapter. In a recent work (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8), I teased out the conceptual components of awe in the following way. (1) The subject of awe is the person experiencing it. (2) The feeling of awe is intense and predominantly pleasant, although it may be slightly tainted with a sense of impending terror. (3) The perception eliciting it can be visual, olfactory, auditory and tactile. (4) The intentional object of awe is the cognised contact with a truly great ideal that is mystifying or even ineffable in transcending ordinary human experiences. This experience is perceived to have increased existential awareness and connected the subject to a greater whole. (5) The target of awe is constituted by the ideals of the famous Platonic triad of truth, beauty and goodness. Depending on whether the target is truth, beauty or goodness, awe presents itself as the more specific emotions of intellectual elevation (for truth), moral elevation (for goodness) or aesthetic elevation/ecstasy (for beauty). Awe can thus be seen as a term for a

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general emotional cluster. (6) The characteristic goal-­directed activity of awe is that of continuing to experience the emotion or experiencing it again, preferably more profoundly. Awe does not, however, present itself with a distinct behavioural pattern, apart (possibly) from a common facial expression of blissful surprise. I presented components (1)–(6) above as necessary and sufficient conditions for an experience of awe to take place. This formulation does not mean that I consider the concept of awe to be specifiable with mathematical precision. Awe, like all emotion concepts, is open-textured and has vague boundaries. This vagueness is not, however, a result of the unavailability of relevant necessary conditions; it is rather a result of those conditions themselves being vague. For example, it is impossible to define with any mathematical precision the exact dividing line between mere wonder at a remarkable natural phenomenon, such as the rainbow, and awe at a unique appearance of a rainbow that is somehow connected to a heightened existential awareness. Yet lack of mathematical precision does not indicate lack of a conceptual boundary. The essential uniqueness of awe lies in its constituting an essentially self-reflexive experience, as indicated above. More specifically, awe is a self-reflexive emotion in the sense that it represents a relationship between the intentional object and features of the self, although it is not ‘self-conscious’ in the strong sense of being representationally just about the self (like pride or shame). Awe prompts us to self-consciously reflect upon ourselves, for example by re-evaluating our status in the universe. It is thus, in a sense, Janus-faced: it turns outwardly towards its target but inwardly towards ourselves, and it forces us to consider ourselves against the horizon of a more immense external reality – even to the point of making us transcend the boundary between the internal and the external. Being self-reflexive and even self-transcending does not mean, however, that experiences of awe need to be self-comparative; I resent the recent trend of seeing awe conceptually or empirically connected to humility, for example. Another argument that I have developed previously (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8), and have time to articulate only dogmatically here, is that awe can be seen as a virtuous emotion in an Aristotelian sense (although not Aristotle’s own!). It may at first seem strained to try to accommodate an emotional awetrait within the famous Aristotelian architectonic of a quantitative and qualitative golden mean – at worst a futile attempt to ‘Apollonize the Dionysian’ (Asher, 2017, p. 35) – but it is still worth a shot. For example, with respect to the quantitative mean, it is obviously not good to be in a state of constant rapture; that sort of aestheticism on steroids would count as the excess-extreme of awe. The deficiency-extreme would be constituted, however, by the insipid philistinism of those incapable of experiencing awe towards the right objects when the occasion calls for it. To be in a qualitative mean, awe would obviously also have to be felt for the right reasons, in the right manner, for the right length of time, and so on. In order to justify awe as virtuous, we will

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need to show that it speaks to an intrinsic human need, whose satisfaction is constitutive of human flourishing. I have indeed argued that awe satisfies this condition by responding to an interhuman urge for self-transcendence. Notice that when I talk about awe as a ‘virtuous’ emotion, I mean ‘virtuous’ in a moral sense, not just an intellectual sense. In informing our existential awareness of our status in the great chain of things, our self-evaluations and our self-conceptions of ourselves as moral agents at work in the world, awe does more than just guide the self away from itself, in a flow-like way – like wonder – towards external objects. Rather, it touches the core of our own moral selfhood. Despite all his claims about the contemplative life being the best life for human beings, and all his reminders of how wonder is the springboard of all academic inquiries, Aristotle was no friend of awe. On his great escape route away from Plato’s idealism, sweeping away his metaphysical lumber, Aristotle seems to have become fearful of ecstatic wow-experiences and limited in his view of the potential targets of morally relevant emotions as comprising only other people (like compassion), ourselves (like pride) or natural objects (like wonder), but not abstract ideals (like truth, beauty and goodness), or at least not abstract ideals via a sense of awe and mystery. I consider these omissions to put severe constrictions on AF: indeed, to render it too ‘flat’ and ‘disenchanted’ to be acceptable. However, because of the continued influence of Plato and of gnostic philosophies, ideas about the essentially moral and self-transcending or ecstatic nature of deep scientific inquiry remained very much part of the Western mindset until the 18th century ( Jones, 2006). It was not until the Enlightenment that awe experiences – as part of or inspired by scientific practice – came to be seen as threats to the newly emerging ideal of the rational, industrious, autonomous and controlled self, with awe being relegated to the status of a mere irrational excess of wonder (see e.g. Evans, 2017, esp. pp. xvi and 197), and with wonder itself being domesticated and normalised through a process towards a fetishisation of the mundane, as already indicated (cf. Taylor, 2007, p. 308). Carr (2014) may well be right that we read Aristotle too much through a modern scientific lens and underestimate the extent to which the objects of his inquiry were esoteric, on a modern understanding: for example, rational purposes endowed with causal powers. That granted, the virtue of contemplation and the emotion of wonder scarcely save AF from an accusation of flatness. Griffin, for instance, is scathing in his dismissal of the detached ‘Godlike review of eternal truths as they march in orderly formulation before the mind’ of the Aristotelian contemplator. He concludes that this ‘passive, narrow, austere, even rather boring activity would not go far towards making life valuable or giving it substance’ (1986, pp. 57–58). Knuuttila makes the same point bluntly when he says that ‘Aristotle was not inclined to seek the meaning and end of life outside it, as Plato did, and

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correspondingly he did not think that detachment from appreciating contingent things and from associated emotions is what philosophy should teach people’ (2004, p. 25); hence the lack of attention paid to any kind of awestruck transcendence as part of contemplation and wonder. ‘Transcendence’ is a tricky word, however. When it is claimed that the goods at issue in eudaimonic activity are self-transcendent goods (or goods ‘larger’ than the self ), that is a leaf taken straight out of Aristotle’s book, as indeed out of any respectable non-egoistic moral theory. For example, compassion (Gr. eleos) transcends the self in being directed at the undeserved misfortune of another person. Indeed, Viktor Frankl’s (1984) famous call for self-transcendence as a condition of self-actualisation seems to be admirably satisfied by AF. So what seems to be missing from AF is not self-transcendence as such (qua ‘horizontal transcendence’ vis-à-vis other people, as I explained in Chapter 4) but rather selves-transcendence (qua ‘vertical transcendence’ towards ideals), or more specifically, the notion of transpersonal emotions with their heightened, ecstatic sensitivities. While Flanagan is right that it is odd to characterise transcendence as a separate virtue, as positive psychologists do, because it lacks the required specificity of a characteristic domain (2007, chap. 2), the transpersonal urge is, I submit, a universal human orientation to exalted ideals. I would hesitate to describe a human life as flourishing that did not include considerable elements of emotional awe. Children’s experiences of the world are typically filled with awe, but unfortunately, the capacity for awe often seems to dissipate in adolescence and to become suppressed in many adults, leading to the sort of ‘flatness’, ‘insipidity’ and ‘disenchantedness’ that Taylor decries. I therefore make the daring theoretical move of proposing that, to make sense of human flourishing in its full, AF be expanded to EAF: extended, enchanted flourishing. Taylor himself is more demanding than I am about the extra elements needed to amplify flourishing (as we see in the following section), beyond those of transpersonal emotions. He even suggests in some places (although he is not consistent on this) that what he calls ‘fullness’ goes beyond or is independent of human flourishing (2007, pp. 16–19; yet on p. 44 he talks only about fullness going beyond ‘ordinary’ human flourishing). I remain adamant in assuming, however, that EAF refers to a notion of ordinary human flourishing, even though it exceeds Aristotle’s account. We simply know more about human psychology than he did in his time, and it is fully in line with Aristotelian naturalism to update it when needed in light of new evidence – empirical, normative or both. As Iris Murdoch once dramatically put it, if a moral philosophy does not give a satisfactory or sufficiently rich account of the good, ‘then away with it’ (1988, p. 215). I am suggesting something a bit less dramatic: an Aristotelian revision. If what is missing in Aristotle is the orientation towards the proverbial Platonic triad of the good, the true and the beautiful – someone might ask – then why not simply recoil from AF altogether and embrace Plato’s ideas of

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flourishing? That might seem quite a dramatic move – replacing the proverbial clod chopper with the proverbial cloud hopper, as vividly represented in Raphael’s School of Athens – yet Flanagan suggests as much with his claim that in order to flourish, a person must penetrate the Platonic spaces of the good, true and beautiful to some degree (2007, p. 40). Rather than dwelling with Aristotle inside Plato’s cave, should we not follow Plato’s lead and try to get a glimpse of the sunlight outside? As Diotima asks in her famous speech, cited by Socrates in the Symposium, ‘what if man had eyes to see the true beauty – the divine beauty, I mean, pure and dear and unalloyed, not clogged with […] all the colours and vanities of human life […] Would that be an ignoble life? (Plato, 2015, 211e–212a). No – the obvious answer is – that would not be an ignoble life. Moreover, Platonism offers some merits above and beyond Aristotle, for instance in making sense of epiphanic moral conversion (in people brought up in bad habits) as a result of sudden dramatic exposure to transpersonal ideals. I explore that feature in Chapter 6. Nevertheless, I would argue that Aristotle’s theory of flourishing and moral development offers resources – not least educational resources – that would be lost if we simply abandoned it wholesale and reverted to a Platonic account. It is no coincidence that most contemporary accounts of flourishing as the aim of education take their cue from Aristotle rather than Plato. Platonism comes with heavy baggage that will put most current educators off: the metaphysical strangeness of Plato’s theory of forms, the hard rationalism and the radical motivational internalism (of people who know the good automatically doing the good), his political totalitarianism, his disregard for moral luck, his theory of justice as the primary virtue, and so forth. By drawing on Plato, educators will quickly find themselves biting off more than they can chew. All that said, however, a complete rejection of Plato’s idealism – especially his general insight into people’s orientation to transpersonal ideals – easily degenerates into a failure to take the bold, imaginative steps that Plato was able to take. I agree with educational philosopher Sanderse (2012) that we need a bit of Plato to complement Aristotle, although not necessarily in the places that Sanderse himself identifies (see Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 6). Moreover, I sympathise with Chappell’s endeavour to offer a ‘demythologised’, metaphysically modest version of Platonist virtue ethics (2014, chap. 12; cf. Murdoch, 1970), according to which contemplating the highest ‘forms’ means extending a reflective gaze upon the very standards of the good, true and beautiful (2014, p. 318). One theorist who noticed the very lacuna in Aristotle that needs to be filled was the humanist psychologist Maslow, whose theory of the pyramid, or hierarchy, of needs has now largely, if lamentably, fallen into oblivion. Sharing and arguably drawing explicitly on many aspects of AF (see Ivie, 1986), Maslow believed that in order to fully actualise their potential, human beings need to activate their Dionysian side as well as their Apollonian one. The very top of his pyramid thus includes ecstatic ‘peak experiences’

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(Maslow, 1964), experiences simultaneously ‘spiritual’, ‘cosmic’ and explicable within a naturalistic framework. It is perhaps a pity that current positive psychologists have so little time for their humanist predecessors; they could probably learn a lot from Maslow on people’s need-based orientation towards transcendent ideals. As Jules Evans puts it, without Dionysus, we run the risk of ‘arid, over-cerebral rationalism’ (2017, p. 229). I say a little bit more about Maslow in Chapter 6.

Do we need supernaturalism to make sense of enchanted flourishing? Most of the theorists (apart from Flanagan, 2007) who have suggested an extended view of flourishing along the lines proposed above, in order to incorporate transcendental – or, to use the less ambiguous term, transpersonal – experiences, have done so from within a religious framework. This raises the question of whether or not EAF requires supernaturalism to replace Aristotle’s avowed naturalism: a major change of compass indeed. In order to get a grip on that question, it helps to acknowledge that ‘supernaturalism’ and ‘naturalism’ are protean and treacherous terms, always trying to consume one another. In the light of modern physics, it could even be claimed that the distinction between them is out of its depth. Metz (2013, p. 79) defines ‘supernaturalism’ as assuming a relationship with a ‘spiritual realm’, but he admits that this does not answer the question of what counts as ‘spiritual’. He ends up with the characterisation of ‘spiritual’ as ‘outside of space and time’ and ‘not composed of sub-atomic particles’. However, some respectable physicists have conjectured that core concepts of standard physics, such as those of space and time, may not exists inside the singularity of black holes, and no one knows what particles, if any, dark matter is composed of. So things can satisfy Metz’s characterisation without being ‘supernatural’. To be honest, the question of whether a full account of flourishing needs supernaturalism is often just a euphemism for the question of whether it needs religion (witness the deep suspicion of the anti-religious educationist John White about even the slightest concessions in this area, mentioned later in this chapter). Not every religion will presumably count here, although the atheist Flanagan (2007) makes a valiant effort to show that Buddhism would, for example, be fully compatible with a naturalist (e.g. Aristotelian) framework. One could easily imagine a similar argument being made in the case of a ‘religion’ such as, say, Emersonian unitarianism. So what we end up with is the question that people like Charles Taylor (2007, p. 8) are really interested in: does flourishing need theism, say of the Catholic kind? To capture its true essence, does it need to be ‘directed towards God’s infinity’ and to engage with sacredness and holiness rather than ordinary human well-being? I can envisage three sorts of answers to the specific question, relevant for present purposes, of whether EAF requires theism: (1) Theism is required

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to make full sense of transpersonal experiences. (2) Theistic religion offers valuable sources of insight (cultural, historical, symbolic, psychological) into such experiences, irrespective of its truth. (3) Theism is either superfluous or positively misleading in trying to make sense of those experiences. The second answer is my own view. That answer might seem insipid to some – or even a case of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it – but it does carry significant educational ramifications. It would mean, for example, that to secure the required literacy of potential sources of transpersonal experiences, students in the Western world need to be exposed systematically at school to the heritage of the theistic religions, be it within a class designed as ‘religious education’ or somewhere else (cf. de Ruyter & Merry, 2009). How could a student, for example, understand the contours of the term ‘Damascus experience’, for sudden moral conversions in the wake of dramatic transpersonal experiences, without knowing what happened to a certain person on the way to Damascus? I say a little bit more about the educational implications at the end of this section, but let us start here by diving in at the deep end, with Taylor’s argument for answer (1). Taylor traces the history of ‘flatness’ in accounts of human flourishing not back to Aristotle, for whom he has deep respect, but to the Enlightenment, which turned the ‘perpetual absence of fullness’, so to speak, into a virtue, thus warranting the Weberian notion of ‘disenchantment’ as an apt description of the modern predicament. One of the major changes wrought by disenchantment was the replacement of a conception of a ‘porous self ’ (engaging with spirits and a God) with a ‘bounded’ (‘buffered’ and self-enclosed) one. This marked the beginning of the ‘me-culture’, at the individual level, and an acceptance, at the species level, that there is no goal higher than human flourishing in a deflated sense (nowadays often equated with AF, although Taylor refuses to do so.) This change excluded various ‘excess’ experiences from reckoning, captured nowadays by the label ‘awe’, characterised by a sense of boundlessness of natural phenomena or goodness. In short, the wilderness of the repertoire of the porous self was tamed by a regime of self-containment. Through this clampdown, the desire for a more-than-immanent transformative perspective – the désir d’éternité – was blanked out and even pathologised. But this is precisely, in Taylor’s view, why people who attain ordinary human flourishing (or what I have called AF) may find it to have a hollow ring: a feel of unease and a dispirited sense of purposelessness in a universe perceived as fully contingent (Taylor, 2007, pp. 10, 25, 38, 151, 335, 530, 621). Taylor acknowledges the possibility of what I called answer (2) above, namely of drawing lessons from idea of the ‘porous self ’ without, however, accepting its necessarily religious grounding. He calls this strategy ‘responding to transcendent reality but misrecognizing it’ (2007, p. 768). He thinks that to attain complete and unalloyed fullness of flourishing, we must open ourselves up to the ultimate source of transcendence, which for him is the God of Abraham (2007, p. 769). To put this into the present

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context, Taylor would consider my account of EAF fully adequate only if it embraced theism. One cannot, so to speak, buy the foreground without the background: the true source of intelligibility. The sort of naturalist form of transcendence that I have proposed will be seen as a poor substitute for genuine non-naturalist transcendence (2007, pp. 676–678). Even so, it may provide a temporary ‘exile’ (2007, pp. 6–7), for it makes Ólafur Kárason’s fleeting experiences of ‘the epiphanic resonance of the divine’ seem contrived and fake to him, even at the very moment of experiencing them. To liberate ourselves from the shackles of ‘flat flourishing’, Taylor will argue, half-way measures do not suffice. McPherson, who is even more Taylorite than Taylor himself, has developed some of Taylor’s theses further in a series of well-turned articles (2012; 2015; 2017). He sees an inextricable link between Taylor’s historical analysis and his theory of ‘strong evaluations’. What is wrong with naturalism as a handle on flourishing is that it tries to understand the first-personal or phenomenological moral standpoint in terms of a third-personal one, subject to criteria of natural scienticity (McPherson, 2012, p. 627), hence ruling out the possibility of evaluations of the ‘strong’ kind. Taylor, as McPherson sees it, has articulated and defended a moral ontology that (alone) can inform and make sense of our moral phenomenology. He also draws an interesting link between Taylor’s views and those espoused in Nagel’s recent work on Mind and Cosmos (2012), which also argues for a teleological understanding of the universe, albeit more along standard Aristotelian lines than those inspired by theism (McPherson, 2015). In his 2017 chapter, McPherson goes the whole hog, so to speak, and argues that spirituality has a place in neo-­A ristotelian theory. He defines ‘spirituality’ as ‘a practical life-orientation that is shaped by what is taken to be a self-transcending source of meaning, which involves strong normative demands, including demands of the sacred or the reverence-­ worthy’ (2017, p. 63; italics omitted). There are, it seems to me, two parallel arguments running through McPherson’s 2017 chapter (and unfortunately run together rather than kept separate), one of which works well but the other much less so. The first argument is that the demand for spirituality as part of supreme human flourishing is already satisfied by Aristotle’s remarks about the ‘divine’ element in contemplation (1985, pp. 286–287 [1177b27–1178a2]). For all the reasons given in the preceding section, I doubt that is the case. Aristotle seems to be using ‘divine’ here very much in a metaphorical sense, in juxtaposing the contemplative life with the ordinary life of the (possibly highly moral) philistine. The other argument is that AF would constitute a better theory of human nature if it were explicitly extended to EAF. I have no quarrels with that argument; indeed, it is the one that I have been developing in this chapter. Another prominent writer who has argued forcefully that a full conception of flourishing requires a theistic commitment is John Cottingham (2012). Cottingham’s starting point – very much like Ólafur Kárason’s – is human

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beings’ sporadic glimpses of the transcendent, however transitory and ephemeral. Some of those may, however, gradually solidify and become so strong that the so-called naturalistic world is irradiated. We sense a deeper meaning of values such as love, mercy and compassion, ultimately irreducible to any naturalistic account. We finally respond by yielding to a necessary impulse of trust – trust in a divine being who alone can make those experiences intelligible and provide a safe home for our transcendent urges. To suppose that this deeper meaning can be sustained otherwise is simply to give in to bad faith. Let us turn now to the opposite view, answer (3), that a full concept of human flourishing does not require a theistic outlook, and that it might even be radically led astray by such an outlook. The theistic option has suffered dismemberment at the hands of no less prominent a philosopher than Nussbaum (2002). She bites the bullet by arguing not only that a theistic dimension to flourishing is redundant for the concept to retain its salience and urgency, but also that the concept of human flourishing is actually unintelligible outside of a context of human finitude. Hence, the very idea of eternal life, assumed by the major theistic religions, would make human flourishing implode, rather than expanding its resources. Human flourishing is flourishing for human beings as we know them; transcendent flourishing is for transcendent beings if those exist. Or, as the Greeks put it, ‘Mortals should think mortal thoughts’ (2002, p. 451). Elsewhere, however, Nussbaum has acknowledged that there might be scope for a transcendence of an internal and human sort to extend the repertoire of ordinary humanness, and Taylor takes this to indicate that she is not fully consistent in her antipathy towards transcendent aspirations (2007, pp. 625–627). A more sustained argument against any supernaturalistic interpretation of flourishing has been mounted by Flanagan (2007; 2009) – a theorist who, as we saw in the preceding section, spearheads the campaign to add Platonic aspirations (towards transpersonal ideals) to AF. This crusade against supernaturalism may seem odd at first sight, because Flanagan also offers a spirited defence of Buddhist ideals. However, he does think that Buddhism is amenable to a fully naturalistic interpretation, whereas the theistic religions are obviously not. Flanagan’s explicit aim is to decouple our ‘transcendent urge’ from any religious urge to posit divine beings (2009, p. 45). There is simply no space for such beings in any of the best accounts that science offers of the way the universe works, and going against science ‘in ways that incorporate superstitions and wishful thinking is childish and unbecoming to rational social animals such as us’ (2007, p. 108). ‘We are animals’, and this world ‘is a material one’, with no justification whatsoever for believing in divinities or an afterlife (2007, p. 126). This does not prevent Flanagan himself, he submits, from experiencing, to the full, emotions of awe and solemnity, evoking in him ‘a sense of the holy, sacred and precious’ (2007, p. 188), because all those phenomena may be given a perfectly reasonable naturalistic warrant. The universe can be truly a holy place for a materialist, at least a Buddhist

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materialist like Flanagan, with spirituality accommodated but ‘naturalized’ (2007, p. 291). However persuasive one may (or may not) find Flanagan’s arguments, there is a strange mismatch between his extremely (some would say excessively) broad-minded, ecumenical stance towards different traditions of learning and world views and the hard line he takes against any insights from the theistic religions. In a response paper, he acknowledges that some readers may find ‘a certain arrogance and/or condescension’ in the way he speaks down to believers. However, rather than making any concessions to soften his stance, he piles on the agony for the believers by claiming that when religious scientists say something about theos, they ‘invariably speak gibberish’ and sell ‘snake oil’ (2009, pp. 46–48). In my view, a much more reasonable approach to take is that of answer (2) introduced earlier in this section: to accept that theism offers valuable sources of insight (cultural, historical and psychological) into transpersonal emotions and the motivations they engender. I would go as far as saying that the obvious place to start, in Western schools at least, for a teacher who wanted to introduce students to insights into the ‘selves-transcending’, is with the great classic works of Western art, most of which have been inspired by theistic beliefs. Even if Flanagan is right in maintaining that everything that can be said about the transcendent can, in principle, be said though a naturalistic script, it simply has not, in fact, been expressed as elegantly or profoundly through that medium as through religiously inspired art. Hence, there is a need for some sort of (non-confessional) religious education in schools, if only in order to illuminate what a great portion of humanity understands as the putative content of a paradigm like EAF. By invoking a parsimonious definition of spirituality as ‘awareness that there is something Other, something greater than the course of everyday events’ (Hay & Nye, 2006, p. 60), ‘spiritual education’ would seem to fill admirably the role that I envisage for religion as a guide to transpersonal experiences. I agree with Hay and Nye that a teacher of spirituality should help children become ‘aware of their awareness’ (2006, p. 143) of transcendent ideals and help them plot a path towards enriching that awareness. I have residual doubts, however, about this being best done under the rubric of anything called ‘spiritual education’. Instead, I consider this mission to fall squarely within the remit of any good character education or, in a more capacious sense, education towards flourishing – at least for those who take seriously my proposal that AF be extended to EAF. John White sounds warning signals about taking children down this road. He worries that, given children’s penchant for the supernatural and otherworldly, feeding them religious material on transcendence will simply nourish that urge and lead them further away from finding this-worldly answers to life’s greatest questions. They should be introduced to ‘wonder’ but not to ‘awe’ proper, because the latter has indelible religious connotations.

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Most important, as we in the West are living in an increasingly secular world, teachers should respond to the needs of secular children for a secular world-view; intimations of a supernaturalistic understanding of the urge for transpersonal ideals will hinder rather than help in that quest (White, 2014). Like White, Egan (2014) makes a distinction between wonder and awe (with wonder focusing on the rationally graspable, but awe focusing on the mysteries of existence, much as I suggested earlier), but he argues that it is the role of teachers to stimulate both emotions in students, and that they should do so by introducing each new topic with a focus on its exotic and unfamiliar aspects. John Haldane makes the same point, more generally, when he says that unless philosophers can show such an enterprise to be confused or exclusively religious, shying away from the deepest experiences of the human condition opens us up to the charge of ‘neglecting something of fundamental, indeed perhaps of ultimate human importance’ (2000, p. 64). White does acknowledge in a few places that there is a sense of mystery at work in our lives, albeit not of a ‘spooky’ kind which seeks answers in a ‘transcendent world’ (2011, p. 100). I have tried to show in this section that there is a way of understanding transcendence (as ‘selves-transcendence’) that is not reliant on a religious world view. White may or may not agree with that manoeuvre. However, I am clearly more sympathetic than he is to the idea that insights from the mainstream theistic religions can enrich our understanding of transpersonal ideals (cf. also de Ruyter, 2006) – and help students find their own ways of satisfying their transcendent urges.

The example of science education Science education provides a nice case to illustrate some of the points made in this chapter so far about EAF and its educational implications. Given the fact that science education deals with some of the greatest potential sources of enchantment available – the wonders of the universe at macro and micro levels, organic and inorganic – it is lamentable how rarely it seems to induce bliss, rapture and awe in students (Hadzigeorgiou, 2014; Henderson, 2017). Let me begin with the two following theses that I happen to endorse: a

Scientific practice can, and should ideally, cultivate moral virtues in its practitioners (in addition to more obvious intellectual virtues such as wonder) – most specifically, the moral virtue of awe. b Science education can, and should ideally, inspire in students a love of transcendent ideals, such as truth, and introduce them to morally relevant awe experiences when such ideals are fathomed. This is true for both budding scientists and budding interested lay people, who are thus likely to become future friends rather than foes of scientific inquiry (and science truly needs more friends in a post-truth world).

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To begin with the thesis that scientific practice is somehow intimately linked to the cultivation of moral virtue, this thesis was more or less taken for granted during medieval times and the early Enlightenment period ( Jones, 2006), even to the point of not requiring a specific rationale. When one tries to unpack the underlying assumptions here, those often boil down to considerations that would not cut much ice nowadays, however: about the essential coherence of human beings’ divine destiny on earth and how, if they perform their function well in the image of God, their virtuous activities will all fall into line and be mutually supportive. In any case, after the Enlightenment, the link between moral virtue in general and awe in particular (on the one hand, scientific practice, and on the other, education) was lost. Science had experienced not only demagification but disenchantment as well. It will hardly surprise readers that I would like to argue for the aspiration that scientific practice and science education be re-enchanted through the cultivation of a certain morally virtuous emotion trait in practitioners and students: namely awe. Once again, however, it helps to begin with wonder. As I have mentioned repeatedly, Aristotle argued that all academic inquiry starts with wonder; his mentor Plato had already made similar points through his mouthpiece Socrates. Einstein later echoed those claims and added to them by asserting that the scientist who can no longer experience wonder ‘is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle’ (cited in Hadzigeorgiou, 2014, p. 44). Concerned that many scientifically oriented people have indeed fallen prey to such disenchantment, Caspar Henderson recently published an inspiring book titled A New Map of Wonders (2017), which takes us on a rollercoaster ride to some of the wonders that science has discovered, and reveals how those should, if all is well, excite wonder in us. Just consider some of the topics that the book covers – light, life, the heart, the brain, self hood, our world as a whole – and you can just imagine the stories of how encounters with those phenomena have enraptured scientists and blown them away as new and astounding truths have been unveiled. Admittedly, in what Thomas Kuhn (1962) used to call ‘normal science’, one may envisage days of non-­ uplifting drudgery in the lab. But at least during times of great discoveries – of Kuhnian ‘revolutionary science’ – it is difficult to imagine the spirit of the scientist not ‘firing on all cylinders’ (Henderson, 2017, p. 24). Henderson defines wonder (citing Martyn Evans and Philip Fisher) as ‘an attitude of altered, compellingly intensified attention towards something that we immediately acknowledge as important’ and crave to understand – where this ‘something’ is ‘a feature of the middle distance of explanation, outside the ordinary’ but ‘short of the irrational or unsolvable’ (Henderson, 2017, pp. 4 and 7). These descriptions do not amount to a philosophically rigorous specification, but they do capture something essential about wonder. As noted previously, wonder encapsulates human beings’ most intense form of curiosity about the world in which they live and all its enigmas. Just consider David Attenborough following the elegant movements of some sea

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animals that have never been captured on film before – and envisage the shine in his eyes. Wonder elicits heightened awareness of what is going on before our eyes, but at the same time evokes a lessened self-focus. We forget ourselves and even the very passing of time, as we lose ourselves in what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) defined as a state of flow. Then, as our mind ‘fires on all cylinders’, we activate states of forceful (but not forced) contemplation where we try to untangle the relevant scientific mystery, believing that it bears untangling. Much as I admire Henderson’s (2017) rehabilitation of wonder into the world of scientific practice and science education in his recent book, it does not quite reach the level of re-enchantment that I would recommend. I wish there were a little bit more of the enchantment of Jules Evans (2017), from another recent book, in Henderson’s work. Evans’s The Art of Losing Control is an unapologetic plea for the retrieval of ecstatic experiences – rapture and bliss – across the whole spectrum of the human condition, and although he does not apply his argument to scientific practice in particular, it is easy to see how such implications could be elicited. While acknowledging an important distinction between ‘healthy’ and ‘toxic forms of transcendence (2017, pp. xii–xiii), Evans may seem at times to come perilously close to sanctioning experiments in living that are potentially dangerous, such as dabbling with psychedelic drugs (albeit in a ‘measured’ way), but I understand his more radical claims as deliberately provocative antidotes to the post-Enlightenment fetishisation of the mundane. Anders Schinkel, who recently received a John Templeton Foundation grant to study wonder, also tries to move beyond the disenchantment of ordinary wonder by postulating a concept of ‘deep wonder’ (Schinkel, 2017), which goes beyond wonder as mere dispassionate curiosity and retains some of awe’s contours of mysteriousness and bewilderment. Schinkel specifically notes the relevance of this concept for science education. Mindful of Ockham’s razor, however, I am not sure whether there really is conceptual space for a notion of ‘deep wonder’ between ordinary wonder (Schinkel, 2018) and awe proper. Schinkel’s (2017) ‘deep wonder’ incorporates a sense of mystery – heightened awareness of the incompleteness of one’s knowledge; an engagement with the whole person; an overwhelming sense of vastness; and defamiliarisation of the familiar. However, all those features happen to be components of my earlier characterisation of awe (cf. also Keltner & Haidt, 2003). The only feature that potentially sets Schinkel’s ‘deep wonder’ apart from awe is his reliance on Nussbaum’s original point about wonder remaining focused on the value of the external objects rather than on their relations to ‘our own plans’. But that feature seems inconsistent with Schinkel’s own contention that ‘deep wonder’ engages the whole person. If we follow Nussbaum, Schinkel’s new concept falls short of capturing the self-reflexive existential awareness that I would like to see inform the practice and education of science.

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When watching a Horizon documentary on BBC about the concept of infinity a few years ago, I felt as if I had entered a magic kingdom. Covering topics such as possible parallel worlds, the mystery of the singularity of a black hole and the prospects of an endless array of universes, this documentary truly enthralled me. I felt intellectually elevated, spirited up to a transcendent reality where I existed as an ineluctable part of a great chain of being. I recorded the programme and have watched it again and again, each time reliving some of the emotion of the first viewing, but never again swept away to the same experiential heights. This is the sort of moment that I would like as many students of science as possible to experience – having to do with existentially engaging awe rather than just curiosity engaging wonder – and I would hope that such moments can be part and parcel of scientific practice also. I rue the way in which the classic school curriculum, including most notably education in so-called STEM subjects, has become untethered from any moral or existential concerns. From an educational point of view, what I have been arguing for may not seem terribly radical in its essence. It is simply a rehearsal of the time-honoured view that all good education – and not least education in science – should help students see the world anew. What is radical, however, and will remain controversial, is the claim that this cannot be done through the elicitation of mere wonder as an intellectual virtue, and that even education in the apparently down-to-earth subject matter of the natural sciences should aim higher than that. Seeing the world anew is not only about seeing external reality anew – this flower, that galaxy – but also about seeing ourselves anew in light of, and as part of, that reality, and allowing ourselves to get lost in rapture as we grapple with the existential and moral ramifications of our being in the world. Depriving reality of its sense of mystery is an unadvisedly cramping feature of post-Enlightenment science education (Henderson, 2017). Disenchanting such education has been achieved at the hefty price of demotivating students, by removing the sense of purpose in studying STEM subjects for those who do not plan to become scientists – and these are the vast majority of students.

Initiating students into love of the transcendent I have argued in this chapter for an extension of standard Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of flourishing to incorporate the human urge for ideals that go beyond persons or ‘selves’: an urge for transpersonal or selves-transcending ideals, and human emotions targeting those ideals. For a number of (arguably mistaken) reasons, Aristotle did not count this urge as part of the human ergon and, hence, did not include it in his conception of human flourishing. Neither do the standard contemporary accounts inspired by his conception of eudaimonia. I do not consider a full conceptual reshuffle necessary to accommodate these insights into an Aristotelian theory, but

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they do require amendments of typical Aristotelian understandings of what is needed, beyond moral virtue, to realise the constituents of flourishing and of how students are best prepared at school for a flourishing life. The second and third sections in this chapter elaborated upon the possibility of an ‘enchanted’ version of AF termed EAF, explaining the need for such an expansion of the theory, and exploring the question of the possible or necessary contribution of theism to EAF. My conclusion was that although theism is not necessary to make sense of EAF, we would be unwise to ignore its insights – cultural and symbolic as well as substantive. For example, trying to understand the Western quest for transcendence historically without engaging with the theistic religions would be as limiting as trying to understand ancient Greek culture without reading Homer. I hope that the tenor of my discussion will resonate both with fellow-­ travellers on the current flourishing bandwagon and with objectors to it. Despite the growing interest in flourishing as an educational ideal – and in character education as a practical application of part of that ideal – I notice some deep and lingering dissatisfaction with the eudaimonic ideal among many educators, albeit dissatisfaction that is often not conceptualised adequately. I have suggested in this chapter what this dissatisfaction may actually be with, namely disenchantment, and how that shortcoming can be alleviated through an extended, enchanted Aristotelian account of human flourishing. Moreover, I have suggested that by blocking avenues of enchantment, educators may be flattening or trivialising some of the educational routes to flourishing. What do current theorists of flourishing of a practical bent have to say about the transpersonal urge and its role in the good life? Generally very little. Positive psychologists (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) posit ‘transcendence’ as an umbrella virtue for five different character strengths: gratitude, humour, appreciation of beauty and excellence, hope and spirituality/religiousness. However, it is difficult to specify precisely what these strengths have in common. The last three could perhaps be seen as united by a transpersonal orientation, but the first two appear as gatecrashers in that party unless one understands gratitude and humour in unusual ‘cosmic’ senses. Brighouse and de Ruyter do not really address the issue in question; White does, however, in detail, but only apparently to dismiss the sort of extension of the flourishing concept that I have been proposing in this chapter. In addition to those of White’s concerns that I have mentioned already, he devotes a whole chapter in his book (2011, chap. 12) to demonstrating that all the ‘depth’ we need in order to live well can be achieved within a mundane view of flourishing. Revelling, so to speak, in disenchantedness, his main foils are anything spiritual and other-worldly. While acknowledging that he was drawn, as a young man, to texts about the mysteriousness of the universe, he describes how he later came to his senses and realised that all there is to

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know and enjoy in the world can be attained without engaging anything that could be called ‘spirituality’ (2011, p. 98). White treads a very thin line between accepting, as he does, the existence of more profound forms of fulfilment than playing push-pin (for example, in experiences involving nature and the arts), on the one hand, and, on the other, rejecting any element of mystique in those experiences. What is anathema to him is basically religion and its association with transcendence. I would suggest, however, that White throws the baby out with the bathwater. Not to see anything irreducibly awe-inspiring in the workings of the universe – the singularity of a black hole; the possibility of endless parallel worlds – involves, in my view, a concession to philistinism (although White himself is clearly anything but a philistine). White seems to think that going beyond mundane language in describing transpersonal experiences of what Ólafur Kárason called ‘ephiphanic resonance’ is tantamount to embracing a religious framework, ‘under God’s shadow’ (2011, p. 108), but, as became apparent earlier in this chapter, that may not be the case at all. Understandably, White is deeply sceptical of anything that could be called ‘spiritual education’. He is not the only one. The mention of that term often conjures up an image of an unhelpful label in education that has come to mean everything and nothing (Carr, 1995) and is possibly beyond redemption. Yet if we acknowledge the main insight of EAF, as proposed in this section, schools need to create spaces in which children can find an outlet for the sensibilities that throb in their nerves towards ‘peak experiences’. Whether this ‘space’ is referred to as ‘spiritual education’ or as something else is perhaps beside the point, although I did grant earlier in this chapter that the term ‘spiritual education’ may have lost traction. White suggests that time should be carved out of the school day to enable students to pursue their particular passions (2011, p. 104). I would go much further and suggest, explicitly, that teachers should expose students to experiences where they are most likely to come into contact with the ideals of truth, beauty and goodness. Legends, fairy tales and folk stories will provide an important initial resource in this regard. Radically put, if the transcendental urge is really part of the human ergon, then teachers working within the paradigm of education for flourishing have a duty to help students experience emotions of aesthetic ecstasy and moral and intellectual elevation. In order to do so, they need to help students keep an open mind, recommend that they explore new ways of seeing, encourage personal awareness and inform them of research into the nature and impact of peak experiences (see Hay & Nye, 2006, p. 149: cf. Long, 2018, for some practical suggestions). Even more radically put, they need to initiate students into what Plato (2015, 211b6–d1) called the science of love (ta erôtica) of the transcendent (cf. Chappell, 2014, chap. 12). Enchantment is something that, I believe, can be taught through deliberative strategies, and as Bennett (2001, p. 4)

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points out, one of those strategies ‘might be to give greater expression to the sense of play, another to hone sensory receptivity to the marvellous specificity of things’. A good place to start is with Damon’s research into the way in which seeing themselves as part of a grand scheme of things helps young people find their self-identity and a path to purpose (2008, p. 91; cf. also Snow’s concept of ‘generativity’: 2015, p. 266). That said, I would hesitate to label laudable efforts by teachers to help children understand and actualise conceptions of EAF as efforts to help them in their quest for ‘ultimate meaning’ (pace Schinkel, 2015). First of all, ‘ultimate meaning’ is, as Schinkel acknowledges, a tricky term. Second, I think the ‘meaning’ that matters in school contexts refers to a much less demanding, and more easily realisable, ideal (recall Chapter 2). It may well be, for example, as Doddington (2018) argues, that various aesthetic experiences help students satisfy the sort of pre-condition of flourishing that I explored in Chapter 2 as one of meaning and purpose. However, I have been arguing in this chapter for a more radical view, namely that various awe-filled experiences are part and parcel of the activity of flourishing itself. The additional pedagogical efforts that Schinkel, Doddington and I have in mind, to steer children towards engagement with ‘transpersonal ideals’, ‘a sense of purpose’ or ‘ultimate meaning’, may not differ much in terms of actual classroom practice, but it does matter, from the point of view of philosophical justification, how we choose to conceptualise and label them and how, precisely, we see them as fitting into a theory of educational flourishing. To sum up, in this chapter, I have used a plethora of different terms to try to capture the essence of Ólafur Kárason’s quest for ‘the epiphanic resonance of the divine’: transpersonal urge, transcendental orientation, and so on. Whatever we want to call it, this impulse is real and needs to be accommodated in philosophical and educational theories of flourishing.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 If you have time, please read the novel World Light. Do you agree that there is something exquisite about Ólafur Kárason’s wretchedness? Why, or why not? 2 Do you belong to the majority of people who are ‘aware of a spiritual dimension to their existence’? Do you notice the same awareness in your students? If yes, what does this ‘spiritual dimension’ really mean – and is it worthy of further cultivation at school? 3 Revisit the three competing answers about the relationship between theism and transpersonal experiences explained in the third section of this chapter: (1) Theism is required to make full sense of transpersonal experiences. (2) Theistic religion offers valuable sources of insight (cultural, historical, symbolic, psychological) into such experiences, irrespective

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of its truth. (3) Theism is either superfluous or positively misleading in trying to make sense of those experiences. Which of the three would you subscribe to – and how does your answer reflect on your role as an educator? 4 Is making self-reflexive existential awareness and experiences of awe part and parcel of education in STEM subjects a realistic goal? Or is it one that simply cannot be achieved given today’s realities in curricular content and teacher training? 5 What could Plato have meant with his call to initiate students into the ‘science of love of the transcendent’? Is this overall goal worthy of pursuit in education, as part of education towards flourishing? If so, how can this goal be achieved?

Chapter 6

Flourishing and epiphanies Going beyond Aristotle and Kohlberg

The road to Damascus This chapter continues to pursue the same theme as Chapter 5, about an unfortunate lacuna in Aristotle’s theory of flourishing, but I explore this theme here from a different angle and draw in many more ‘culprits’ than Aristotle. On the road to Damascus, Saul – the rabid persecutor of early Christians – had a divine revelation that had a profound effect on his life (Acts 9.3–7). Motivated by this ‘Damascus experience’, the sinner Saul turned into the apostle Paul through a religious conversion and a radical self-change of moral reform. This chapter is about the second of those phenomena, namely epiphanic moral conversions, a topic conspicuously absent from most current agendas in moral philosophy, moral psychology and moral education – not to mention the recent flourishing literature. If broached at all by academics, such (alleged) conversions tend to meet with scepticism or outright denial. The eerie silence and lingering scepticism are perhaps not unreasonable scholarly responses. As we see in the following section, there are various good reasons – logical, psychological and developmental – for questioning the legitimacy of this phenomenon, and the sceptics include some of the biggest names in the relevant fields, from Aristotle to Kohlberg. Yet most ordinary people seem either to have heard of abrupt moral conversions in others or to have had ‘Damascus experiences’ themselves. When I ask my students every year about such experiences, only a few – but always a few – say they have had a moral conversion, or at least have experienced formative events of intense moral enlightening. A 2002 Gallup poll found 41% of Americans answering in the affirmative the question of whether they had ever had a ‘profound religious experience or an awakening that changed the direction of their life’ (cited in Yaden & Newberg, 2015, p. 31). However, because this was a double-barrelled question, we do not know how many would have said yes to the latter part only, which inquiries about the sorts of experiences that interest me here. This chapter takes on the challenge of making sense of such

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experiences while responding satisfactorily to the academic misgivings that cast doubt on them. My assumption is that some people, including some young people, need to be thrown out of their comfort zones in order to learn how to flourish. What is required – at least for the extended, enchanted Aristotelian flourishing addressed in Chapter 5 – is not only the gradual awakening of a standard psycho-moral trajectory but a true gestalt-switch. My exploration will be unapologetically cross-disciplinary. The best way to understand this elusive topic is to shed light on it from many different academic lanterns: in philosophy, psychology and education. The exploration will also, however, be apologetically eclectic and cursory. In default of a firm discursive tradition, the safest bet is to be inclusive at the beginning and to wade through the crests and troughs of as many sources as possible. Most of this chapter, therefore, assumes the form of a critical review of various relevant traditions of thought. World literature is brimming with descriptions of epiphanic moral conversions, although we may obviously question the extent to which those mirror moral reality. (Notice also that it was a writer, not an academic, James Joyce, 1956, who can be said to have rehabilitated the term ‘epiphany’ in its present sense.) There is even a discursive tradition in literature and film studies about metanoia as the radical ‘inner revolution’ of a character (Kazmierczak, 2018). To choose two examples almost at random, Dostoyevsky’s (2015) famous short story, ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’, written in 1877, illustrates the life of a man obsessed from an early age with his own ridiculousness and the meaninglessness of his existence. Determined to end his life, and wandering outside at night with a revolver in his hand, the protagonist stumbles upon a desperate young girl of eight, wearing nothing but a wretched little dress, ‘crying for her mammy’. Assuming that her mother must be lost or dying, he wants to help her, but the girl abandons him before he can carry out his intention. In the wake of this experience, however, the ‘ridiculous man’ comes to the conclusion that his life is not so ridiculous after all; he is still a person with feelings rather than ‘nothingness’ at the core of his being and an inner voice telling him to love others like himself. The story ends on a positive note with an observation about how he tracked down the little girl – and ‘shall go on and on’ towards a fully flourishing life. In an even shorter story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun (2005), ‘An Incident’, written in 1920, the protagonist is a world-weary, misanthropic traveller being pulled towards his destination by a rickshaw man. The rickshaw accidentally hits an old woman in rags; she falls to the ground without being seriously injured. The traveller impatiently orders the driver to move on, but the latter disobeys and decides to help the old woman to a police station. In an act of contrition, the protagonist aspires to give money to the rickshaw man. Afterwards, however, the incident has a prolonged and profound effect on his life, ‘teaching me shame, urging me to reform, and giving me fresh courage and hope’. In sum, both stories convey the message that a

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coincidental event can create cognitive dissonance strong enough to motivate people to change their overall moral outlooks in abrupt and radical ways, by envisaging horizons of moral goodness that were previously closed to them, and thus turning their life trajectories from floundering to flourishing. Social science seems to be lagging behind literature in illuminating morally reformative ‘Damascus events’. This is not to say that the topic has eluded all social-scientific scrutiny; I discuss a number of salient sources in the third section of this chapter. However, the greatest attention paid to moral conversions in social science is in areas that are slightly peripheral to the interests of the present chapter. One is in the field of near-death studies, which is peripheral in terms of frequency. For obvious (and fortunate) reasons, very few people will ever have the experience of being at death’s door and then returning unscathed. Moreover, some of the experiences described in this literature are somewhat airy-fairy and may cause brain haemorrhages in the analytically minded. The other area is that of religious conversions (Lonergan, 1990), and a sub-area of the latter called ‘calling experiences’, which are studied extensively within the fields of psychology and sociology of religion (see e.g. Batson & Ventis, 1982; Yaden & Newberg, 2015). Research in this field rarely focuses specifically, however, on the change of moral beliefs or priorities relevant to standard theories of flourishing. For present purposes, more enlightenment may be gained by turning to philosophical research, both in the history of ideas and in the field of emotion studies. I tap those sources in the fourth section of this chapter. In the field of education in general, and moral education in particular, the topic of epiphanic moral conversions is sometimes brought up in connection with the popular, if somewhat cliché-ridden, theme of a charismatic teacher who successfully challenges students to reform. Recall, for example, Jaime Escalante in the film Stand and Deliver, John Keating in Dead Poets Society or Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Some ‘charismatic’ teachers may be accused of a degree of superficiality, and the self-change they bring about in students may, similarly, turn out to be short-lived and superficial. Be that as it may, Escalante, Keating and Brodie all seem to turn their students’ self-conceptions upside down in ways that are morally relevant (see further in Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 10). But what distinguishes the self-changing experiences depicted there, turning the flourishing switch from off to on, from those of more ordinary (gradual/incremental) personal development and growth? And how can self-change of this kind – if needed – be triggered through classroom interventions? I address the educational questions related to moral conversions in the final section of this chapter. I have already indicated the sort of roadmap that I propose to follow. Before I proceed further, however, let me clarify my methodological assumptions by listing the criteria that I see as characterising the phenomenon of epiphanic moral conversions and that I have used as guiding lights to identify the relevant literatures.

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First, I take it that these conversions constitute abrupt, swift or even catastrophic turning points (cf. MacLaughlin, 2008, chap. 1). William James made a distinction between gradual/incremental and sudden conversions (1958, pp. 152–153). The former are obviously the bread and butter of all psycho-moral development/education towards flourishing and as such may deserve the descriptor ‘conversion’, but it is only the latter that occupy my current scrutiny, because they involve ‘quantum psychological changes’ (Bien, 2004) or ‘Aha moments’ (Irvine, 2015) that present unique and puzzling features. The relative swiftness of the actual turning point, however, does not exclude a period of gradual moral preparation that may be noticed when the conversion experience is viewed in hindsight (Irvine, 2015, chap. 4). Second, the conversions in question must be ‘epiphanic’. The meaning of this term may not be crystal clear, nor admit of a consensual academic specification, but I assume here that it refers to awakenings (to purported new truths) that are not only abrupt in a temporal sense but also spontaneous and dramatic, involving radical reconfigurations of mental structures (see e.g. Jonas, 2015a; Schinkel, 2016). Although these changes may sometimes be hard to define, and may even be seen as ineffable by the self-transforming agent, they will nonetheless typically be experienced as sudden ‘irradiations’ disclosing meanings that were previously ‘occluded’ (Cottingham, 2012; recall my brief rendering of his general point of view in Chapter 5). Third, the events eliciting the conversion will normally be unplanned and fortuitous, or what Irvine (2015, p. 17) calls ‘unbidden’. This is not a necessary defining feature, however. In some cases, agents themselves may undertake measures to facilitate their self-change because of a perceived need to change. As we see in the following section, such cases present particularly thorny problems of their own from a logical point of view. Moreover, educators may deliberately design interventions to shake the moral foundations of their students, especially if those have been found wanting (see Schinkel, 2016). Nevertheless, the results of any such self-induced or other-induced interventions will always retain some measure of uncertainty and fortuitousness, because epiphanies rely on spontaneous reactions, and spontaneity can, by definition, never be fully pre-planned. As Dees observes, if I am waiting for a specific conversion to happen, ‘I am already converted’ (1996, p. 533). Fourth, epiphanic moral conversions are strongly emotionally laden. This can mean either that they are triggered by intense emotions, such as awe or elevation, or that they elicit fierce emotional responses during and after the conversion, or both. Fifth, those conversions involve radical self-change. What precisely that means depends on one’s self-theory. Realists (such as myself ) will take it to mean that the conversion involves an essential change of the deep, underlying self, perhaps constituted by emotions of which the agent is unaware. Antirealists (who do not acknowledge the existence of any underlying self ) consider it to involve a radical shake-up of the agent’s ‘self-concept’ or ‘(moral) identity’,

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referring to the totality of the beliefs and attitudes she harbours about herself (see Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 2, on different self-theories). Obviously, a conversion of this kind might involve changes to both self hood and identity, although the agent still remains ‘the same’ through the personal metamorphosis in a deeper metaphysical sense (Morland, 2016); we are not talking here about a Kaf kaesque change of a Gregor Samsa into a gigantic bug. Notice that this fifth criterion excludes cases where the agent ‘experiences’ reform self-deceptively but where a radical self-change has actually not taken place. Sixth, the change of heart triggered by the moral conversion must be towards moral improvement or reform – or, to couch it in the language of the present book, away from floundering towards flourishing. This is not said to exclude the possibility of epiphanic experiences that may disrupt or subvert moral convictions (e.g. in the field of science or arts, see Irvine, 2015), or dramatically negative moral experiences of great evils; it is simply presented as a defining feature of the topic under present scrutiny. In addition to the intrinsic moral reform, the conversion experience often produces some extrinsic benefits, for example in terms of improved health or subjective well-being (see MacLaughlin, 2008, chap. 5), although I will not be focusing on those benefits here.

Academic musings and misgivings Although Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1981) theory of moral development – once the towering paradigm in moral psychology – has fallen into disrepute in academic circles of late, it is still taught in most undergraduate textbooks in developmental psychology, and I have found occasion to mention it at previous junctures in this book. I assume that readers are familiar with his well-known developmental theory of six stages, culminating in the stage of post-conventional, autonomous Kantian moral reasoning. What matters for the present line of inquiry is that Kohlberg assumed that moral development is a slow and laborious process and that all agents need to progress through the stages in the same order, though not at the same pace. To be sure, Kohlberg did not see this developmental trajectory as an unproblematically incremental and continuous progress. For example, he noticed a dip at college age in many students, where – lured by sceptical relativism – they regress temporarily to Stage 2 hedonist-subjectivist reasoning. He called this ‘Stage 4½’ because it does not involve a complete reversal to child-like reasoning (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969). However, Kohlberg did not, in his heyday, envisage a return from this dip – or from any other lower level of development – in terms of a sudden epiphany. As with other forms of reasoning, it takes time to sort out the puzzles and understand where reason leads you and why. Kohlberg proposed moral dilemmas as a handy tool not only to measure moral maturity but also to stimulate moral growth,

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and he described transitional experiences where students, working through such dilemmas and engaging with conflicts in their own cognitive structures, gradually progress. But, as Schinkel (2016) correctly notes, even those transitional experiences lack the full epiphanic quality of the moral conversions under discussion here; at best they could be described as semi-epiphanic. For Damsacus-like moral conversions need not involve any prior engagement with conflict at all; one may see the light of truth ‘in a flash’, without any prelude of deep reflection, ambiguity or uncertainty. There is no space here to rehearse the considerations that gradually blunted the force of Kohlberg’s otherwise impressive and epoch-making paradigm. Kohlberg himself seems to have grown increasingly sceptical and disappointed about the low number of people advancing to Stages 5 and 6 (with the latter one almost empty), according to his own scoring system. Late in life, however, in an article that was published posthumously (Kohlberg & Ryncarz, 1990), Kohlberg presented an unexpected twist on his theory by hypothesising the existence of a further, metaphorically named ‘Stage 7’ (not necessarily requiring full command of the previous stages). Perhaps influenced by existentialist and humanist psychology (see e.g. Maslow, 1964, whom I mentioned in Chapter 5), Kohlberg and his colleague now mused that there could be a unique peak-experience stage of moral development, characterised by a ‘cosmic’ or ‘transcendental’ perspective, where moral truths are embraced through existential resolutions – intuitive jumps into the unknown – or sudden gestalt-switches, rather than dispassionate moral reasoning (see Gibbs, 2014, pp. 91–93). Notwithstanding this evidence of a late Kohlbergian ‘conversion’, it seems that the 1990 article has escaped the attention of most psychologists, and the most immediate arguments against epiphanic moral conversions in social-scientific circles continue to be of Kohlbergian provenance. Kohlberg’s philosophical and methodological assumptions were as much Platonic as Kantian. He shared Plato’s unremitting moral rationalism, and he was a devout motivational internalist, believing that moral judgements are intrinsically motivating, without the aid of emotion, to the radical point of affirming that ‘He who knows the good chooses the good’ (1981, p. 189). Yet one thing Kohlberg failed to pick up from Plato was the latter’s ready accommodation of epiphanic moral conversions. Although the present section is mostly devoted to misgivings about such conversions, it is instructive to bring in some insights from Plato here as an antidote to the theories of both his late disciple, Kohlberg, and his immediate disciple, the flourishing-theory progenitor Aristotle, to whom I turn soon. Mark Jonas has studied Plato’s views on moral conversions in some detail and offered helpful reviews and recommendations (2015a; 2015b). He reads from dialogues such as the Republic the conviction that through the dialogical seductive power of persuasive myths, the desires of the non-virtuous can be swayed in the right path for long enough to entice them to begin a process

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of moral self-reform. Asher (2017, p. 33) refers to this as a Platonic process of ‘ecstatic transport’. In the Republic, for example, the hedonistic Glaucon is inspired to something like a conversion via moments of insight serving as transformative catalysts – although the whole process clearly needs more time and self-work in order to be completed. Even more paradigmatically, the dialogue Lysis involves the deliberate use of specious arguments in order to trigger epiphanies in interlocutors. In the end, for example, Lysis himself is compelled to ‘quit thinking and begin seeing’ – in his case, seeing in a flash what true friendship with a beloved person is. Plato’s method is particularly interesting here for its educational implication: that there actually is a method of instruction – the Socratic dialogue – in which the conditions for spontaneous conversions can be created, by an insightful teacher, in those seen to be in need of a conversion experience. That said, taking on board Plato’s insights may come at a hefty price, because the attraction to be inspired in the student is towards moral truths residing in a realm of ‘forms’, which will seem metaphysically weird to most moderns, and the evoked attachment is supposed to be purely rational, rather than elicited and sustained through emotional responses (cf. Chappell, 2014, chap. 12, however, for a demythologised version of Platonism that is relevant for present concerns). Notoriously sceptical of the assumptions and methods of his mentor Plato, Aristotle does not seem to have given much credence to the possibility of Platonic conversion experiences. Indeed, while Aristotle is often presented nowadays as Kohlberg’s nemesis in moral education, their views on moral development seem surprisingly similar with respect to epiphanies. It is not as if Aristotle explicitly denies their existence – he does not mention them at all – but a plausibly Aristotelian position can be inferred from his general line of argument regarding the pre-conditions and nature of moral development. Yu (2007, p. 16) remarks that Aristotle ‘clearly does not seem to have much patience for converting wicked adults’. That sounds almost like an understatement. Aristotle firmly believed that in order to be capable of ever reaching the high ground of the phronimoi (fully virtuous, practically wise persons), the soul of the moral learner needs to have been ‘prepared by habits’ (that is, via systematic early-years habituation) ‘for enjoying and hating finely, like ground that is to nourish seed’. The effects of the antecedent circumstances of bad upbringing cannot be undone because of the intractability of altering ‘by argument what has long been absorbed by habit’, for a person in such a condition ‘would not even listen to an argument turning him away, or comprehend it [if he did listen]; and in that state how could he be persuaded to change?’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 292 [1179b11–31]). Bad upbringing compromises, stifles and stunts, according to Aristotle. It is therefore, ‘very important, indeed all-important’, to acquire the correct habits of character right from youth (1985, p. 35 [1103b21–5]). Although Aristotle does acknowledge character formation to constitute a life-long process, the period of early-years education is essential, even constituting

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what some people would call an un-overridable determinant (see further in Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 5). All in all, ‘no one has even a prospect of becoming good’ without proper habituation (1985, p. 40 [1105b11–12]) – at least if ‘good’ is understood as ‘virtuous’ (although Aristotle does leave some room for reforming vice, by becoming continent, in the badly brought up, see 1985, p. 52 [1109a34]). To be sure, actions are voluntary in the sense that ‘we are in control of [them] from the origin to the end, when we know the particulars’. So an unkind man could in principle decide to act kindly. However, with ‘states’, such as virtues and vices, ‘we are in control of the origin, but do not know, any more than with sicknesses, what the cumulative effect of particular actions will be’ (1985, p. 70 [1114b30–1115a3]), so for the unkind man the act of kindness is likely to be merely hypothetically voluntary; he is not in a state that motivates it. These textual references show that although Aristotle is not widely considered to have presented a systematic stage theory of moral development akin to Kohlberg’s (recall previous discussions in this book), he does seem to envisage moral development as a slow, incremental process, requiring a long early period of moral habituation, including most prominently emotional sensitisation, followed by another long period of reason-infusion, during which traits already acquired (hexeis) are revised and honed in light of the student’s own (budding) practical moral wisdom (phronesis). There seems little, if any room, for epiphanic conversions – or for any moral conversions at all. Things are not quite as simple as that, however; for in another (and more obscure) place in his corpus, Aristotle seems to offer a ‘Plan B’: The bad man, if he is being brought into a better way of life and thought, may make some advance, however slight, and if he should once improve, even ever so little, it is plain that he might change completely, or at any rate make very great progress; for a man becomes more and more easily moved to virtue, however small the improvement was at first. It is, therefore, natural to suppose that he will make yet greater progress than he has made in the past, and as this progress goes on, it will change him completely and establish him in the contrary state, provided he is not hindered by lack of time’ (1941b, p. 32 [13a22–31], my italics). Aristotle is clearly talking here about the possibility of a complete change towards full virtue – a radical self-change – rather than just change towards the second-best tack of ‘continence’ (by forcing oneself to be good). But how can ‘the bad man’ be ‘brought into a better way of life’ if his soul has not been prepared for it through proper habituation (cf. Bondeson, 1974)? Knobel (2019) argues that, in some cases at least (e.g. the fictional one of Ebenezer Scrooge), a relatively sudden change can satisfy Aristotle’s prior-habituation condition if the person simply reverts to, and picks up the thread from, a habituation process that occurred at some time in her past but from which

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she then departed in an opposite direction. The required moral understanding may still be there, albeit dormant and masked, and allow for a relatively sudden retrieval. This explanation suffices, however, only for those who have somehow been led astray from virtue and are finding their way back. In an earlier work (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 5), I tried to carve out an alternative route, reasonably faithful to Aristotle’s own texts, to explain the above-mentioned Plan B manoeuvre. My strategy was to fasten on Aristotle’s own conception of the intellectual virtue of practising contemplation. Contemplation, as I explained it in Chapter 4 in the present book, reflects upon the unchanging form and telos (final end) of substances, most specifically of the objects of mathematics, logic and physics. However, it is also possible to reflect upon the telos of human life and, by so doing, discover the unique ergon (function) of human beings. But if it is possible to reflect upon and gain wisdom about the ergon, then the ergon will presumably lead one to understand the specific eudaimonia (flourishing) of human beings also. Moreover, even if that ergon is, in its most ideal form in human beings, concerned with contemplation only (as Aristotle assumes), in the actual, non-utopian world it will require us to exhibit our moral virtues to the full. The successful contemplator will thus, in principle, through mere contemplation, be able to gauge the significance of the phronetic life and what it demands – possibly leading to a moral conversion. Nevertheless, for a number of different reasons, I remain pessimistic about Aristotle’s putative Plan B being able to account for epiphanic moral conversions. First, although contemplative scientists may no doubt have their occasional ‘eureka moments’ of wonder, followed by paradigm-shifts in thinking, none of what Aristotle says about contemplation indicates any intense emotional engagement of awe – hence violating one of the characteristics of standard epiphanic conversions. I need not rehearse the argument for this reason here; it was developed in detail in the previous chapter. Second, whatever subsidiary moral function we may want to ascribe to contemplation, it cannot override Aristotle’s general doubts about a mere theoretical study of morality ever being able, on its own, to activate character change. What else would be needed, then? Well, at least the contribution of true character friends, preferably at a higher level of moral development than oneself, who could pull one along towards reform. However, that condition rules out fortuitous moral conversions, so we are left with a possible explanation only of a sub-category of the explanandum: other-induced conversions. Third, moral enlightenment along the contemplation route will, by psychological necessity, require a higher-than-average level of IQ and self-knowledge. No available evidence on epiphanic conversions indicates, however, that such conversions are limited to high-IQ people. In short, no matter how we twist Aristotle’s texts, they will scarcely yield more of a constructive explanation of epiphanic moral conversions than Kohlberg’s, on a standard reading. Indeed, Aristotle’s inability to explain such conversions appears as the warped mirror

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image of his inability to account for the enchantment required for true flourishing (recall Chapter 5). Battaly (2016) likes the focus on friends in my Plan B but thinks the focus on contemplation is symptomatic of an over-emphasis on self-cultivation as a route to virtue, seen in many virtue-ethically-minded philosophers. Instead, she suggests a ‘Plan C’ in which the ethical environment is used to jumpstart a change in the vicious person, through (non-intellectual) emotional contagion from moral exemplars, without the need for any inward-gazing ‘selfwork’. Now, if Plan C is meant only to explain the possibility of reforming vice, there is not much of an Aristotelian add-on in what Battaly suggests. As already noted, Aristotle himself was already open to the possibility that badly brought up people can counter vice in themselves by becoming continent. Despite having internalised ‘bad ends’, the vicious need to sort out the actions and emotions that are conducive to those ends. During that process, many of them will become acutely aware that the law and social customs mete out sanctions for vice. If all is well, they will thus learn to control themselves, through a process to which Aristotle refers as a ‘second-best tack’ (1985, p. 52 [1109a34]), and that process may well involve environmental re-­conditioning rather than reflective self-reform. However, if Battaly takes Plan C to be about developing virtue rather than just reforming vice, her plan becomes recognisably un-Aristotelian, because the former requires the cultivation of phronesis, which, in turn, requires self-reflection and self-criticism. Once again, Aristotle’s stringent conditions about the nature and development of phronesis present an ongoing challenge for character educators – and the idea of possible epiphanic conversions just piles on the agony. Not only moral philosophers and moral psychologists are sceptical of swift and dramatic changes in character or self hood. In personality psychology, the reigning Five-Factor Model of personality considers any such change severely restricted by the content of one’s Big-Five profile, which is supposed to be largely set in stone (McCrae, 2009). No ‘Damascus experience’ will suffice, for example, to turn an introvert into an extrovert. In social psychology, William Swann (1996) offers a whole theory of self-­ verification to explain people’s resistance to change. Swann has conducted a number of psychological experiments, demonstrating that people tend to pay attention to, seek, believe, value and retain feedback that confirms their self-concept, whether that self-concept is positive or negative. These findings contradict the well-entrenched assumption that people are in general self-enhancement seekers and praise junkies: consumed by an overwhelming desire to think well of themselves. In contrast, Swann’s studies suggest that once people have firmly incorporated a given characteristic – however negative – into their self-concept, they seek feedback that verifies that characteristic, even if it brings them intense pain. We thus like to seek out others who see us as we see ourselves, and we tend to flee contexts in which such self-verifying evaluations are not forthcoming. Swann refers

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to this tendency as ‘self-traps’: stubborn impediments to self-change (see Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 10, for a fuller discussion). There is a link here to what Mautner calls our ‘urge for normality’ (2018, p. 156), which can offset and override our contrasting desire for deep, harmony-disturbing and potentially epiphanic experiences. It must be noted, however, that nothing in what either Swann or Mautner says excludes the possibility of dramatic moral conversions; these theorists simply explain our resistance to them. Indeed, one could put a positive spin on Swann’s theory and argue that it supports the conception of epiphanic conversions given in this chapter, by accounting for one feature characterising them: namely why they are so rare. Moreover, Swann’s theory could perhaps account for other-induced moral conversions in so far as we seek verification from others of a new self-concept that they have induced us to adopt. It remains to consider one final sceptical point that was recently advanced by philosopher Ryan Kemp (2015). He provides a logical argument against the possibility of radical self-transformations. The argument turns out to be slightly less encompassing than one envisages at the beginning of his article. Kemp does admit the possibility of radical self-transformations (which could include epiphanic moral conversions) when those are brought about fortuitously and/or heteronomously (by external forces). He does argue, however, that autonomous (self-induced or self-authored) self-­transformations are impossible. The argument follows a familiar pattern from disputes about the logical status of other reflexive phenomena, such as self-deception and self-constraint. How can the same self be both the deceiver and the one deceived? Similarly here, how can the self reinvent itself when the only ingredients it has got at its disposal to exercise such a reinvention are contained within the self? A decision to make a radical self-change seems, by logical necessity, to outstrip the self ’s own repertoire of available resources. I do appreciate the apparent paradoxicality here, but there are manoeuvres at hand to solve it, similar to those that have been used for other self-­reflexive concepts. For example, although it seems paradoxical to claim that a person directly constrains her own freedom, there is nothing logically odd about saying that in the case of Ulysses and the Sirens, Ulysses indirectly constrained his own freedom, through the agency of others, by asking his shipmates to tie him to the mast. Analogously, a person who has found herself thrown into some sort of perceived moral imbalance, undermining a flourishing life, might devise steps to bring about her own transformation, although she would have to rely on other people, or on some other external forces, to assume causal responsibility for the transformation. All that Kemp’s argument establishes is that it is impossible to be the sole autonomous creator of one’s own conversion and to determine its content systematically beforehand (cf. also Battaly, 2016). But that concession fits well with the nature of the conversions under discussion in this chapter; this is exactly why they are appropriately described as ‘epiphanic’.

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A more radical antidote to the supposed self-transformation inertia is suggested by the philosopher L. A. Paul (2014), who thinks that we make choices that are both epistemically and personally transformative on a regular basis – witness the apparently mundane choice of deciding to have a child rather than to remain childless, or to opt for a new career. Those choices, she argues, generate phenomenological transformations deep enough to count as radical self-change. Although Paul’s account opens the door to self-elicited transformations, flowing from deliberate decisions, those are not tantamount to decisions to undergo a moral conversion. Rather, she is describing the possibility (and commonness) of decisions to take spectacular jumps into the unknown – and those decisions do not necessarily alter the orientation of one’s moral compass on the road towards flourishing.

Some relevant psychological evidence Having so far focused mostly on the misgivings and scepticisms about radical moral conversions, it is now time to review briefly some of the more favourable psychological evidence. Notwithstanding the general claim made earlier, that such experiences have been subject to widespread and protracted indifference, there are some notable exceptions. William James’s (1958) treatise on the varieties of religious experience (written in 1901–1902) includes a long discussion of religious conversions. Although the empirical evidence discussed lies outside the purview of the present chapter, since it relates exclusively to religious experiences, James draws many helpful distinctions that apply equally well to moral conversions. I have already mentioned his distinction between gradual and abrupt conversions – indicating that I am exploring only the latter here. That said, the borderline between the two can be fuzzy. For example, the closest I have come myself to a moral conversion is when, as a first-year undergraduate, I got to know a German PhD student in theology who was suffering from terminal cancer. Accepting his predicament with incredible equanimity, he decided to spend his last months engrossing himself in what he liked most, philosophy and theology, and working on the thesis he knew he would not complete – never apparently complaining or despairing. Since having this experience, I feel I appreciate life more and have a markedly reduced tendency to fuss about trifles. This ‘conversion’ shares many of the characteristics of the epiphanic ones listed in the first section, but it did not originate in a single ‘Damascus event’, and although it happened over days rather than months or years, it may be moot whether to call it ‘gradual’ or ‘abrupt’. Someone might also point out that if talk of a ‘Damascus experience’ is relevant here at all, that experience befell the German student, not me, and that I was only experiencing the ‘benefits’ vicariously or second-hand. The larger question, then, is whether a vicariously experienced epiphany makes it any less of an epiphany. In any

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case, I would not hesitate to say that getting to know this student marked a clear turning point in my own flourishing trajectory. James also distinguishes between volitional and self-surrender types of conversions, where the former tend to involve quick assent to and awareness of what is taking place, and the latter are characterised by an initial resistance to what is happening ‘to’ oneself, although the resistance is eventually given up. Third, James distinguishes between new-birth and layered types of conversions, where the former signify a complete about-face by the agent (as when Saul metamorphosed into Paul), and the latter are conversions that, while remaining epiphanic, still point in a direction into which the agent was already heading, however tentatively and sub-consciously, before the conversion experience (see MacLaughlin, 2008, chap. 2). Perhaps supporting the concept of a ‘layered’ conversion is the latter-day ‘kindling hypothesis’ in depression research, which holds that in the context of chronic stress, a relatively minor event can cause a tip into severe depression (Monroe & Harkness, 2005). This hypothesis is obviously not about moral conversions, nor indeed conversion for the better, but it opens up the question of whether a ‘minor’ event can count as a ‘Damascus’ event by tipping the scales towards a major change of compass (in line with the well-known ‘butterfly effect’ in chaos theory). To return to James, the biggest inspiration to be gained from his work, dated as some of it may be, lies in his confidence that radical conversions are real and his willingness to explore them scientifically. The humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow (1964) believed that in order to fully actualise their potential, human beings need to activate their Dionysian side as well as their Apollonian one. The very top of his famous pyramid of needs thus includes ecstatic ‘peak experiences’ – experiences that are simultaneously, in Maslow’s view, ‘spiritual’, ‘cosmic’ and explicable within a naturalistic framework. Those alleged peak experiences often include conversions from a sense of meaninglessness to a sense of cosmic meaning and purpose – including a moral purpose – and can thus fall under the heading of epiphanic moral conversions. However, much of Maslow’s work is questioned in today’s academic (including ‘positive’) psychology for its ‘grandmotherly’ tone and method. Maslow relied substantially on biographical analyses of the lives of unique individuals and, in addition to that, on narrative interviews with a relatively small number of participants. Recent methodological misgivings have unfortunately led to a dearth of interest in some of Maslow’s more exciting topics, such as the concept of a ‘peak experience’, although these continue to be studied within a fringe movement in psychology, called ‘transpersonal psychology’, that focuses on the nature of self-transformations (Davis, 2003). It would be churlish to complain that the next topic on my agenda has not been studied with scientific rigour. I am thinking here of near-death experiences, about which much has been written of late. The ‘typical’ cases of such experiences involve persons who, during a physical emergency – like the truck driver Thomas Sawyer crushed under his own truck in 1978 (recounted

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in Gibbs, 2014, pp. 212ff ) – experience a complete, epiphanic review of their lives, accompanied by the perception of a glimpse into a deeper, transcendent reality. The experience typically evokes ‘emotional involvement and moral assessment’ (Lorimer, 1990, p. 10). Following this experience and its retrospective review, the person is transformed, which in Tom’s case meant that his previous self-centred and abusive behaviours were replaced by an attitude of love and altruism. Greyson (2006) reviews much of the available empirical data and finds clear trends, many of which coincide substantially with the characteristics identified in the first section of this chapter as those of epiphanic moral conversions. The near-death experiences are catastrophic, unplanned, epiphanic and emotionally laden, and they result in a morally positive self-change. Greyson presents both qualitative and quantitative data supporting the reality of those experiences and their (lasting) effects. Yet – apart from accounting for only a small percentage of alleged radical conversions – near-death experiences are often discussed in a language that will turn secular theorists off, because it seems to assume contact with some supernatural reality or being. Moreover, sceptics may complain that first-­ person accounts of near-death experiences typically rely on ‘flashbulb memories’, which are generally not considered reliable (Talarico & Rubin, 2003). Nevertheless, some psychologists believe that near-death experiences offer significant insights into not only the phenomenon of moral conversions but also the nature of moral development in general (see e.g. Gibbs, 2014). Emilie Griffin (1980) followed in the footsteps of William James by trying to unravel the phenomenology of religious conversions. In doing so, she produced a four-stage model – of desire, dialectic, struggle and surrender – that might, at first sight at least, be considered equally relevant to moral as to religious conversions. The desire stage is a period of dissatisfaction with the agent’s status quo – a feeling of emptiness or turmoil. The dialectic stage (which may be short in abrupt conversions) includes a weighing of intellectual reasons for and against the conversion. The struggle phase refers to the person’s ambivalence in wanting at the same time to embrace the conversion and to step on the brakes. The final stage of surrender is characterised by the complete assent of the convert to the reality and content of the new outlook. Griffin’s model is better at explaining gradual conversions than abrupt conversions. More significantly, the more accurate a picture we take this model to paint of religious conversions, the more those seem to differ from moral conversions, or at least from the sort of moral conversions under scrutiny in this chapter. For, as MacLaughlin (2008, chap. 4) correctly points out, the latter are typically less reflective than the conversions identified by Griffin; they do not universally present any preliminary desire phase; and they often include no experience of a struggle and eventual surrender. The reason why Griffin’s model seems to have some intuitive appeal, however, may have to with how it relates to an historically powerful model of moral progress in general – a model found in a number of Western religions,

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but also in essentially non-religious ideologies such as Platonism, (Rousseau’s) primitivism, Marxism and Surrealism – according to which such progress inevitably follows a cycle of fall, self-estrangement and redemption. One of the problems with this fall–redemption model is that it may produce moral inertia through the assumption that one needs to hit rock bottom before one begins to climb up again. Just as an alcoholic trusting this developmental model may delay entering rehab by conveniently moving the presumed ‘bottom’, which she purportedly needs to hit first, ever further downwards, so the young moral learner may be discouraged from continuing to make slow, laborious progress by the anticipation that a ‘turning point’, where struggles are transcended, is awaiting around the corner. Not feeling torn before the ‘big event’ will, then, be seen as a sign of self-suppression and immaturity, rather than of self-harmony and maturity. Epiphanic moral conversions are here elevated from an exception to a rule in progress towards flourishing, but that seems to fly in the face of empirical evidence. The distinctions pointed out by MacLaughlin above remind us of the need to distinguish epiphanic moral conversions from cases of so-called ‘post-traumatic growth’ – about which research findings are currently proliferating. While the nature of such growth is still inherently controversial ( Jayawickreme & Blackie, 2014) and is written off by some as a ‘positive illusion’ (Taylor & Armor, 1996), especially because of the common reliance on mere retrospective, ‘self-comforting’ evidence, it is typically conceptualised as a gradual, reflective process, often involving inner struggles, and thus may have more in common (phenomenologically) with Griffin’s model than with the characteristics presented in the first section of this chapter. Moreover, although one could reasonably predict post-traumatic growth to target intellectual virtues such as wisdom and phronesis, epiphanic moral conversions are more likely (at least in the short run) to affect specific emotion-imbued moral virtues such as compassion and generosity. Pointing in a different direction from most of the research on post-traumatic growth, however, is another finding from psycho-therapy, more specifically cognitive therapy (CT), which shows some CT patients experiencing sudden gains: large symptom improvement in one between-sessions interval, as if through a gestalt-switch. Survival analyses show that only one third of those sudden-gain-responders relapse in two years (Tang et al., 2007). Kirk Schneider’s (2009) book Awakening to Awe contains an analysis of qualitative interviews with a number of people who have experienced profound transformations as a result of embracing the objects of awe. Schneider’s book is highly relevant for the present argument, because I hypothesise in the following section that awe may hold the key to some of the enigmas of epiphanic moral conversions. The agents with whom Schneider engages all seem to have faced some existential crisis, halting their flourishing, as a result of childhood traumas, drug addiction, chronic illness, depression or aging, but then to have epiphanically recovered through intense attachments to objects

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of awe (for instance, in nature or in art). The details provided by the transcribed interviews are salutary for eliciting an account of educational interventions that might work for individuals in need of radical self-transformations. However, the interviewees do not describe a particular ‘Damascus experience’, but rather a series of awe-inspiring episodes that gradually got them back on track. Schneider’s research questions and findings are thus slightly out of sync with the scope of this chapter. I would finally like to mention Alfredo MacLaughlin’s PhD thesis (2008), which neatly synthesises and critiques much of the available social-scientific sources on moral conversions. In addition to offering a helpful overview, which can serve as a springboard for further explorations, MacLaughlin presents useful taxonomies of his own, such as his distinction between conversions in terms of their (a) content, (b) degree of commitment and (c) behavioural coherence with the new standards (2008, chap. 5). MacLaughlin’s examples show that a conversion that can be counted as radical on one of those variables need not necessarily be so on others. What MacLaughlin’s thesis demonstrates more than anything else, however, is the current lack of empirical studies, especially of the quantitative kind, homing in on different varieties of moral conversions. As we have seen, the focus so far has clearly been on cases that, from the perspective of moral psychology and moral philosophy, may be lacking in relevance, either because they are exclusively about religious conversions, or because they are about conversions that cover only a very limited number of cases, such as near-death experiences. For instance, no study is, to the best of my knowledge, available that explores differences among fortuitous, self-elicited and other-elicited moral conversions. In sum, the currently available diet on which philosophical or psychological theories of epiphanic conversions can feed is severely restricted. Moreover, no attempt has been made to bring current findings into line with accounts of different routes towards flourishing. Therefore, the best that one can offer at the moment are exploratory suggestions, such as those pursued in the following section.

Disenchantment, awe and elevation The phenomenon of epiphanic moral conversions still seems to elude a satisfactory comprehensive account. Previous sections indicate that the problem does not lie so much in the concept itself – which has been clarified considerably by a number of theorists – as in the lack of empirical evidence about under what kinds of conditions such conversions actually take place. How frequent are they? What triggers them? How can they fit into a plausible account of moral development and of trajectories towards flourishing? Is there a difference between conversions in childhood and in adulthood? Are conversions reversible? And so forth. Those are the questions needing scrutiny, and answering them requires more than musings from the philosophical armchair. Nevertheless, in order to get a firmer grip on those questions, I offer

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further philosophical reflections in the present section and then engage in some hypothesising about the mechanisms that may be at work. Historically, it may be possible to trace the failure of theorists to acknowledge epiphanic moral conversions all the way back to Aristotle’s radical rejection of Platonic idealism. Since then, but especially since the fall of the medieval transcendental and teleological world-view, we have – as I argued in Chapter 5, drawing on Charles Taylor in particular – lived in a world of increasing ‘disenchantment’. Taylor does not specifically single out the loss of belief in epiphanic moral conversions as a symptom of the general malaise of disenchantment, but in a number of places he mentions the ‘epiphanic’ quality of those rare occasions when moderns still come into contact with, or at least sense the presence of, a transcendental reality (2007, pp. 544–546; 607–609; 728–32). Often those experiences have to do with aesthetic ecstasy, when one is confronted with works of great art, or awe at the wonders of nature. Whatever the reductionist tenets of disenchanted science, human beings are thus – just as Plato envisaged – inexorably drawn towards ideals of beauty, truth and goodness. In one place, Taylor mentions that momentary intimations of fullness can be part of a ‘conversion’ experience where one perceives oneself to have come into full contact with the source of goodness (2007, pp. 728–730). He then describes in some detail the epiphanic moments of awe experienced one day by Václav Havel, the late Czech writer and statesman, when, languishing as a dissident in prison, he began to gaze into the crown of an enormous tree that rose up and over the prison fences (2007, p. 728). Awe is quite an interesting emotion for present purposes, for lack of attention to awe – or the tendency to consign it into inconsequence – seems to constitute a nodal point of several causalities that contribute to scepticism about conversions. Consider again, for example, Aristotle’s elision of awe, lamented in Chapter 5; this may partly explain why Aristotle did not fit epiphanic moral conversions into his theory of moral development. For without experiences of awe, it is difficult to see how some of the characteristics of such conversions, listed in the first section of this chapter, could be accounted for. That said, it would be premature to exclude the possibility that intense experiences of more everyday ‘Aristotelian’ emotions, such as shame or compassion, could elicit conversions. Awe has come under the spotlight of contemporary psychology of late (in particular positive psychology), and an often-cited analysis by Keltner and Haidt (2003) suggests that two appraisals are prototypically central to awe: perception of vastness and a need for accommodation. Vastness can involve physical or social ‘size’, or, in fact, ‘anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self, or the self ’s ordinary level of experience or frame of reference’ (2003, p. 303). Accommodation ‘refers to the Piagetian process of adjusting mental structures that cannot assimilate a new experience’; it involves confusion and obscurity to begin with and then, ideally, a realignment of structures (2003, p. 304). These two appraisals are central in the sense that emotional

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experiences that lack one of them cannot count as ‘awe’ (cf. quite similar criteria in Burke, 2008, for a ‘sense of the Sublime’ – originally written in 1757). I do have a number of problems with Keltner and Haidt’s analysis (see Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). For example, I do not consider ‘accommodation’, in their sense, a necessary condition of all awe experiences. In many cases, awe simply confirms or reinforces already existing structures, for example structures that have come into existence as a result of previous awe experiences directed at similar targets. However, I agree that a radical alignment of cognitive structures characterises some awe experiences (cf. the empirical findings in Shiota, Keltner & Mossman, 2007). More specifically, I would hypothesise that (a) awe is a common (perhaps even a psychologically crucial) emotional trigger of epiphanic moral conversions; and (b) awe-proneness is associated with proneness to such conversions. Awe is perhaps best seen not as a single discrete emotion but, rather, as a name for family of emotions that includes intellectual elevation and moral elevation, as well as aesthetic ecstasy (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). Of those, moral elevation (to which I return in more depth in Chapter 7; cf. also Haidt, 2003) would probably be most relevant for moral conversions, so my third hypothesis is that (c) epiphanic moral conversions are strongly correlated with reported experiences of moral elevation. This is in line with Haidt’s (2003) suggestion that in order to understand elevation, we need to examine ‘peak experiences’ empirically. I hope that by exceeding my remit as a philosopher, in advancing those three hypotheses and encouraging psychologists to test them, I have put some flesh on the bones of the point I made at the close of the third section of this chapter that epiphanic moral conversions require more empirical work. It is not just that I consider them to stand in need of empirical scrutiny in general; rather, I believe they deserve empirical scrutiny with a particular focus. That said, although the hypotheses are empirical, they are based on a view that is philosophical (in this case both moral and conceptual) about the nature of awe as a potentially virtuous emotion and how this emotion helps us place ourselves and our lives in relation to self-transcendent goods. I have argued for this specific nature of awe elsewhere (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8), and while there is no space to rehearse that argument here, I simply flag it at this juncture as a reminder of my firm belief that no serious headway can be made in the study of a phenomenon such as that under discussion in the present chapter without input from both social scientists and philosophers.

Education for epiphanies Since we are still awaiting a full empirical theory of epiphanic moral conversions, it may seem premature to so much as begin to suggest educational interventions to stimulate such conversions. Someone might even argue that, given the very epiphanic and unpredictable nature of conversion experiences – which can at worst elicit moral regress rather than progress – this topic

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should not be touched with a barge pole in the classroom. This is a very important consideration that I ask all readers to ponder, and especially practitioners. If we return to the popular accounts of charismatic teachers producing radical self-change in students, those can quite easily be reconceptualised as exercises in awe education. What John Keating did, for example, in Dead Poets Society was to inspire in students awe at great literature and the messages it conveys about how to lead our lives. However, even for those of you who believe that it is the explicit as well as the implicit mission of the educator to help students find their ways to flourishing, serious doubts may arise about whether that mission can ever include deliberately triggering major gestaltswitches in students. Stimulating incremental growth that is taking place anyway is one thing; pushing students forcefully out of their comfort zones – even when the need for that seems pressing – is quite another. Do Dead Poets Society and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie really offer examples of responsible and good classroom practice? Or were the teachers exceeding reasonable limits in their self-defined exercise of flourishing tutelage and entering dangerous territories with unforeseeable consequences? At present, all I can offer, as food for further thought, are some scattered observations, based on anecdotal evidence and yet-to-be-confirmed hypotheses about an association between awe and epiphanic conversions. Rather than fastening on the possible perils of radical enchantment experiences in the classroom, we should perhaps focus on the observation that, although this was far from being the original purpose of the classic school curriculum (Segev, 2017), schools often seem to function as vehicles of a disenchantment process wherein a sense of mystery at the wonders of life is gradually educated out of students. Schneider, whose research shows awe as literally life-saving for many people, complains that schools are sites of enculturation of ‘intricate defences’ against mystery (2009, pp. 7–8). If that is true, and if my empirical hypotheses above hold water, then less awe-proneness in students will decrease the likelihood of their undergoing moral conversions, either presently or later in life. That is not good news for those of us who believe that some people urgently need such conversions in order to stay on a trajectory towards flourishing. This situation must be seen as potentially remediable, however; schools do not necessarily need to serve such a deflationary function. Indeed, Schneider’s interviews indicate various avenues open to innovative schools and teachers, in order to cultivate awe, and he even produces helpful lists of educational conditions that may enhance awe awakenings (2009, pp. 181–183). Usually, the best place to start an inquiry into the educational stimulation of an emotional trait would be with Aristotle, who saw moral education essentially as a refinement of sensibility. For reasons that will have become apparent to readers, however, Aristotle’s texts will not be of much help here – except as a general reminder about the educational uses of great art (including music)

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and literature to cultivate deep emotions. As Longinus noted a long time ago, great art does not so much persuade directly as it ‘takes the reader out of himself ’ (1991, I.3). That said, Aristotelians would be quick to remind us that if we wanted to accommodate awe as a praiseworthy emotional trait, to be promoted through moral education, we would need to make a clear distinction first between virtuous and non-virtuous awe (Vogler, 2017). The awe of an Aldous Huxley’s mescalin trip does not count (1954), although it invoked in him feelings of ‘grace and transfiguration’ and a ‘Beatific Vision’. Nor does the commercialised awe fetishism of New Age spirituality (Evans, 2017, p. 209) count here. We must avoid turning students into ‘thrill-seekers and sensation addicts’ (Evans, 2017, p. 134), constantly on the look-out for the next epiphany. Regarding potential Aristotelian methods, Snow (2016) identifies in Aristotle’s constant emphasis on learning virtue by doing virtue a ‘paradox of striving’: of spoiling our efforts by trying too hard. Perhaps, to prepare us for awe, Gandhi’s method of purifying the mind and waiting to be touched will work better. However, that frame of mind requires a certain sort of humility, which is not usually considered to be an Aristotelian virtue. More in line with Aristotle’s own pedagogy – if he were to acknowledge the possibility of radical self-transformations – would be methods such as adventure education (e.g. ‘wilderness therapy’) and service learning (e.g. placements in refugee camps), in which the sudden epiphanic growth would be stimulated obliquely through the challenges of the experience itself, rather than aimed for directly (see e.g. Miller, 2017). In a thought-­provoking paper, Ruth Tietjen (2017) describes processes of self-­transformation that can evoke ‘mystical states of mind’ – which would then, in turn, potentially satisfy our self-transcendent urges that I described in Chapter 5. From the point of view of the present chapter, however, the educational question would be how to elicit the opposite causal chain: from ‘mystical’ states of mind, encompassing awe or a sense of the sublime, towards personal self-transformations. Perhaps those of us who tend to take Aristotle’s texts as a semi-gospel on flourishing education need to accept a reason for winding the clock back slightly and paying heed to Plato. As Jonas (2015a) cleverly argues, the approach modelled in some of Plato’s dialogues, such as Lysis, offers contemporary educators a method for using Socratic questioning to guide students in a profitable direction towards abrupt insights, without dictating the way. Students can thus be given the scaffolding necessary for seeing the light of truth, while being expected to take ownership for where the pursuit of this light leads them (2015a, p. 51). In addition to Plato’s insights, considerable literature exists on the potential role of various ‘transformative pedagogies’ and of the teacher as an ‘evoker’ of radical educational experiences in general (see e.g. Hogan, 2004). The lessons learned from this literature indicate, however, that education for epiphanies is very much a hit-and-miss affair (Aldridge, 2014).

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I am tempted to conclude, at the end of this exploration, that schooling which forecloses the option of an epiphanic moral conversion does not constitute good education – least of all in a liberal society that is meant to open up rather than foreclose flourishing avenues. To what extent this option should be buttressed and stimulated in the classroom is another question, however, and answering it will require not only a much fuller, empirically informed theory about moral conversions and their role in student flourishing, but also considerable educational phronesis on the part of the teacher.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 Have you had a profound religious or non-religious experience or an awakening that changed the direction of your life? If yes, how would you characterise it and its effects on you? 2 Do you agree with Swann that once people have firmly incorporated a given characteristic – however negative – into their self-concept, they seek feedback that verifies that characteristic, even if it brings them intense pain? Would this, for example, explain the strange phenomenon of bullied students seeking out the company of those who bully them – or does it admit of some other more plausible explanation? 3 Do you believe in post-traumatic growth? Or is the idea of bouncing back stronger from major traumas just a culturally conditioned narrative script that people superimpose upon their lives retrospectively in order to make setbacks appear more bearable? 4 Do you agree with my hypotheses that awe is a common (perhaps even a psychologically crucial) emotional trigger of epiphanic moral conversions and that awe-proneness is associated with proneness to such conversions? If so, are there any implications for teachers as potential elicitors of awe experiences in the classroom? 5 To reiterate the question posed in the final section of this chapter, do Dead Poets Society and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie really offer examples of responsible and good classroom practice? Or were the teachers exceeding reasonable limits in their self-defined exercise of flourishing tutelage and entering dangerous territories with unforeseeable consequences?

Chapter 7

Flourishing and the emulation of exemplarity Going beyond Aristotle and Zagzebski

Targeting the exemplarity of flourishing lives The primary answer given to the question ‘How does one learn to lead a flourishing life?’ – if addressed to any theorist with broadly Aristotelian sympathies, such as myself and many of the authors I have drawn upon in this book – will most likely be ‘Examine people who are leading flourishing lives and try to emulate them’. Yet this answer raises a host of issues that are sometimes conveniently eschewed by orthodox Aristotelians, neo-Aristotelians and quasi-Aristotelians alike. This chapter addresses those issues; it is basically about the problematics of role-modelling in the context of education towards flourishing. Role-modelling, especially of the kind that moral philosophers, moral psychologists and moral educators refer to as learning from exemplars, has been achieving renewed prominence of late. In 2015, a major interdisciplinary research project was launched in the United States, targeting the ‘morally exceptional’ and how to learn from ‘moral superstars’ (Wake Forest University, 2015). In that same year, two thought-provoking books came out foregrounding the salience of exemplars for moral development: one popular (Brooks, 2015); the other academic and reviving what the authors call ‘exemplar methodology’ (Damon & Colby, 2015, p. xv). The reasons for this development are probably varied, but it seems likely that they stem in part from declining trust in the ability of pure reasoning principles – untethered from experiential associations with real people in real situations – to enact lasting changes in the psycho-moral make-up of young people. The most sustained and enduring interest in the topic can perhaps be seen among character educationists, especially of the Aristotelian kind (Kristjánsson, 2007; Annas, 2011; Sanderse, 2013), because moral role-modelling constitutes a time-honored staple of Aristotelian methods for cultivating character. More generally, exemplar research continues to form a major research agenda in moral psychology (see e.g. Dunlop & Walker, 2013), and the recently identified emotion of (moral) ‘elevation’ has been making headlines within positive psychology (Haidt, 2003; Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Recently,

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philosopher Linda Zagzebski has upped the theoretical stakes considerably by proposing a comprehensive new moral theory of ‘exemplarism’, according to which basic moral concepts are anchored foundationally in exemplars of moral goodness, tracked by the emotion of admiration, in a manner analogous to the way proper names and the names of natural kinds are grounded according to a philosophically respectable, if controversial, Putnamian/Kripkean causal theory of reference (Kripke, 1980). Zagzebski goes on to make a distinction between exemplars admired for natural excellences and those admired for acquired excellences (such as moral and intellectual virtues) and argues that admiration for the latter (typically) provides motivation to emulate them (Zagzebski, 2013; 2015a; 2015b; 2017). Zagzebski has already furthered the debate on the emotional basis of learning from exemplars, and I return to her arguments at various junctures in this chapter, although attempting to assess the whole new moral theory is outside my purview. Zabzebski has entered a minefield, however, for the whole discursive field of role-modelling is beset with practical (especially educational) and theoretical problems. My present attention in this chapter is fastened on a set of problems that are at once psychological and conceptual. What are the psychological (in particular, motivational and emotional) mechanisms that drive the purported learning from exemplarity, and what sort of conceptual cartography (in particular, charting the territory of emotion concepts) is required to make sense of those mechanisms? My aim is to say something relevant about these two interlocking questions in what follows. These questions are particularly acute for all Aristotelians, because Aristotle simultaneously gave high priority to role-modelling as a method of character education and said precious little about how it actually does, or should, take place. Aristotelian character education seems most essentially, in its early stages at least, to be a process of emotional sensitisation, so it is incumbent on Aristotelians to give a plausible account (for example, concurring or competing with Zagzebski’s) of how emotions motivate role-modelling. This responsibility would be even more acute for theorists who argued that role-modelling is not only about cultivating character per se but also about learning to lead a flourishing life more generally, because other aspects of the presumed examplar than merely her character would then have to be taken into consideration and modelled somehow. However, lacking much advice from Aristotle himself about education qua emulation, neo-Aristotelians have considerable reconstructive and justificatory work on their hands. As I see it, there are two discrete sets of problems facing us here. One set has to do with standard methodological problems of role modelling. I present them in the following section as throwing up three distinct ‘paradoxes’ that need to be resolved. The second set has to do with the nature of the emotions targeting exemplarity. There is an over-supply of concepts residing in that area, and each theorist produces her own preferred classification. Amongst the services that philosophers attempt to provide is the refinement

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of conceptual understandings. Gilbert Ryle’s metaphor, about how critical analyses of concepts ideally need to be holistic with respect to the neighbouring conceptual terrain, is instructive here: ‘Surveyors do not map single objects like the village church. They put together in one map all the salient features of the area: the church, the railway, the parish boundary, and perhaps the contours. Further, they indicate how this map joins the maps of the neighbouring areas’ (2009, p. 211). Drawing on Ryle’s advice, the third and fourth sections in this chapter offer a critical review of the conceptual terrain, relying both on previous philosophical and psychological analyses. If there is a ‘village church’ in this area, it must be the concept of admiration. Zagzebski has trimmed its ragged edges considerably of late (2015a; 2017). She understands admiration as a positive (pleasant) emotion, with contempt as its contrary, that construes the object as good in a distinctive way that is stronger and more basic than construing it as desirable. So, contrary to what she takes to be the standard view, the desirable is grounded in the admirable. As already noted, she makes a distinction between admiration for natural and for acquired excellences (especially virtues) – even hypothesising that they do not only ‘appear’ but also ‘feel’ different – and she considers the latter ‘imitably attractive’, in the sense that they (typically) give rise to the urge to imitate or emulate the object (2015a). She takes on board certain insights from the recent literature on elevation (which I review later) by accepting that admiration for virtue is often associated with the feeling of being uplifted or elevated. This is an important revision, for Zagzebski ultimately wants to collapse elevation into admiration (for virtue) by showing that the two emotions are identical. Her final move is that if agents endorse their emotion of admiration, upon critical reflection, they will use that as a ground for a judgement of admirability – a move that for Zagzebski eventually bridges the gap between emotion theory and moral theory, culminating in her new theory of exemplarism (2017). Zagzebski does not address specifically the question of how admiration functions in learning to lead a flourishing life, but her theory offers potential resources to throw new light on that question. There is a slide in Zagzebski’s account between admiration for excellences and admiration for people exhibiting those excellences, because she ultimately characterises admiration as an emotion of feeling in a distinctive way towards a person seen as admirable and refers to that person (rather than just to her qualities of excellence) as imitably attractive (2017, chap. 2). Zagzebski has ordinary language on her side here; it makes no clear distinction between admiration for persons and qualities: say, for a flourishing individual versus the attributes of her flourishing. Robert C. Roberts suggests, however, that it would be ‘worthwhile, in moral psychology’ to refine ordinary language by making a distinction between admiration for persons and non-persons (2003, pp. 264–265). He remains agnostic on whether this distinction marks out distinct but related emotions or variants of the same emotion, but at least he regards ordinary language here as too blunt an instrument for academic

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purposes. It would have been helpful if Zagzebski had provided an argument for why this distinction is irrelevant for her particular purposes; yet I will not fault her for that omission because I do not think this particular distinction is crucial to making sense of role-modelling along the admiration route. I go on to argue later, however, that another distinction – that between admiration and elevation – is. In general, my argument against Zagzebski’s account of learning from exemplars, as well as against some of the other accounts (including Aristotle’s original one), follows a pattern that will be familiar to readers from the preceding two chapters in this book, in so far as they have targeted ‘disenchanted’ accounts of flourishing. I fault the accounts in question for failing to acknowledge attraction to and emulation of ideals rather than persons: of exemplarity rather than individual examplars. I argue that we need a concept of elevation (as a kind of awe) to account for attraction to transpersonal ideals and that making sense of elevation, on this understanding, may help resolve some remaining problems in the other accounts. In short, in order to emulate flourishing lives, we should emulate the ideal contents of those lives (at least in so far as those ideals are ‘realistic’, not ‘utopian’; recall Chapter 2), rather than the individual persons instantiating them. I conclude, in the final section, by suggesting that insights from the Chinese virtue ethicists and the emotion theorist Mengzi (Mencius) may help Aristotelians and non-Aristotelians alike get back on track. The final section also offers a brief educational discussion. In sum, the basic aim of this chapter is to show that in order to give a full account of emotions targeting exemplarity, for instance the exemplarity of eudaimonia, we need to go beyond both Aristotle and Zagzebski, and that Mengzi may be our best bet for starting to carve out an alternative route.

Problematics of emulation – and examples from the historical emulation literature Let me begin this section with one practical worry, if mostly to cast it aside. The flip side – the dark side, if you like – of the increased interest about exemplarism is the continued fear of parents and educators that young people are (increasingly) identifying with, idolising and emulating the ‘wrong’ sort of role models. A 2015 poll higlighted Miley Cyrus as the latest bane of parents (Crain, 2015), but given the evanescence of the celebrity world, she has probably been superseded already by someone else. Academics keep producing findings indicating that these fears are unfounded; most young people nowadays, as ever, cite parents and relatives as their role models (see various references in Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 7; Sanderse, 2013). Nevertheless, it might be unwise to rule out this concern completely. As an aside, when people are asked specifically about the ‘wisest person they know’, rather than a general role model, the focus

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shifts from close significant others to a fairly well specified set of cultural and historical figures, such as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, and the criteria of ‘wisdom’ identified seem to be practical rather than philosophical in nature (Weststrate, Ferrari & Ardelt, 2016). Another worry is that little if any consensus has been reached on how best-exemplar methodology works in classroom contexts; there is simply insufficient empirical evidence available on the effectiveness of different strategies (Vos, 2018). In professional ethics, considerable literature exists on the teacher (qua professional) as a role model – inevitable or self-chosen – and how that role needs to be cultivated in teacher training. Disappointingly, however, much of this literature shows teachers to be unprepared and/or unwilling to take on such a task, and, counter-intuitively perhaps, it also finds that students rarely mention teachers as their most important role models (Sanderse, 2013). Apart from those concerns about how exemplar methodology might be abused, or not optimally used, more general misgivings exist about its shortcomings. As briefly sketched in Chapter 4, those shortcomings include hero-worship, where the student uncritically imitates or mimics the role model, warts and all; moral inertia, where moral exemplars are seen as standing so high above the learner that idolising them becomes disempowering rather than uplifting; and moral over-stretching, where the learner tries to follow in the footsteps of a role model but, not being as sure-footed, may end up in unfamiliar circumstances where, rather than virtue progressing, vice breaks forth with redoubled ardour because the learner succumbs to temptations that the advanced role model could have overcome. Regarding the problem of hero-worship, contemporary (Aristotelian) character educationists agree that an imitation–conditioning model, often associated with social-learning theories (cf. Sarapin et al., 2015), is not the ideal to aim at, except perhaps with very young children, and that it must gradually be replaced with critical reason-informed and reason-guided engagement (Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 7; Annas, 2011; Sanderse, 2013). For even if the immediate source of motivation remains the admiration for a particular exemplar (be it the student’s current teacher/parent/mentor, or a sage from the past), the ultimate source must be something other than simply a desire to ‘imitate a hero’: namely, the emulation of particular admirable qualities that the heroic exemplar exemplifies. It is incumbent on character educationists, however, to explain how this shift of motivation can be elicited and sustained in students. Vos (2018) offers helpful initial suggestions here about the ways in which thin and over-simplified descriptions of exemplars in moral education can be replaced by rich descriptions, capturing the complexities and moral ambiguities of flourishing lives (cf. also Cigman’s 2018 criticism of ‘unpopulated scenarios’, mentioned in Chapter 2). Moreover, Vos, in drawing on Kierkegaard, illuminates a facet of the hero-worship problem that has so far escaped attention: the fact that emulating a hero, warts and all,

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betrays an inadequate grasp of one’s own self-identity and self-realisation. This insight enables us to present the hero-worship problem in the form of a paradox; we could call it the paradox of holistic authenticity. The closer one gets to existing holistically in the same way that the exemplar exists, the further one gets from authentically becoming oneself (cf. van der Ritj, 2018, for a more austere Kantian take on this paradox). The second problem concerns the threat of moral inertia, where the moral exemplars are seen as standing so high above the learner that they function simply as glorious pin-ups rather than as galvanising role models. Sports psychology is replete with stories of people who gave up because they realised that they could never reach the same heights as Olympic winners. How can we avoid the same effect taking hold in education towards flourishing? This problem, like the previous one, can be presented in the form of a paradox: the paradox of personal idealisation. The more perfect and substantively imitable the role model is, the more likely that it will be psychologically demotivating rather than motivating, even possibly inducing feelings of resentment (Monin, Sawyer & Marquez, 2008). For example, Han and colleagues (2017) showed that the more attainable and realistic the relevant moral exemplar is, the more likely the emulators are to engage in voluntary service activities. There might even be a case for arguing that the fully virtuous are not the best role models for moral learners; people less far ahead of them in moral development may be better role models (Athanassoulis, 2018). A continent person might be a good role model for an incontinent person, for example. A close corollary to the problem of moral inertia is the problem of moral over-stretching. Even those who do feel nobly motivated by glorious role models are likely to come a cropper when trying to imitate them, because the former may not have the psycho-moral wherewithal to withstand the challenges that the exemplars have already had to surmount. Again, a paradox lurks: the paradox of noble failures. The more nobly one tries to emulate a glorious role model, the less likely one is to succeed. Let me now explore briefly some historical accounts of role-model methodology, in particular with reference to the problems – or ‘paradoxes’, if you like – presented above. Aristotle. Admiration is, for some reason, not one of the emotions analysed in Aristotle’s treatise on emotions and their use in rhetoric (2007). He devotes considerable space, on the other hand, to dissecting the emotion of emulation (zelos). This emotion is characterised by a kind of distress ‘at the apparent presence among others like him by nature, of things honoured and possible for a person to acquire, [with the distress arising] not from the fact that another has them but that the emulator does not’. Thus emulation is a good thing and characteristic of good people, whereas envy is bad and characteristic of the bad, because the former person, through emulation, is making an effort to attain good things for himself, while

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the latter, through envy, tries to prevent his neighbour from having them (Aristotle, 2007, p. 146 [1388a29–38]). Interestingly, later in this same chapter, Aristotle considers contempt (kataphronesis) the opposite of emulation, rather than (as Zagzebski does) the opposite of admiration. However, he makes a move with which Zagzebski would concur, claiming that those are emulated whom many admire or whom the emulators admire. Like Zagzebski, Aristotle sees proper emulation as striving for qualities that are (seen as) ‘appropriate attributes of the good’ (2007, pp. 146–147 [1388b4–8]). Moreover, he proposes the trait form of emulation – which we could call emulousness – as an age-relative virtue for young people (see Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 7): an integral ingredient in early moral education. Aristotle remains mostly reticent on how emulousness can be cultivated. In a previous work (Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 7), I offered an optimistic take on this problem by suggesting that lightly touching up what Aristotle says about the emotion of emulation (zelos) in his Rhetoric (2007), and bringing it into line with his general requirements of phronesis-guided education, would suffice to develop a coherent neo-Aristotelian account. Since then I have come to believe that more reconstructive work is needed to update Aristotle – the great cartographer that he was of moral reality – in light of new social-­ scientific evidence and more recent analyses of emotion concepts. Indeed, no contemporary follower of Aristotle would claim that we ought to retain his account in situ. More specifically, I now see three main stumbling blocks to understanding role-modelling through standard Aristotelian routes. First, conceptually, emulation scarcely does all the work required to make sense of the psychological landscape. Emotion concepts that were not at Aristotle’s disposal (such as elevation) or of which he did not make explicit use (such as admiration) may be needed to supplement his account. Second, psychologically, the emotion of emulation does not suffice to explain the mechanism at work in various kinds of exemplarity-learning experiences, especially those having to do with the sudden and dramatic moral conversions that I explored in Chapter 6 (even if those may be pretty rare). Third, morally, standard Aristotelian accounts do not provide sufficient resources to counter the three problems-cum-paradoxes depicted above. These problems have motivated Swanton to propose that virtue ethicists replace an ‘oracle’ model of the virtuous agent with a ‘dialogical’ model (Swanton, 2003; cf. Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 6; cf. also Howell, 2014, on the deeper philosophical problems of moral deference). All those stumbling blocks may be grounded in Aristotle’s inability to make sense of people’s emotional attachments to ideal exemplarity, as distinct from the attachment to individual exemplars. Although Aristotle does define the affective part of emulation as one of ‘distress’, we should be cautious in characterising the emotion as a ‘negative’ on a standard psychological understanding. Emulation (zelos) is (pace Zagzebski, 2015a, p. 210) not only painful; it also includes pleasure at the

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presence of ‘the honoured thing’. Indeed, if the choice is between not being able to acquire it for oneself and being able to acquire it only by removing it from the emulated person, the emulator prefers the first option. Notice here that Aristotle did not share current psychology’s simplistic dichotomy of the ‘valence’ of emotions as either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, but seems to have considered most, if not all, emotions to be of mixed valence (Frede, 1996). The specific complication about the valence of emulation arises from the need to distinguish emulation both from begrudging spite (resenting the emulating person’s possession of the honoured thing) and envy (resenting the emulating person’s possession of the honoured thing and wanting to remove it from her to oneself ). John Stuart Mill. Mill’s treatise On Liberty (1972; originally published 1859) is a masterpiece of philosophical writing – whether or not one buys into its core message – and Chapter 3 on ‘individuality’ is perhaps its most precious gem. This chapter is about the moral value of great individuals (geniuses, spearheads and trailblazers) for the progress of humankind. Although the argument is not explicitly about moral heroes qua exemplars, but rather about their more general value for utility in the widest sense, there is no doubt that Mill wanted us to take our cue from them in our self-directed moral learning. Mill’s chief complaint is about the ‘despotism of custom’ that maims moderns’ capacity to lead flourishing lives ‘like a Chinese lady’s foot’ (p. 127). The value of individual originality and individual precedent is ‘hardly recognised by the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth’ (p. 115): an oversight that is dragging society into the swamp of ‘collective mediocrity’ (p. 124). What has been forgotten is that ‘nothing was ever yet done which some one was not the first to do, and that all good things which exist are the fruits of originality’ (p. 123). Who are these trailblazers whose legacy tends to be forgotten? Mill thinks they are few and far between, but they are ‘the salt of the earth’ without which ‘human life would become a stagnant pool’. More specifically, the people he is referring to are geniuses of wisdom, truth and learning: ‘persons of genius’ who ‘are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people’ (p. 122). They may look unorthodox, even eccentric, to others, but the apparent eccentricity is nothing but a cloak of geniality that some of the masses fail to see through. However, the ‘honour and glory of the average man is that he is capable of following that initiative’ (p. 124). Mill, somewhat surprisingly, does not explore here the possibility that, rather than not acknowledging and following any exemplars, the ‘ordinary man’ might be lured by cheap populists, masquerading as moral superstars. He is clearly more worried in this chapter about the tyranny of mediocrity than about the worship of false prophets. Is Mill guilty of uncritical hero-worship in this chapter? He may seem to be taking some steps in that direction when his stylistic swagger gets the better of him and he starts to rhapsodise about ‘the stuff of which heroes are

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made’ (p. 118). But in other places he is quite clear that he is ‘not countenancing the sort of “hero-worship” which applauds the strong man of genius’ for forcing his will by hook and by crook (p. 124). What counts as true geniality is informed by moral constraints; it is only such morally imbued geniality that the ‘average man’ should see as a guiding light. The safety valve here is Mill’s strict condition that no course of action be chosen except as a result of critical deliberation: ‘He who lets the world […] choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.’ Speaking metaphorically, our human nature, which provides the ingredients for human flourishing, ‘is not a machine to be built after a model […] but a tree, which requires to grow and develop on all sides’ (p. 117). Mill’s saving grace is that what he is really celebrating is morally inspiring individuality rather than (great) individuals as such. He is not advocating the Nietzschean Übermensch. Reading Mill’s chapter on individuality reminds us of the thin line between being inspired by moral exemplarity and simply suspending one’s critical judgement and groveling at the feet of presumed exemplars. The latter course is a display of the sort of mediocrity against which Mill warns, rather than an act of defiance against it. William James. A couple of decades after Mill, the great American pragmatist and psychologist William James wrote an animated article (1880) about the role of ‘great men’ in shaping history. James’s motivation is different from Mill’s in that he is not so much interested in the moral mission of geniuses as in their more general contribution to the progress of humankind. The challenge that he takes on is to reconcile that contribution with the evolutionary theory of Darwin, which seems to offer a more mundane account of the slow, evolutionary course of all natural beings. James fastens, however, on Darwin’s concept of ‘spontaneous variation’ and explains the legacy of great minds as shifting, rather than adapting to, environmental conditions. James memorably compares the role of great exemplars to ‘ferments,’ changing the very constitution of the objects upon which they act. He gives examples of individual initiatives without which the course of history would have run in different – and arguably less propitious – directions: Queen Victoria, John Stuart Mill, Bismarck and the like, the fermentative influence of whom we can ignore only at a cost to our understanding. Yet James is also acutely aware that not every person fits every hour, and that ferments require certain environmental conditions to be in place, in order for them to work. On the other hand, he is adamant in rejecting the sort of environmental determinism that he reads off from the sociological work of Herbert Spencer, according to which society remakes individuals before they can remake it. James accuses Spencer of conflating necessary conditions and sufficient conditions. True, it is not sufficient to be a genius in order to work your magic on the course of history; your teachings must find a soil in which to grow. But no geographical environment can, by itself, produce a given type of mind;

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the true historical trailblazers have the necessary ingredients built into them to change history and to act as exemplars for others to follow. Bertolt Brecht. The great German poet and writer Brecht offers what many people consider to be a strong reductio argument against the great-individual theory of progress in one of his best-known poems, ‘A Worker Reads History’ (1947). Its message is so powerful that whole theses have been written about it. For every great visionary whose call is heeded, there are hundreds who simply do not have the wherewithal to get their message across. They have no cooks to prepare their meals while they are pursuing their great ideals, and no pipers to blow the trumpets for them. Where would Jesus have been without John the Baptist, or Socrates without his wife, who (albeit grudgingly) took care of the home while he conversed with the young of Athens on street corners? The message from the poem is unambiguous – and very much in line with the Marxist orthodoxy to which Brecht subscribed. The great-individual theory commits the misstep of underestimating the amount of moral luck that the so-called ‘greats’ need in order to flourish and be heard (recall my discussion of moral luck in Chapter 2). Although Brecht’s poetic argument is not aimed directly at the standing of moral exemplars, it does problematise any attempts to analyse moral learning, or education towards flourishing, essentially in terms of moral-exemplar methodology. David Brooks. Brooks’s The Road to Character (2015) is, in my view, a work that fascinates and frustrates in equal measure. Although written for a general readership, and finding itself on self-help shelves in bookstores, the work gets off to a solid theoretical start with conceptualisations that are academically meaty as well as practically salient. Brooks makes a distinction – essentially coinciding with that often seen as separating moral from performance virtues (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 1) – between what he calls ‘résumé virtues’ and ‘eulogy virtues.’ Résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. Eulogy virtues, however, are the deeper virtues that ‘get talked about at your funeral’ and that ‘exist at the core of your being – whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful’ (2015, p. ix). Brooks then argues that we live in an age that encourages us to nourish the résumé virtues but neglect the eulogy virtues, hence making us inarticulate about how to cultivate a flourishing life qua a moral life. He writes about this distinction with consummate skill and panache at the outset of his book. Brooks’s attention then turns to exemplar methodology. ‘Example is the best teacher,’ he observes, with moral improvement occurring most readily ‘when the heart is warmed, when we come into contact with people we admire and love,’ bending our lives to ‘mimic theirs’ (p. xiii). The rest of this big book is devoted to analyses of the lives of exemplars – some historically famous but others from humble settings – who have demonstrated ‘spiritual heroism’ (p. 75). Brooks’s caveat in his Introduction, that none

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of the exemplars chosen ‘is even close to perfect’ (p. xiv), may seem like an important one in pre-empting moral inertia in readers. However, this caveat is easily forgotten as we read through the book, for while the protagonists have all lived through internal struggles, they seem to have emerged as pretty close to perfect. As Brooks describes them, they ‘possess an impressive inner cohesion’ instead of ‘leading fragmented, scattershot lives.’ They have achieved ‘inner integration,’ being ‘calm, settled, and rooted.’ They ‘are not blown off course by storms.’ They are ‘like marble,’ and do not ‘crumble in adversity,’ or ‘in fright,’ but maintain their composure in all circumstances, and they are incredibility tolerant of ‘the flawed people around them’ (pp. xiv, 111, 117, 128). How does a person reach such splendid heights? Brooks presents a ‘pattern’ of development that can lead people towards this state of moral marble-dom. His exemplars have all descended ‘into a valley of adversity’ first, a scary underworld, exposing them to make-or-break crucible moments of moral crisis and confrontation (being ‘tossed to and fro’) – only to have been lifted out of this valley ultimately and reborn to a state of redemption and growth (pp. 13–14, 191). In this new altered state, they have overcome sin through grace – not necessarily, although often, in a Christian sense – but always in a manner in which suffering gives way to integration, at a distinct ‘turning point,’ through the dramatic workings of some ‘greater design’ (pp. 77, 89, 93, 164, 207, 265–266). The pattern that Brooks is presenting here is a familiar one of the cycle of fall, self-estrangement and redemption, found in a number of Western religions, but also in essentially non-religious ideologies such as Platonism, Rousseau’s primitivism, Marxism and Surrealism (Kristjánsson, 2002, chap. 6). It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to critique this pattern from an alternative, non-cyclic theoretical perspective (such as Aristotle’s). I can only gesture here at the way in which thinking in terms of this pattern may be inimical to moral development. First, whereas dramatic epiphanic moral conversions, or so-called Damascus experiences, undoubtedly do exist, they are probably not common, as I acknowledged in Chapter 6, and they are definitely not the stuff of which ordinary moral progress is made. Not everyone needs to bend to the breaking point before turning straight. Brooks himself hints at an alternative route, in the case of someone like Montaigne, who ‘had such a genial nature’ that he could perhaps ‘be shaped through gentle observation.’ However, he thinks that most of us ‘will end up mediocre and self-forgiving if we try to do that’ (p. 234). In contrast, I recommend the Aristotelian tradition – represented in Brooks’s book by George Eliot – of being ‘a meliorist and a gradualist’ about moral development, believing that people and societies are more typically reformed by ‘slow stretching, not by sudden rupture’ (p. 160). Although enchanted wow-experiences are needed for flourishing, as I have argued in previous chapters, I think the young soccer player should generally be taught

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to model herself on the ‘hero’ of the local village team before she begins to aspire to playing like Messi – and I worry that the latter route may produce inertia. Second, another way in which the fall–redemption model may be conducive to inertia is through the assumption that one needs to hit rock bottom before one begins to climb up again. Just as an alcoholic who subscribes to this developmental model may delay entering rehab by conveniently moving the presumed ‘bottom,’ which she needs to hit first, ever further down, so the young moral learner may be discouraged from continuing to make slow, laborious progress by the anticipation that a ‘turning point,’ where struggles are transcended through some sort of a gestalt-switch, is waiting just around the corner (recall Chapter 6). Not feeling fragmented and torn before the ‘big event’ will, then, be seen as a sign of self-suppression and immaturity, rather than of self-harmony and maturity. All in all, while there is much to admire in the early parts of Brooks’s book, I fear that, through committing a misstep in its basic moral psychology, it perpetuates the problem of moral inertia by painting a narrow, idealised and rarefied picture of the exemplars’ roads to exemplarity, a picture that can easily turn young moral learners off, rather than drawing them in. Bill Damon and Anne Colby. Damon and Colby’s thought-provoking book, The Power of Ideals (2015), about ‘exemplar methodology’ (p. xv) is written at a higher academic level than Brooks’s, although it too is easily accessible for an intellectually minded non-expert. It engages with this methodology through a close study of the lives of six 20th century world leaders who have reacted to significant life events and world events in ways that reflect moral awareness and intention, with special focus on manifestations of the virtues of truthfulness, humility and faithfulness. It sometimes uses language eerily reminiscent of Brooks’s, about exemplars ‘at the highest level of genius’ (p. 10) performing actions that are ‘nothing short of astonishing’ (p. 32), and ‘almost saintly’ (p. 37). Such phrases, however, constitute mere rhetorical flourishes in a book that constantly reminds readers of the ambiguities and ambivalences of eudaimonic goodness, and of how high degrees of moral virtue may be compatible with ongoing human frailties and mistakes (p. xvi). Refusing to ‘float on clouds of naïve idealism’ (p. xix), Damon and Colby realise that the very fact of ‘how thoroughly human’ their exemplars are makes it possible for us to learn from them (p. xvii), without falling prey to inertia. About one of their exemplars they characteristically muse that he ‘sought absolute honesty about his own limitations, errors, and failings’ (p. 45), and they even define ‘humility’ in terms of awareness of one’s (non-eliminable) limitations (p. 145). The strength of Damon and Colby’s formidable study lies precisely in the realism of their moral psychology: a psychology that recognises the value of learning from real-world cases of the display of moral qualities, as ‘essential for inspiring and supporting people’s efforts to strengthen those qualities’ (p. 30). Exemplar methodology is about identifying the extraordinary not for

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the sake of reifying and idolising it, but rather for showing how it provides examples of what is feasible and possible in ordinary human development towards flourishing (p. 30). More specifically, Damon and Colby illustrate how individuals can, to a certain extent, choose the social contexts in which they live and develop – and can also choose what they do with those contexts. They highlight the importance and power of ‘highly conscious reflection’ (p. 49) about issues of morality and flourishing, and how such reflection crystallises the nature of ‘moral agency’ (p. 65). Their argumentation has a second dimension to it, in addition to illuminating exemplar methodology. They also offer their account of moral, self-aware, reflective agency as an antidote to recently fashionable ‘social-­intuitionist’ theories in moral psychology, which posit the powerlessness of reason to do anything more than give lame post hoc rationalisations of decisions that our brains have already taken, based on our innate emotional make-up and the situational forces that toss and turn us around (pp. 79–80): I return briefly to those lambasted theories in Chapter 8. Their book works admirably on both levels: the anti-social-intuitionist one, and the level of an uplifting exercise in exemplar methodology. Damon and Colby’s book comes the closest of any work I have read to explaining how the methodology of exemplarism can work without instilling in students a debilitating sense of their own relative imperfections – and thus without running the risk of triggering inertia in them.

The logical geography of admiration, emulation and elevation It is now time to turn to Zagzebski. She agrees with Aristotle’s strict distinction between emulation and envy; however, she prefers to see Aristotelian zelos as a ‘form of ’ or ‘at least a close relative of ’ admiration (2015a, p. 214). She implicitly exposes Aristotle’s mistake to combine within the rubric of zelos both (1) the negative construal of oneself vis-à-vis the other person’s superiority and (2) the positive construal of the superior person, coupled with the positive striving to overcome that superiority. This odd mixture of construals and motives understandably troubles Zagzebski, who stipulates that, in addition to the positive feeling of admiration leading to emulation, there is also a potential negative (painful) emotion that can lead to emulation, but it is an emotion that Aristotle also, confusedly, wants to call ‘emulation’ (Zagzebski, 2015a, pp. 210–211). Ideally, Aristotle should have made a distinction between the evaluative and motivational bits of emulation. He could have posited an emotion of admiration, perhaps of mixed valence, leading to emulation, or he could have made a distinction (as suggested by Zagzebski) between admiration, experienced positively, and another emotion (unnamed), evaluating one’s relative standing negatively, which could also lead to emulation.

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Elsewhere (2017, chap. 6), Zagzebski quietly tidies up these infelicities in Aristotle by proposing a model according to which the process of role-modelling starts with admiration of an exemplar, which leads to a conception of oneself as lacking the admired qualities but desiring to possess them, which in turn produces emulation – and she suggests that this model can be combined with varieties of Aristotelian psychology. In the discussion below I simply follow Zagzebski, for there is much gained, and little lost, by distinguishing more clearly than Aristotle does between the evaluation of another’s relative excellence and the striving to become more like the other person. Indeed, I consider the assumption ultimately shared by Aristotle and Zagzebski (that the motivation to learn from exemplarity is adequately described as emulation, elicited by an evaluation of another person as admirable or honourable in certain ways) as more important than the subtle differences in their vocabularies. It is this assumption that I contest, however, later in this chapter, by proposing another possible emotional route to learning from exemplarity. More specifically, what I contest is not the claim that the tidied-up Aristotle–Zagzebski route is the most common emotional route to learning from exemplarity. Indeed, I believe, though without conclusive empirical evidence, that it is the most common route. However, what I contest is the assumption that this route provides an exhaustive explanation of what goes on in emotion-inspired learning from exemplarity, without the need to invoke elevation as a separate emotion. It should be mentioned in passing that psychologists have studied one more psychological state that seems relevant to the present discussion: namely, inspiration. Where does that fit into the geography of our ‘parish’? In a persuasive analysis of the psychology of inspiration, Thrash and colleagues (2014) argue that inspiration is not a distinct emotion but rather designates a motivational state that can be part of various emotions. Inspiration incorporates, inter alia, approach motivation, ‘such that one feels compelled to bring one’s new idea or vision into fruition’ (2014, p. 497). Couched in those terms, Zagzebski’s thesis could be restated such that admiration (for acquired excellences) typically inspires people to emulation. In sum, to round off this conceptual tidying-up work, admiration can most serviceably be understood as a pleasant (or perhaps a mixed-valence) emotion whose immediate target is another person and whose intentional object is that person’s excellence, positively evaluated. Typically, this emotion contains the motivational state of inspiration, which then leads to emulation. Emulation is, in turn, a mixed-valence emotion whose immediate target is another person and whose goal-directed activity is the modelling of that person’s excellence. While this modestly revisionary analysis is of clarificatory value, it does little to fend off the methodological problems, identified earlier in this chapter, that role-modelling faces, especially hero-worship and moral inertia. Notice that Zagzebski’s empirical thesis (about the admiration-inspires-emulation effect) does not address, let alone parry, those problems. First, her thesis might be

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wrong (as demonstrated by future psychological experiments). Indeed, one empirical study has already cast doubt on it, indicating that a certain kind of envy, but not admiration, inspires emulation (van de Ven, Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2011). Second, even if the thesis turns out to be right, as indicated by another empirical study, showing admiration for virtue to be ‘profoundly motivating’ (Immordino-Yang & Sylvan, 2010), her thesis is about what ‘typically’ happens. And ‘typically’ leaves considerable room for exceptions. I take it that the problems in question are based on empirical hypotheses about what happens when people come across true ‘moral superstars’ or exceptionally well flourishing individuals. It could be that on the rare occasions when we encounter the most admirable examples of excellence, inertia sets in and the admiration-inspires-emulation link becomes broken. That would be a most unfortunate conclusion for education towards flourishing, however, because it would mean that we should – counter-intuitively – try to steer moral learners away from the most admirable exemplars of human excellence. Meanwhile, Irwin (2015) has identified another moral problem connected to making admiration the wellspring of exemplar-based moral motivation – a problem that inter alia is meant to explain why the ancient philosophers, such as Aristotle, did not place great stock in admiration. Irwin considers the problem to lie in the moral ambiguity of admiration. Although it may be easy to distinguish conceptually, as Zagzebski does, between admiration for natural and for acquired (virtuous) excellences, this is not easy in practice, especially not for moral learners. Morally dubious or conflicted characters in the classics, such as Ajax and Medea, are great and remarkable, with respect to natural excellences, ‘and so it is difficult to withhold admiration from them, even if we recognize that they are not the neighbours or fellow citizens we would want’ (Irwin, 2015, p. 231). In other words, admiration is a morally dangerous attitude, and this is precisely what repelled the ancient philosophers. Adding to this insight, true moral exemplars tend to have a disdain themselves for being admired (van der Ritj, 2018). In Aristotle, only the great-hearted (megalopsychoi, see 1985, pp. 97–104 [1123a32–1125a35]) seem to have reached the level of not being led astray by misguided admiration, but they are a unique, privileged class of people at the peak of moral maturity, as I explained in Chapter 4. Incidentally, Irwin seems not only to be making a psychological observation here; he also takes indirect Euthyphro-style swipes at Zagzebski’s moral theory by warning against making admiration foundational to correct moral judgement. The order of justification must be the other way round – from the morally correct or virtuous to what is properly admired (Irwin, 2015, pp. 235, 242, 247). So far I have mostly confined my attention to philosophical studies of the concepts of admiration and emulation. One reason is that social scientists have not done a lot of conceptual work in this area. Another reason is that, even though psychologists seem to have become more interested in conceptual work of late – hence, building bridges to philosophy – their facility with such work is not always commensurate with their new-found interest in it.

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However, a recent extensive overview of the geography of admiration and adoration, whose main purpose is to make clear distinctions between the two (Schindler et al., 2013), constitutes a notable exception. The authors survey helpfully a lot of empirical and conceptual work in social science, yet philosophical readers may be slightly confused about what drives their method. Conceptual studies in philosophy tend to have clear standards of rigour and refinement – foregrounding conceptual clarity, economy, coherence, serviceability and the like – but no such standards are explicit or implicit in the aims of the ‘theoretical analysis’ (2013, p. 111) in question. It takes the form of an extensive literature review that seems to yield a relative consensus on what admiration and adoration are and how they differ from one another. It is not made clear, however, whether the authors take themselves to be simply reporting on a literature or regimenting it: bringing it into some sort of critical, reflective equilibrium. And the upshot of their analysis is, as far as admiration is concerned, essentially consistent with Zagzebski’s account. Admiration turns out to be an emotion that ‘motivates the internalisation and emulation of ideals embodied by an outstanding role model’ (2013, p. 85). It constitutes a reaction to another person’s specific actions or characteristics. Meanwhile, adoration ‘motivates adherence to the teachings and expectations of a meaning maker and benefactor perceived as superhuman and sacred’ (2013, p. 85). So, while both emotions belong to the larger parish of ‘appreciation emotions’, they are separated by different targets and formal objects. Whatever the overall merits of this analysis, it helps us get a further conceptual handle on the common methodological objections to role-­ modelling, for we can now rephrase them partly as variations on the theme that role-modelling stands in danger of degenerating into undue adoration. Hampering further psychological work in this area, however, is the lack of established instruments to measure admiration, emulation and adoration (yet see Sarapin et al., 2015 for an attempt at a multidimensional admiration scale; cf. the discussion in Onu, Kessler & Smith, 2016). A comprehensive survey of the parish of appreciation emotions, relevant to the topic of learning from moral exemplarity, would need to include a number of other emotions apart from admiration, emulation and adoration. I turn to what I take to be the most significant of those, namely elevation, in the following section. Other emotions are undoubtedly swirling around, such as gratitude, respect and reverence, but in order to keep the scope of the exploration within reasonable limits, I will continue to focus on those that I consider most intimately related to the topic of learning from exemplarity.

Elevation as awe Jonathan Haidt created considerable buzz in 2003 when he identified and characterised ‘elevation’ as a specific emotion: one that intellectually minded people, such as Thomas Jefferson, had described in vivid terms over the

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centuries – as ‘dilating the breast’ and ‘elevating the sentiments’ (cited in Haidt, 2003) – but that academic emotion theorists had for some reason failed to recognise. Touching a chord with various researchers, elevation has since 2003 developed into an important research topic, especially within positive psychology. While Haidt is onto something important in his identification of elevation, I argue that he has misrepresented it. To make my case, we need to untangle his conceptual account. Elevation, according to Haidt, is an other-praising emotion elicited by acts of virtue or moral beauty, causing warm, open feelings in the chest (or even chills and goosebumps) and motivating people to improve themselves and behave more morally through emulation (2003, pp. 275–276). The word ‘or’ is crucial here, for it seems that Haidt is describing two distinct emotions rather than just one. For convenience of exposition, let me call them elevation1 and elevation 2. Elevation1 is an emotion of appreciation of personal acts of virtue. It is triggered by acts of charity, gratitude, fidelity or any other strong display of virtue that does not directly benefit the self; it leads to distinctive physical feelings and elicits the above-mentioned motivation of emulation (Algoe & Haidt, 2009, pp. 106–107). Elevation 2 is an emotion of appreciation of the transpersonal moral beauty of goodness/virtue. It is connected to awe, self-transcendence and spirituality, even aesthetic appreciation, and could perhaps be named tugendfreude (as opposed to schadenfreude): joy in virtue (Haidt & Keltner, 2004). Haidt makes two general claims about all elevation to which I take exception. One is that elevation connects to the moral-domain dimension of purity/degradation and thus is a genetically grounded but culture-modified source of individual moral difference. People prone to elevation will then tend to be high on the purity scale – and the contrary of elevation is seen as disgust (Haidt, 2003). This looks like an ad hoc move to bring the emotion of elevation into line with Haidt’s (2012a) controversial general theory of moral foundations or domains. The contrast with disgust also seems to make elevation too visceral. I would argue – as Aristotle did for emulation and Zagzebski for admiration – that the contrary of elevation is better seen as contempt than as disgust. The second claim is to restrict elevation to experiences of goodness that do not directly benefit the self (Haidt, 2003; Algoe & Haidt, 2009, p. 107). Haidt is motivated to make this move in order to separate elevation from the other-praising emotion of gratitude (Algoe & Haidt, 2009). However, Haidt seems to under-appreciate the possibility of separate emotions co-occurring, even synergistically. There is no reason why feeling gratitude towards a benefactor, at an act of goodness directed at oneself as beneficiary, rules out the possibility that one also experiences elevation1. If anything, one emotion is likely to amplify the other. Similarly, it seems unreasonable to suppose that elevation 2 cannot co-exist happily with dyadic gratitude (gratitude without a specific benefactor, also known as ‘appreciation’) or, more specifically, with what Roberts (2014) calls ‘cosmic gratitude’.

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These can perhaps be seen as side-concerns. The main concern, however, is that Haidt does not seem to be aware that he is combining two distinct emotions, with different targets and objects, under one umbrella. There is a dilemma lurking here. The first horn is that if ‘elevation’ is to be understood as elevation1, it seems to be redundant with respect to ‘admiration’. As Zagzebski correctly points out, elevation (qua what I call elevation1) is perfectly captured by her notion of ‘admiration for moral excellences’ (2015a, p. 209). Algoe and Haidt (2009, p. 107) admit that ‘admiration’ is sometimes used in ordinary English as a name for a response to moral exemplars, but they decide ‘for the purposes of [their] studies’ to define ‘admiration’ as a response to non-moral excellence only, and to define ‘elevation’ as a response to moral excellence. Again, this decision (uncritically adopted e.g. by Onu, Kessler & Smith in their 2016 conceptual model) seems to be taken ad hoc. There is normally no good reason to correct ordinary language for failure to distinguish between varieties of an emotion simply on grounds of different specific targets. If we insisted on such a separation, the emotional vocabulary would proliferate ad infinitum. There would have to be a special name for anger at school bullying, another to designate anger at rudeness on the bus, and so on. The issue here is that there does not seem to be any difference between ‘admiration’, as applied in ordinary language and subtly refined by Zagzebski, and ‘elevation’ (qua elevation1), except that ‘elevation’ is being used for a specific nuance of admiration, and perhaps also a nuance characterised by unusually intense feelings, but neither feature constitutes a sufficient reason for a new word, let alone an analysis of a new emotion. Elevation1 could simply be referred to as ‘moral admiration’, ‘passionate moral admiration’ or something similar, when needed for the sake of clarity. The second horn of the dilemma is that if elevation is understood as elevation 2, much of what Haidt says about the nature of elevation in general does not hold. It is not targeted at persons or individual acts of goodness but must, rather, be understood and analysed as a specific kind of awe, as I explain later in this section. In either case, Haidt’s general account of elevation seems to rest on a specious conceptual foundation. The identification of elevation has spawned considerable empirical research (see e.g. Thomson & Siegel’s 2017 overview). Algoe and Haidt (2009) have conducted studies showing subtle differences between experiences and motivational correlates of elevation, gratitude and admiration (with admiration understood in their own restrictive way). Siegel, Thomson and Navarro (2014) also reveal how elevation typically results in different behavioural responses from gratitude. Schnall, Roper and Fessler’s (2010) experiments showed that feelings of elevation, but not of mere amusement or happiness, predict altruistic and helping behaviour. Silvers and Haidt (2008) report nursing mothers being more likely to nurse and hug their children after watching a morally uplifting video than after watching a comedy. Landis and colleagues’ (2009)

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study suggests that elevation has significant incremental validity in predicting (self-reports of ) prosocial behaviour over and above the Big-Five Model. Aquino, McFerran and Laven (2011) demonstrate how moral identity, as both a measured and a manipulated variable, partly explains people’s susceptibility to elevation. All these findings are interesting, but because elevation is usually, in these experiments, triggered by visual materials, it is not clear whether the participants are fastening on the personal or the transpersonal nature of the excellence on display. In other words, we do not know whether the found effects are due to the experience of elevation1 (namely moral admiration) or elevation 2 (namely moral awe). I submit that Zagzebski’s conceptual account of admiration, discussed earlier, tells us most of what we need to know conceptually about elevation1, and she proposes various credible empirical theses that could explain at least some of the psychological findings above. I do want to argue also, however, that both Zagzebski (on admiration) and Aristotle (on emulation) ignore another possible route to learning from exemplarity and that there is, indeed, space for the concept of elevation (qua elevation 2) to capture that route. To illustrate my case, let me begin with an anecdotal example from my own life (for this and further examples, see Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). During a gap year as a 20-year old, I unwisely took up a job as a high-school teacher. I had to teach seriously disruptive students without being prepared to do so through either experience or training, so this year of work stretched my mental and physical resources towards the breaking point. I was basically at my wits’ end. My father watched my gradual mental deterioration from close by, without being able to do anything substantial to remedy the situation. Probably out of a sense of despair, more than anything else, he bought me an expensive watch. When he passed it on to me, without a word, I immediately sensed what had happened. I felt an overpowering sense of elevation – not so much in the form of moral admiration at my father’s gesture or a desire to emulate him as a moral exemplar (although those emotions featured also), but rather by way of intense appreciation that such depth of goodness could exist in the world. At the philosophical risk of ‘having one thought too many’, or adopting an arm’s-length rather than a spontaneous stance, my most profound emotion was thus directed at the ideal of moral goodness, rather than at my father as a person. Moreover, I felt motivated to strive for such goodness myself because of the attractiveness of the relevant ideal, rather than because of its attractiveness through the mediation of my father. Although I consider Haidt’s analysis of elevation to be undercut by various infelicities, he does, in my view, have a point that there is a route towards moral motivation via the exemplarity of sheer moral beauty. Drawing on Plato’s triad of the true, good and beautiful, I would hypothesise that (moral) elevation (in the elevation 2 sense to which I confine myself henceforth) is one of the three main members of the emotional family of awe, the others being intellectual elevation, in the face of overpowering truth, and aesthetic ecstasy,

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for example when confronted with great works of art (cf. Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). Confining the use of ‘elevation’ to elevation 2 makes sense of the dramatic feelings that Haidt associates (wrongly) with all elevation, as such feelings are well-known characteristics of awe. The formal object of elevation, on this account, is captured by the cognition that the subject is experiencing an instantiation of a truly great moral ideal that is mystifying or even ineffable in transcending more mundane, everyday human experiences. This experience will be perceived to have increased existential awareness and connected the subject to a greater whole. Most important, perhaps, the target of elevation is not another person but a transpersonal ideal (which links my hypothesis here directly to the argument in Chapter 5). Zagzebski complains that Aristotle and Aristotelians neglect admiration (2015a, pp. 206–207). We saw earlier how Irwin (2015) explains this apparent neglect. In any case, as I pointed out earlier, this lacuna may not be essential from a motivational point of view, because Aristotle did give a detailed account of the emotion of emulation, inspired by the appreciation of ‘honoured things’ (although he considered the valence of the appreciative part mixed or painful rather than pleasant). Much more significant, psychologically and morally, is the absence of awe in general and elevation in particular from Aristotle’s account of the emotions, as I explained in Chapter 5. The good news, however, is that Aristotle’s uncompromising naturalism allows us to update Aristotelianism in light of new findings (see e.g. those in Huta & Ryan, 2010, on elevating experiences and eudaimonic well-being or flourishing). If it is really true that the fullness of a life well lived cannot be achieved without experiences of elevation, then the Aristotelian naturalistic theory requires that flourishing be partly constituted by the presence of the relevant emotional trait – and that education towards flourishing be designed such as to cultivate this trait. In a famous quote, Emerson reminded us not to be taken in by the ‘luster of the firmament of bards and sages’ (1993, p. 19). His alternative approach was about learning to ‘watch that gleam of light which flashes across our own minds’. My account of elevation suggests a route beyond Aristotle and Zagzebski: the route of steering our minds towards transpersonal ideals. I am not saying that this is always the best route – indeed, the routes suggested by Aristotle and Zagzebski are probably both more common, as I have conceded earlier, and in many cases more practical – but I do suggest that it constitutes an alternative route to motivation, worthy of consideration and cultivation in education towards flourishing. To prevent misunderstanding, in so far as my suggestion here is psychological rather than normative, I propose it (just as Zagzebski does with hers) as an empirical hypothesis. I can envisage a number of psychological experiments that could reveal whether it is the exemplar or the ideal of exemplarity that motivates learning: namely, admiration/emulation or elevation. Indeed, two features of Zagzebski’s approach that are ‘imitably attractive’ are her willingness to enter a literature from which many philosophers are inclined to bail out, namely that of emotion research in social

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science, and her presentation of some of her main claims as empirical theses, to be corroborated by social science, rather than as ‘conceptual truths’. Notice two things about the account I have suggested. First, it may indicate a way to bypass both moral admiration and emulation (in the synthesised Aristotle–Zagzebski sense) through direct inspiration by abstract ideals. A simpler interpretation would be that, in my account, elevation just replaces admiration. So instead of being positively attracted to (the qualities of ) an exemplar through admiration, which then inspires emulation via the negative construal of your inferiority, you become attracted to an abstract ideal that inspires emulation through the realisation of how badly you match up to it. However, there seems to be something odd about the idea of ‘emulating’ an abstract ideal, and the oddity is – I submit – not only linguistic. A more Platonic understanding of elevation may offer an explanation here, according to which one can grasp and embrace an ideal epiphanically and spontaneously, without the mediation of Aristotelian emulation (recall Chapter 6). I acknowledge, however, that accounting for such experiences requires an alternative developmental and educational story to the one provided in standard Aristotelian accounts – and one that cannot be provided within the confines of the present chapter, for Chapter 6 revealed how patchy the available psychological evidence is. Notice, second, that the elevation route I have sketched here towards learning from exemplarity may avert some of the problems attached to role-modelling. There is no danger of its being reduced to fawning hero-worship, for there is no person (and hence no hero) to worship. Also there is no danger of feeling that ‘someone is better than one could imagine oneself being’ (Wierzbicka, 1972, p. 63), leading to inertia, because there is no person to whom to compare oneself. However, although those particular problems have been averted, they have been replaced with analogous – and perhaps even more debilitating – ones, marring our relationship with abstract ideals. Thus there may be a ‘mere ideal-worship’ problem that is the analogue of the ‘mere hero-worship’ problem and in relation to which my account is no better off than Zagzebski’s. A similar point applies with respect to the ‘moral inertia’ objection. Again, one can readily imagine that when contemplating an ideal of beauty, truth or goodness – manifested in ideally flourishing lives – a person might be motivationally constrained or inert as a result of thinking that she could never exemplify such a high standard. In fact, my account may seem to be worse off than Zagzebski’s on this point. Exemplars, at least, are personal. One might think, then, that for any given person, the perceived gap between herself and an exemplar would be somewhat less than the perceived gap between herself and a transpersonal ideal. As Zagzebski herself would be the first to acknowledge, those are empirical hypotheses that admit only of a social-scientific resolution. In the absence of any known research into the comparative effects of personal exemplars versus abstract ideals, I can only offer the following two quick considerations. First,

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one of the main reasons why hero-worship is seen as a danger for role-modelling is that the learner becomes tempted to emulate the hero as a whole, warts and all, rather than just the admirable qualities. So, for example, ‘Beliebers’ ( Justin Bieber fans) become induced to emulate his antics rather than just admiring him for his music. At least in the case of ‘ideal-worship’, this worry will not arise. Second, regarding moral inertia, it is true that someone can easily feel overwhelmed by an abstract ideal, no less than a personal exemplar, and find it beyond practical reach. Yet it is an old platitude of sports psychology that learners are less likely to feel disempowered if they focus on a difficult goal, rather than on the star performers who have already mastered the goal, and I hypothesise that the same could apply here regarding idealised persons versus ideals. However, at the moment, I have nothing but intuition and anecdotal evidence to rely upon. One problem that the elevation route does not solve, however, is the one identified by Irwin in the case of admiration: the danger that elevation, no less than admiration, can mislead our sentiments (Irwin, 2015, p. 241). It could even be reasonably argued, with references to stark examples from recent world history, that the attraction to abstract ideals constitutes a more potentially misleading source of motivation than attraction to individual exemplars. I am not sure how any theory of moral motivation and learning can avert this problem. This is precisely why Aristotle focuses on the development of the meta-virtue of phronesis as an arbitrator, to the adjudication of which all moral learning needs in the end to be subjected. Stripped of phronesis, neither admiration/emulation nor elevation has an inbuilt mechanism directing them unproblematically towards some immediately and uncontroversially available ideal of flourishing lives. I want to end this section by anticipating one possible Zagzebski-inspired objection. The objection would be that the distinction between learning from exemplarity and from exemplars is specious because one can access the former only through the medium of the latter (namely, exemplarity displayed by exemplars). Now, it may well be that experiences of exemplarity are parasitic, causally and biographically, upon experiences of exemplars – although the following section will cast doubt on that. However, even if that is the case, Zagzebski’s thesis is stronger: it is about moral concepts being grounded foundationally in the emotion of admiration that has individual exemplars as its target. But if my argument can be sustained, another emotion, namely elevation, can home in on exemplarity directly by targeting an ideal, not a person.

How Mengzi (Mencius) may improve Aristotle We are so used to virtue ethicists promoting education theories based on learning from moral exemplars (although rarely, perhaps, in such a foundational sense as in Zagzebski’s theory) that we can hardly think of an alternative, without falling back on Platonic rationalism. My recourse to Plato on

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the good, true and beautiful above must not be understood, however, as a plea for some sort of Platonic theory of education towards flourishing. Apart from the metaphysical weirdness of the ‘forms’ to which we are supposed to be attracted, the attraction in question is not an emotional attraction in Plato; hence, the very feature of virtue ethics that draws many people towards it, namely its capacity to make sense of the moral and educational salience of our emotional lives, is lost. Yet I also suggested in Chapter 5 that Aristotle got a chunk of his psychology of human emotions wrong. In a previous publication on how to tidy up Aristotle’s emulation (Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 7), I explored the possibility of drawing upon insights from Chinese philosophy, more precisely from the teachings of Mozi. I now think I chose too soft an example. Mozi was a quasi-utilitarian, and utilitarians tend to be fairly relaxed, in any case, about embracing transpersonal moral ideals, such as Mozi’s ‘universal love’. We would benefit more from complementing Aristotle with insights from fellow virtue ethicists. In Chinese philosophy, there are obvious candidates for that role – namely Confucius and his disciples, in particular Mengzi, who foregrounded the emotional side of flourishing more than his master. In recent moves that slacken the Aristotelian monopoly on virtue ethical theory, it is becoming fashionable to juxtapose Aristotelianism and Confucianism and, while pointing out the remarkable similarities between their virtue systems and ideas of flourishing lives, to suggest that each can learn from the other as a ‘mirror’ (Yu, 2007, p. 4). In particular, it has been suggested that Confucian ‘aestheticism’ may provide resources for Aristotelian ‘theoreticism’, in making sense of both our relationship with nature and our attachment to transpersonal ideals (Sim, 2007, pp. 2–3, 131, 211). Yet Confucius’s own conception of the ultimate exemplar, the junzıˇ  , and of how we acquire wisdom by admiring and emulating him, does not seem to offer a significant addition to Aristotle’s conception of the phronimos and our zelos directed towards him (Yu, 2007). For present purposes, I have therefore been persuaded (by Kim, 2008, and Philip Ivanhoe, personal correspondence) that Mengzi (c. 372–289 BCE) makes for a more interesting critical ‘second-self ’ friend to Aristotle. Mengzi is most famous perhaps for his theory of the innate goodness of human beings, traditionally contrasted with Xunzi’s view of the inherent badness of human nature. This innate goodness, which then simply needs to be drawn out and polished, is grounded in the moral ‘sprouts’ (incipient virtue traits) of benevolence (an inadequate translation of rén), righteousness (yì), propriety (lıˇ   ) and wisdom (zhì), Mengzi also argued that each of the sprouts had a root/germ in a specific emotion (2009, pp. 21, 72 [2A: 6.4–6.5, 6A: 6.7]) and that the main role of moral education was to nourish those emotion-cum-virtue (‘heart-mind’) seedlings, without pulling on them too hard and thereby uprooting them (2009, p. 17 [2A: 2.16]). Debates rage about Mengzi’s general emotion theory (see e.g. Wong, 1991; Chan, 2006; Kim, 2008), but engaging in this debate would take us too far

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afield. What matters for present purposes it to explore the emotional germ of jìng, which is (emotionally, foundationally) to lıˇ what compassion is to rén; in other words, jìng forms a heart-mind dyad with lıˇ. Now, jìng cannot be given a standard translation across the board. Depending on the context, it can mean ‘respect’, ‘deference’, ‘reverence’, ‘admiration’ or ‘awe’. In many of these contexts, jìng is simply directed at admirable individuals (elders, sages) and/or the exemplary rites and rituals to which they adhere. In other contexts, however, jìng arguably comes close to capturing the essence of elevation (i.e. elevation 2), as developed in the previous section, by recognising/appreciating the worth of transpersonal ideals and doing so in an intense (awestruck) way. Mengzi talks about how ideals such as order and righteousness ‘delight our hearts like meat delights our mouths’ (Mencius, 2009, p. 73 [6A: 7.8]). In Aristotle’s emulation, by contrast, the ‘wow factor’ of an intense sensibility response is missing. Chan argues that, in Mengzi, worth or merit as such (including the worth of virtue), as an exalted, transcendent ideal, is the ultimate ground for jìng, rather than any worthy individuals (2006, pp. 234–235; cf. Kim, 2008, p. 188, although Kim [personal correspondence] does think that Mengzi also allowed for awe directed at exceptional individuals). Through jìng, one befriends, so to speak, ‘the Virtue of another person’ rather than the person herself (Mencius, 2009, p. 64 [5B: 3.1]). This attraction to the transpersonal emerges most conspicuously in references to jìng towards Heaven and the Way (Philip Ivanhoe, personal correspondence; Tan, 2011, p. 479; Fu, 2013, pp. 280–281; cf. Mencius, 2009, p. 79 [7A: 1]). Heaven (Tian) is an impersonal force ordering the universe, responsible for fate and the Way (Yu, 2007, p. 26), and a transcendent anchorage of morality. The Way (Dào), in turns, refers to the right way to live and guide our lives in what we might call a flourishing fashion. Notice that both concepts have a place in Confucianism in the absence of any explicit theology, and they are understood there in a somewhat mundane sense, quite similar to the sense that many contemporary Westerners ascribe to a putative principle of deservingness in the world, where people generally get their due in the end, without the need for any god(s) meting it out (see Kristjánsson, 2006, chap. 4.2, on the ‘belief in a just world’). Transpersonal ideals such as worth or desert can thus be seen as sources of value, at which one may stand in awe, without the need for any particular person, human or divine, at whom to direct admiration. Intense elevation, in the face of such ideals, may help to explain the phenomenon of epiphanic moral conversions that, as noted in Chapter 6, remains an enigma for Aristotle-inspired theories of moral education. Indeed, clear similarities can be found here (see Tung, 2003) between Mengzi’s view and that of the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, whose research into ‘peak experiences’ (1964) I mentioned in Chapter 6. Obviously, Confucian scholars carved up the emotional landscape quite differently from either Aristotle or us moderns, and the fact that a concept

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such as jìng has no straightforward counterpart in either Aristotle or modernity should perhaps make us more humble about the possibility of philosophers fashioning a universally reasonable and applicable emotional vocabulary. Nevertheless, I have attempted in this section to illuminate my case for the nature of elevation by showing how it can make full sense, in a virtue ethical system such as the Confucian one, to be inspired by transpersonal ideals of exemplarity, for example the examplarity of flourishing. The scorecard, on balance, looks like this. I have argued that, in their different ways, both Aristotle and Zagzebski get their psychology of role-modelling right – minor squabbles aside – and that by synthesising their accounts of admiration and emulation, we can strike the keynotes in explaining the process of emotional attachment to exemplarity. However, at the same time, I have suggested that both authors may have missed an important, if perhaps less frequently taken, alternative route to moral learning from exemplarity – an awe-inspired route that bypasses the attachment to individual exemplars and is, rather, about direct attachment to transpersonal ideals. I have explained why Aristotle may have missed this route; it connects to a general lacuna in his understanding of human nature. Furthermore, I have suggested a role for an amended version of Haidt’s emotion of elevation (qua emulation 2) to account for awe-inspired role-modelling, and I have illuminated my case by drawing on a close contemporary of Aristotle in China – and a virtue ethicist to boot – Mengzi, to explain how elevation can fit into a virtue ethical system. If this argument holds water, Aristotelians will need to acknowledge that a medial (‘golden-mean’) trait form of elevation, no less than a medial form of emulousness, constitutes (part of ) a virtuous moral disposition for moral learners. This means learning to be properly attracted to the right sort of ideals at the right times, in the right proportions, steering clear of both excessive romanticism about ideals and debilitating cynicism or philistinism (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). From the standpoint of education for florishing, it will then be incumbent on teachers to expose students to examples of ideals, from great works of literature, the arts, religious and secular texts, etc., hoping that by feeding on such a diet, they will grow the relevant emotional disposition. For example, being exposed to and induced to reflect upon Caspar David Friedrich’s great 1818 painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog may be more conducive to the cultivation of awe-like elevation in students than reading about the lives of particular exemplars. Here, however, we encounter a problem that is not confined to the learning of proper emulation or elevation but is, rather, endemic to all Aristotelian (and indeed to all virtue-ethical-cum-character-based) moral education. Very little specific advice tends to be given about how best to cultivate emotional dispositions (cf. Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 9). To be sure, we can divine from Aristotle’s discussion of early-years habituation that emotional development is essentially triggered in the very young through emotional

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contagion, and he does make some cryptic remarks in his Politics about how (older) learners can use music to balance their emotions and move from mere continence to virtue. But beyond that, Aristotle is short on specifics, and we know little about, for example, the details of phronesis-guided emotion education. Confucian scholars suggest that Aristotelians can learn salient lessons from Mengzi here again, because the latter is famous for his account of emotional learning qua emotional extension (tuı). On this account, the trick is to help the learner settle on an understanding of why an emotion is on target in a paradigmatic situation and then learn to extend this understanding gradually to non-paradigmatic cases – hoping that the feeling accompanies the cognition in extending the boundaries of the whole emotion. This account is illustrated through a number of stories, the most famous one being about a ruler feeling compassion for an ox but, irrationally or self-deceivingly, not being able to extend this compassion to the plight of his subjects (Mencius, 2009, pp. 5–8 [1A: 7]). Unfortunately, Mengzi scholars disagree radically about the correct interpretation of ‘extension’: whether it is essentially a logical extension (extending understanding), an emotive extension (extending sensitivity) or both at the same time (see Kim, 2008, chap. 6, for a thorough review; cf. Wong, 1991). In any case, the extension evidently needs reflection on relevant moral similarities and differences (Mencius 2009, pp. 72, 75 [6A: 6.7, 15.2]) – which takes us into Aristotelian phronesis territory (cf. Yu, 2007, pp. 150–152) – but I fail to see Mengzi providing enlightenment here in areas where Aristotle leaves us in the dark. More specifically, I agree with Kim that if one reads Mengzi closely, there is very little advice on emotional cultivation in him that goes beyond a rather narrow Aristotelian habituation picture of enculturation and socialisation (Kim, 2008, chap. 6.3). We learn to extend the boundaries of our emotions by emulating and reflecting upon exemplars who do so. Disappointingly, however, even this reflection seems to be reliant on the indoctrination of basic assumptions, picked up from authoritative sages as role models. If one comes to Mengzi’s account of emotional cultivation hoping for an extension and educative application of his ideas about elevation (as a form of jìng), focused on transpersonal ideals, one’s hopes will be dashed. Mengzi falls back on a standard, Aristotle-like account of learning from exemplars, and we are none the wiser about the precise methods to be used in the home or the classroom to facilitate such learning in a non-indoctrinatory way. This last comment is, however, not so much a complaint about Mengzi or Aristotle as an expression of the need for virtue ethicists to get their hands dirty and complement their psycho-moral accounts of learning from exemplarity with some more specific, practical advice about how the emotions targeting such exemplarity can be cultivated in a reflective, phronesis-sensitive way such that, for example, ideals of flourishing lives can be emotionally embraced and critically internalised.

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Food for thought for practitioners 1 Is the best answer to the question ‘How does one learn to lead a flourishing life?’ really the Aristotelian one: ‘Examine people who are leading flourishing lives and try to emulate them’? Why or why not? 2 Are young people being honest and self-transparent when they say that their main role models are their parents rather than ill-behaved celebrities? 3 Is admiration a dangerous emotion to possess and inculcate? 4 Have you felt the emotion that Haidt calls ‘elevation’: an other-praising emotion elicited by acts of virtue or moral beauty, causing warm, open feelings in the chest (or even chills and goosebumps) and motivating you to improve yourself and behave more morally? If yes, is this emotion worthy of inculcation in students – and can it be done? 5 Have a look at Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Do you agree that reflecting upon this piece of visual art may be more conducive to the cultivation of awe-like elevation in students than reading about the lives of individual exemplars?

Chapter 8

Conclusions and reflections – and where we need to head next

A retrospective roadmap This final chapter casts a retrospective glance over the arguments I have proposed to make throughout the book, by way of rehearsing, reflecting upon, augmenting and refining them. This first section simply reviews the main themes and points of emphasis. The second section delineates twelve major advantages of flourishing theories. The third section ponders various unresolved problems and challenges. The fourth section revisits and reconsiders some educational themes that are intimately tied to the ideal of flourishing. The final section offers brief concluding remarks and suggestions about where we need to head next. Notably, in the retrospective roadmap that follows, I will be flagging specifically areas where my theory of flourishing in education departs from the Aristotelian script. I began in Chapter 1 by setting out the aims of the book and offering the following characterisation of flourishing, upon which I then elaborated in various ways. Human flourishing is the (relatively) unencumbered, freely chosen and developmentally progressive activity of a meaning ful (subjectively purposeful and objectively valuable) life that actualises satisfactorily an individual human being’s natural capacities in areas of species-specific existential tasks at which human beings (as rational, social, moral and emotional agents) can most successfully excel. I explained how Aristotle’s original concept of flourishing as eudaimonia rests on one fundamental argument: the so-called ergon (function) argument, according to which human beings have a natural function, just as an oak tree does. I also spelled out my assumptions of moral universalism and moral progressivism that underlie the sort of neo-Aristotelianism to which I subscribe. Most of Chapter 1 was, however, taken up with the task of distinguishing the ideal of flourishing (and education for flourishing) from that of virtue actualisation (and education for virtue or character). I argued that (fully) realising the virtues is neither necessary nor sufficient for flourishing, and that, more generally speaking, flourishing as a concept is both more capacious than the concept of good (virtuous) character and follows a different logic. Although most of the argument was about virtue not being sufficient for flourishing,

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which is perhaps unsurprising from an Aristotelian standpoint, I also made a more controversial, and less Aristotle-friendly, case for the ideal of flourishing being in some ways less demanding than virtuous character: for instance by allowing for the flourishing of well self-controlled but not fully virtuous persons. Chapter 1 also began to spell out other themes that make my view in this book better characterised as ‘neo-Aristotelian’ in a loose sense, or even as ‘quasi-Aristotelian’, than as ‘purely Aristotelian’. Those themes revolve around my argued conviction that flourishing must involve engagement with self-transcendent ideals, must ignite awe-filled enchantment and must allow for the possibility of radical moral gestalt-switches in ways that go well beyond, and even clash with, traditional Aristotle-inspired conceptions of eudaimonia. Flourishing, understood along quasi-Aristotelian lines, has re-emerged recently as an account of the ideal aim of education, for instance in works by a number of contemporary educational philosophers, such as John White and Doret de Ruyter. Chapter 2 aimed at explicating and critically reviewing this new paradigm by subjecting it to philosophical and educational scrutiny. Moreover, against those who refuse to take Aristotle as their starting point, I showed how contemporary theories of flourishing in education are largely compatible with Aristotle’s account or can be amplified by drawing more explicitly on it. Throughout I asked, at regular junctures, about the specific role of teachers in developing flourishing students. This strategy was meant to keep the eye on the overarching prize of saying something relevant about flourishing as the ultimate goal of educational activities, including school work. In the first section of Chapter 2, I made some initial comments about the recent educational flourishing theories and discussed some of their characteristics. The second and third sections explored two preconditions of flourishing, external necessities and students’ sense of meaning or purpose, the first of which was given high priority by Aristotle himself. The fourth section then addressed the objections of paternalism and elitism, often directed at eudaimonic theories of well-being in general and Aristotle-inspired theories of flourishing in particular. The fifth section explored a recently suggested distinction between ideal and non-ideal theories of flourishing, and it criticised this distinction for being conceptually ambiguous about the dividing line between the ‘realistically ideal’ and the ‘non-ideal’. Chapter 2 did not signal any major departures from an Aristotelian view of flourishing in education, but I noted that my considerations motivating the purpose/meaning pre-condition of flourishing are very much informed by modern sensibilities and must be seen therefore as an extension, rather than a reinterpretation, of Aristotelian flourishing. More specifically, the demand that students develop personal values and aspirations, guiding their purposeful activities, is more individualistic and practical than the mere Aristotelian demand that students gain a theoretical understanding of the human telos and

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eudaimonia. Arguably, also, some of the debate that I entered in this chapter about the potential role of teachers as agents of social change has a distinctively modern flavour – conditioned by current contexts in Western societies – and would thus have seemed alien to Aristotle and his contemporaries. The aim of Chapter 3 was to explore and critique recent aspirations to bridge the traditional divide between subjective (‘happiness’) and objective (‘flourishing’) accounts of well-being through a psychological concordance thesis, according to which flourishing and happiness will in fact, for psychological reasons, go hand in hand. Two varieties of the concordance thesis were explored, one psychological in origin and the other philosophical, with a special focus on the latter (derived from Aristotle) because it makes more radical psychological claims and is more relevant to the themes of this book. Counter-examples were provided and discussed of unhappy and not-happyenough flourishers, and of happy and not-unhappy-enough non-flourishers. I elicited the implications of those counter-examples, the conclusion being that normative claims about the relative priority of flourishing over happiness (or vice versa) for well-being cannot be avoided with impunity. The concordance thesis does not seem to bear scrutiny, at least not as a thesis about either conceptual or psychological ‘necessity’; however, this leaves both a less demanding ‘rule-of-thumb’ concordance thesis, and a host of complementary theses about flourishing and happiness, intact. The most obvious educational upshot of the chapter was that enhancing student well-being may have little, if anything, to do with lessons in making them ‘happy’ (cf. Cigman, 2018). There is nothing un-Aristotelian about that conclusion. Nevertheless, because one of the foils of this chapter was an Aristotelian view of happiness as necessarily supervening upon flourishing (in particular on Julia Annas’s interpretation), the resulting view was very much ‘neo-Aristotelian’ with a focus on the ‘neo’. This is such an important topic, however – in particular for educational incarnations of flourishing theories – that I return to it in the following section. I frankly admit, at the present juncture, that I am not completely at ease with all the practical ramifications of giving up on flourishing–happiness concordance. Notably, the biggest stumbling block to moving this discourse forward is lack of empirical evidence, rued in Chapter 3, on flourishing measured objectively (not least its virtue-related components). Given how anachronistic Aristotle’s account of the supreme meta-virtue of megalopsychia (magnanimity or great-heartedness) seems to be, there is a tendency to pass over it in silence. I argued in Chapter 4, however, against such neglect and maintained that Aristotle’s ideal helps illuminate a number of contemporary debates, both internal and external to Aristotelian virtue ethics, with significant educational reverberations. In moral education, megalopsychia casts light on the levels of moral development and of flourishing, the necessary individualisation of virtue and education in virtue, and the nature and limitations of moral-exemplar methodology. In moral philosophy, megalopsychia

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helps crystallise debates about role moralities, in the context of virtue ethics, and the demands of noblesse oblige, the relationship between objective and subjective well-being, and to what extent contemplation and wonder enter into well-being. This chapter provided a whistle-stop tour of those diverse, but related, topics and explained the lessons that Aristotle’s account of megalopsychia can teach us about them. The main lesson was that, as the somewhat tragic case of ‘magnanimous philistines’ shows us, moral virtue – even of the highest degree and accompanied by sufficient resources for the individual to become a high-impact public benefactor – does not suffice for flourishing. While arguably not venturing beyond anything Aristotle actually thought deep down about human flourishing, Chapter 4 aimed to tease out implications of Aristotle’s discussion that are typically overlooked in desperate attempts to make sense of what Aristotle says about this odd bunch of people, the megalopsychoi. I argued that the description of the tragic predicament of the megalopsychoi prepares the ground for Aristotle’s explicit contention, in Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, that moral virtue does not suffice for flourishing. Moreover, it does so in ways that have escaped most Aristotelian commentators and that Aristotle himself may not even have been fully aware of. Even though this radical, if somewhat quirky, interpretation adds backbone to, rather than undermines, an orthodox Aristotelian theory of flourishing and education for flourishing, there is a sting in the tail. Aristotle may not have gone far enough in accommodating states of self-transcendence, in what I defined in Chapter 4 as a ‘vertical’ (distinct from a ‘horizontal’) sense, into his conception of flourishing – a point that I subsequently went on to assert with some force in Chapter 5. To cut a long story short, Chapter 5 ventured radically beyond most current theories of flourishing and Aristotle’s own theory, by arguing that both suffer from a kind of ‘flatness’ or ‘disenchantment’ in failing to pay heed to the satisfaction of certain impulses that have been proven to give fullness to our lives: impulses that involve awe-struck emotional attachments to transpersonal ideals. In this chapter, I thus argued that although Aristotelian flourishing is a necessary place to begin a study of human flourishing, it is not a sufficient place to conclude such a study, either generally or in classroom contexts; it needs to be extended and ‘enchanted’ in order to do so. That venture does not necessitate an embrace of supernaturalism, however (or so I argued). John White and others have sounded warnings about taking children down the road to awe, given their penchant for the supernatural and otherworldly. I argued against White’s view and offered the outlines of an (essentially secular) awe-filled education. To put it somewhat dramatically, Chapter 5 threw down the gauntlet to standard Aristotelian theories of flourishing (in particular as an educational aim) in ways that previous chapters had only hinted at. Chapter 5 thus proposed to make good on the earlier promise to ‘provide the outlines of a new, expanded neo-Aristotelian conception of flourishing’, extended

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and enchanted by replacing ‘flatness’ with ‘fullness’. The satisfaction of the ‘transcendent urge’ in human beings requires, I argued, elicitation of the virtuous moral emotion of awe, above and beyond the intellectually virtuous emotion of wonder (cf. Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 8). Most of what I argued in Chapter 5 could, in principle, be fleshed out under the rubric of the term ‘spirituality’, but I expressed worries about the vagueness of that term and its remaining connotations of ‘religiosity’. The educational implications of ‘enchanted flourishing’ turned out to be quite radical. Teachers ideally need to find means to induce bliss, rapture and awe in students or, to put it in classical terms, learn to ‘Apollonize the Dionysian’. Chapter 6 continued to pursue the theme of the absence of awe and of the missing ‘wow-factor’ in Aristotle’s own theory of flourishing. He turned out not to be the only culprit. Aristotle’s and Kohlberg’s theories of moral development and education are often presented as proverbial anti-theses in the field. Yet both suffer from a similar difficulty in accounting for epiphanic moral conversions. Kohlberg’s trajectory of moral development is a slow one, through well-defined stages, and Aristotle is often depicted as an early-years determinist who did not envisage much hope of moral reform for people ‘brought up in bad habits’. Late in life, Kohlberg suggested an additional ‘Stage 7’ of peak moral experiences, and Aristotle’s virtue of ‘contemplation’ does offer some reprieve for intelligent agents who are also blessed with good ‘character friends’. Yet we are not much closer to explaining what happens when amoral/immoral people undergo sudden conversions towards morality, for example in the wake of near-death experiences or other radical ‘Damascus events’. I tried to ameliorate these shortcomings in Chapter 5 by adding to Aristotle’s theory a dimension of human nature that he overlooked: a universal emotional (awe-inspired) attraction to moral ideals. In Chapter 6, I then hypothesised that this very dimension may hold the key to explaining the phenomenon of epiphanic moral conversions – real, if rare. Finally, I elicited some educational implications of the proposed theory and how it matters for the development of a theory of student flourishing. Chapter 6 did not provide much in terms of new critical ammunition to motivate a revision of Aristotelian flourishing; rather, it focused previous misgivings – from Chapter 5 – on a particular phenomenon that does happen from time to time in the trajectory towards flourishing and may indeed be necessary, for some students, to keep them moving upwards and onwards: radical conversion experiences. My three empirical ‘hypotheses’ in Chapter 6 (that awe is a common emotional trigger of epiphanic moral conversions; that awe-proneness is associated with proneness to such conversions; and that those conversions are strongly correlated with reported experiences of moral elevation) gave further impetus to the claim that if a theory of flourishing does not make space for awe, in general, and elevation, in particular, something may be seriously amiss with it. At the same time, I expressed concerns about the extent to which a teacher is really entitled to, or capable of, such a

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radical intervention in the psycho-moral make-up of a student as attempting to trigger an epiphanic moral conversion – even if such a move is motivated by the good intention of facilitating flourishing. These concerns remind us of the thin line between removing barriers to relevant experiences that prepare the ground for students’ autonomous choices and actually making those choices for, or on behalf of, students. I am sure that a poll of the most effective teaching methods in education towards flourishing, at least among virtue ethicists, would reveal role-­ modelling (qua emulation of worthy exemplars of flourishing) as the favoured method. However, despite renewed interest in moral role-modelling and its emotional underpinnings, further conceptual work is needed on the logical geography of the emotions purportedly driving it, in particular admiration, emulation and elevation. In Chapter 7, I delved into the main dangers of role-modelling (hero-worship, moral inertia and moral over-stretching) and brought those to bear on historical accounts of great role models (by theorists such as Aristotle, John Stuart Mill and William James), as well as recent accounts (by William Damon and Anne Colby and by David Brooks). I then explored admiration (as understood by Linda Zagzebski) and Aristotle’s emulation and, subsequently, elevation (as characterised by Jonathan Haidt). Although learning from moral exemplarity can, to a large extent, be accounted for on the motivational grounds of admiration and emulation, I argued that we need a concept of elevation (as a kind of moral awe) to account for attraction to transpersonal moral ideals. I explained Aristotle’s inability to make sense of people’s emotional attachment to moral exemplarity, as distinct from the attachment to moral exemplars. In the final section of Chapter 7, I added insights from another ancient emotion theorist, Mengzi (Mencius), in order to get Aristotle back on track. That section also offered an educational discussion on how emulation and elevation are related to student flourishing. All in all, Chapter 7 found the method of role-modelling and its emotional underpinnings to be seriously under-developed – even by neo-­A ristotelians (the present author not excluded) who constantly pay lip service to this method. I suggested an appropriation of ideas from the Confucian tradition as possibly augmenting those of Aristotle, at least theoretically. However, a host of questions about the nuts and bolts of role-modelling as classroom practice – and how it is meant to tap into students’ emotional make-up in a flourishing-enhancing way – remained unanswered. I return to some of the unanswered questions that have emerged at various junctures later in this chapter. Before closing this retrospective roadmap of themes already explored, I will not shirk mentioning a concern that may have arisen among some readers. I said earlier that ‘what is on offer in this book is a fairly novel and radical theory of flourishing as the aim of education, although it takes its cue from Aristotle’s works’. I also said that the various departures from Aristotle’s theory, as have I developed my own, are ‘better characterised as “significant” rather than “substantial” ’. However, let us recall some of those

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departures. I have argued, amongst other things, that a proper theory of flourishing as the aim of education needs to go beyond Aristotle in accommodating • • •

• • •

a modernised notion of individual students’ sense of purpose and meaning; the possibility that flourishing and happiness (even on Aristotle’s own unique conception) do not necessarily go hand in hand; the idea that the megalopsychoi are not only psycho-morally handicapped by their lack of contemplation and wonder (as Aristotle himself seems to indicate) but, in a deeper sense, by lacking the propensity for ‘vertical self-transcendence’; awe-struck enchantment; the possibility of radical moral gestalt-switches; and attraction to transpersonal moral ideals, as distinct from persons representing those ideals.

Readers are likely to ask at this juncture whether enough remains of Aristotle’s own approach to support my calling the theory proffered in this book ‘neo-Aristotelian’. Although I would answer that question in the affirmative, with reference to the various ‘departures’ suggested above being motivated by empirical concerns, rather than an intention to revise the overall structure of a eudaimonic theory, I refrain here from elaborating that argument further. I promised readers in Chapter 1 that I would spare them the sense of being ‘trapped with the ghost of Aristotle inside a jammed elevator’. I respect that promise now by stopping short of any exegetical analysis. I simply ask readers to evaluate the components of flourishing that I have highlighted during the course of the book on their own merits. Do they resonate with readers’ own experiences and views? That is more important than the extent to which Aristotle – or Aristotle’s ghost – would endorse them. Let me close this section by revisiting some rather radical claims I made in Chapter 1 – which may have been off-putting for some readers – about assumptions of moral universalism and progressivism motivating my project. I do not propose to renege on anything I said there, but a brief caveat is in order. I consider Steven Pinker (2011; 2018) to have provided us with inconvertible statistical evidence for human progress being made in areas that are highly relevant for securing the pre-conditions of human flourishing – or at least removing some of the potential barriers to it; these issues are explored in Chapter 2. This evidence should be music to the ears of all friends of the Enlightenment project, but also – and more crucially for present purposes – to all believers in the ideal of human flourishing as a socio-moral and educational goal. My sympathy with Pinker’s progressivism will not win me fans among his many detractors. That said, I am not a dedicated member of the Pinker fan club either, because his simplistic account of what the Enlightenment project was all about systematically evades its darker

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sides. That project contributed to what I called in Chapter 5 the ‘fetishisation of the mundane’, for example through the disenchantment of awe to mere wonder or curiosity. It also laid the foundation of the pernicious distinction between fact and value that has since posed a constant threat to any normative discourse about such value-laden aims as human flourishing. Without this flawed distinction, the three components of disenchantment (of academic inquiry) that Charles Taylor identifies as scientism, mechanism and instrumentalism (2007, p. 773) would not have materialised. The major Enlightenment thinkers themselves seem to have been mostly oblivious to those potential implications. Hume – who more importantly upheld an ‘is–ought’ rather than a ‘fact–value’ distinction – considered the de facto uniformity of human psychology and human societies qua institutions to cancel out the most radical consequences of his moral subjectivism and sentimentalism. Kant, on the other hand, fastened on the dictates of universal practical reason that would bind all rational agents. However, Nietzsche saw those as Potemkin manoeuvres and followed the implications of the fact–value distinction to its logical conclusion by adding to it a host of (not all that unreasonable!) psychological hypotheses about human beings’ obsession with what nowadays would euphemistically be called ‘symbolic capital’. For Nietzsche, the Enlightenment project had basically replaced truth with power, at least in the realm of values, thus making any theory about an objective universal value such as flourishing anodyne at best, outrageous at worst. This is why MacIntyre correctly pits Nietzsche, rather than Hume, against Aristotle as his great nemesis in After Virtue (1981). Because of my deep antipathy to the fact–value distinction, which I have argued for elsewhere (see e.g. Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 4), I do not count my theory of flourishing simply as an outgrowth of the Enlightenment project. Indeed, I consider the greatest confidence tricks played on the academic community in the last few decades (and at which I have taken passing swipes throughout), namely poststructuralism and postmodernism, to be directly inspired by the Enlightenment project itself, as paradoxical as that may seem, given the confidence tricksters’ explicit denial of humanism and progressivism. At the end of the day, a theory of human flourishing as the aim of education, as argued for in this book, needs for its sustenance both a considerable dose of Enlightenment progressivism and pre-Enlightenment universalism, grounded in the objectivity of human values. For the latter, an Aristotelian approach is arguably the most credible option: one more reason for sticking to the designator ‘neo-Aristotelian’ for this book’s approach, despite its various ‘departures’ and ‘updates’.

The advantages of flourishing theories Dan Haybron’s (2016) handbook entry on the philosophical bases of eudaimonic theories is perhaps the best brief and crisp account of the nature, pros and cons of such theories, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to readers.

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That said, Haybron’s discussion remains at a fairly high level of abstraction and does not delve deeply into all the relevant practical – for example educational – ramifications. In this section, I elaborate upon six different ‘virtues’ of flourishing theories that Haybron himself identifies. I then go on to list six other advantages that I would want to add, some of which tap more into practical than theoretical features. 1 Fittingness with everyday conceptions (Haybron, 2016, p. 31). I noted in Chapter 1 that one of the attractions of flourishing theories is that they are typically less philosophically loaded, more readily couched in ordinary language and more immediately appealing to practitioners and laypeople than tends to be the case with more esoteric accounts. I would argue that this ‘common-senseness’ has at least three facets. The first relates to the fact that the teleological language of flourishing has a comfortable home in common parlance. The second has to do with the ethical naturalism animating any Aristotle-inspired flourishing project, making all normative theorising answerable to empirical findings (as I explained in Chapter 1). Dan Lapsley (2016) has objected to my ‘conflation of ethical naturalism with moral realism’ in an earlier book (Kristjánsson, 2015). I do not think I conflated the two. I simply argued that Aristotelian naturalism is a form of moral realism that considers morality grounded in objective evaluative facts about human beings and their environment a view that entails rejection of the ‘fact–value’ distinction but not necessarily the ‘is–ought’ distinction. There are, arguably, other forms of naturalism (e.g. the Deweyan one suggested by Lapsley) that are not morally realist in this sense, but those are not the ones I or most current flourishing theorists endorse. The third facet of common-senseness is that flourishing theories tend to be foundationalist in grounding the quest for flourishing in ‘basic facts’ about human nature, and I take that to be a common-sense view. In this sense, it is clear that my theory (like Aristotle’s) is foundationalist in a sense that Lapsley’s is not. However, Lapsley (2016) wants to draw inferences from foundationalism that go well beyond anything that a flourishing theory needs to propose, or that I would endorse, even in my wildest dreams. That there are objective facts about ourselves and about the normative realm, which – as I take it – hold good irrespective of the particular psycho-moral theory to which one subscribes, does not mean that there are ‘brute facts’ out there – independent of any conceptualisation or theory – that somehow provide an irrefutable basis of all moral theorising. For what it is worth, I believe (like Anscombe, 1958a) that any ‘bruteness’ of facts is relative to descriptions, and I do not consider myself an ‘irrefutabilist’, either with regard to any foundationally ‘brute’ moral facts or to any aspect of Aristotle’s own foundational theorising. Pace Lapsley (2016), there is no ‘special pleading’ being made here.

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2 A concept applicable to other life-forms (Haybron, 2016, p. 32). Again, I said something similar to Haybron’s point in Chapter 1 when I observed that one of the advantages of the flourishing concept is that it can, in principle at least, be applied, mutatis mutandis, to any natural living organism. Oak trees and birds flourish or wilt in the same sense (although obviously not in the same way) as humans do. There are at least three things to note here. First, the analogy to other living beings helps develop – both rhetorically and substantively – the argument about what human flourishing consists in. Second, for those interested in animal welfare, some of the arguments adduced in this book can also be applied to other species. Third, it could be argued that, in the context of living well in our environmentally interdependent world, one of the virtues that a flourishing person needs to cultivate is that of ‘harmony with nature’ ( Jordan & Kristjánsson, 2017): an argument that then leads naturally into a more general ethics of sustainability (see e.g. Curren & Metzger, 2017). I am not saying here that a virtue ethical theory of human flourishing is the only avenue open to those sympathetic to an environmental ethics of sustainability. Utilitarians and Kantians may also have something important to contribute to that discourse. I am simply saying that far from being inimical to the well-being of other living beings, a theory of flourishing can easily be extended to those beings and indeed to the flourishing of the life world as a whole. Such a unified theory would have obvious educational implications. However, it has been beyond the scope of the present book – which focuses on student flourishing – to pursue those. 3 Pluralism as a principle of ‘unifying power’ (Haybron, 2016, p. 32). I harped on the advantages of a unifying but pluralistic neo-Aristotelian view of human flourishing in Chapters 1, 2 and 4, and I do not need to rehearse those arguments here. What simply bears repeating is that pluralism is not the same as relativism or subjectivism. That a person can – and indeed must because of personal and social variance – choose among different mountains to climb in life, and then among different but equally promising paths up the chosen mountain, does not imply that the reasonableness of the choice is simply relative either to cultural circumstance or to individual preference. There are better or worse reasons – in an objective sense – for such choices, although some of the reasons may be equally good and others equally bad. In short, pluralism of the neo-Aristotelian kind is a principle of unity, not of fragmentation. 4 An ideal that is not alienating (Haybron, 2016, p. 32). Some theories of well-being entail that something could be part of our good even if that good is somehow alien to us. This is a particular problem for crude forms of utilitarianism, according to which it may be in our best interest to be alienated from our identity-grounding life projects. This problem does not arise in Aristotle-inspired flourishing theories. Flourishing as an

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ideal does not have any moral value attached to it unless the agent’s heart is in it and she has taken a reflective decision to ingrain it in her sense of who she is. This ‘virtue’ of flourishing theories is also intimately tied to the following advantages (5) and (6). 5 An ideal entailing authenticity (Haybron, 2016, p. 33). We do not fulfil our natures if we are living inauthentically – that is, by not being able to ‘be ourselves’ or by deceiving ourselves as to who we really are. Authenticity is a distinctively modern-sounding ideal and does not find a comfortable haven in a purely Aristotelian theory of flourishing. Aristotle was simply not as alert as modern theorists are to the dangers that flow from self-repressions and lack of self-transparency. However, the emphasis on an individual sense of purpose, highlighted in Chapter 2 as a necessary extension of the Aristotelian account, accommodates contemporary concerns with authenticity. 6 An antidote to ‘impoverishment’ accounts (Haybron, 2016, p. 33). According to some theories of well-being, it seems possible to be ‘happy’ within an impoverished, stunted life as long as you have systematically ‘adapted’ and ‘reduced’ your expectations – witness the happy, well-adjusted slave. As emphasised in Chapter 3, this worry leaves a flourishing theory – at least the one proposed in this book – untouched. I now begin to go beyond Haybron’s list of the general pros of eudaimonic theories to focus more specifically on the neo-Aristotelian variety developed in this book. 7 The incorporation of character virtues as intrinsic to a flourishing life. Although developing the moral, civic, intellectual and performative virtues is not sufficient for flourishing, as I have repeatedly stressed, such virtues are necessary ingredients in it – which is different from saying that only the fully virtuous person, as distinct from the successfully self-controlled one, can flourish: a claim that I have rejected. Moreover, they constitute necessary ingredients in an intrinsic, non-instrumentalist sense, as parts of the good life rather just being conducive to it. This point seems, unfortunately, to be lost on many social scientists, even those explicitly pursuing objective – or ‘sobjective’ – theories of well-being. A notable exception is found in Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) book: the character-­bible of positive psychology. One of their explicit criteria of character strengths and virtues (making up the famous 24) is that although those ‘can and do produce desirable outcomes, each strength is morally valued in its own right, even in the absence of obvious beneficial outcomes’ (2004, p. 19). They go on to explain that the strengths/virtues in question are constituents of, rather than just instruments towards, well-being – a leaf apparently taken straight out of Aristotle’s book. Sadly, most current positive psychologists have failed to follow up on this assumption, making do rather with an instrumentalist conception of the value of character virtues (see e.g. Duckworth, 2016).

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8

9

10

11

The present book has taken the fight to – rather than ceding the territory to – the instrumentalists, while freely acknowledging that a flourishing life also has instrumentalist benefits for grade attainment and job success. The salience given to emotions. I complained in Chapter 2 that none of the current flourishing theorists within the field of education seems to ascribe the same importance to emotions and emotional attachments (as constituents of the good life and of education for flourishing) as Aristotle did. In this book, I have not developed an account of the emotional component of flourishing in general and good character in particular, mainly because I did it in my last one (Kristjánsson, 2018) and would not want to repeat myself. However, underlying the whole neo-Aristotelian theory is the assumption that ‘emotionality is central to our natures’ (Haybron, 2016, p. 47) – indeed part of our ‘self hood’ (Kristjánsson, 2010) – and that education for flourishing will to a great extent be about the cultivation of flourishing-instantiating emotions. As the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray wrote, ‘The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life […] It is the core and essence of human life’ (1935, p. 75). Explaining the role of pleasure in a flourishing life. I have noted throughout how a neo-Aristotelian theory of flourishing gives ample space – but not excessive space – to (a specific kind of flow-like) pleasure as part of the flourishing life and of education for flourishing. While readers may have noted a slight change of emphasis in my discussion of this topic between Chapters 1 and 3, and though I admitted to a certain sense of ‘unease’ about the flourishing–happiness association earlier in this chapter, I still believe that neo-Aristotelian flourishing theory comes closer to getting this association right than most, if not all, other competing theories of well-being. The acknowledgement of ‘moral luck’. Large chunks of Chapter 2 were about the role of what philosophers call ‘moral luck’ in the formation and sustaining of our flourishing. Ranging all the way from economic advantages to pure serendipity, neo-Aristotelian theory is sensitive not only to the extent to which we are, but also to the extent to which we are not, creators of our own destinies. In an educational context, the fact that moral character is not only taught and sought, but also caught (from the ethos and environment) is a case in point. Neo-Aristotelian flourishing theorists and educators always need to ask both what we can do with the cards we have been dealt and how we can make sure that more people around the world get dealt better cards in the future. This need underlies the next advantage. Political richness. As I noted in Chapter 2, Aristotle’s stringent demands on the external preconditions necessary for flourishing, and his insistence that education is a form of political activity, make it clear that any reasonable account of student flourishing will be strongly politically laden. Those who believe that education for flourishing is just about fixing

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individual kids in a political vacuum have come to look for wool in a goat’s house by pretending to draw on Aristotle. I reiterate that point in the following section. 12 The centrality of education. Educational concerns are so central to any Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian theory of flourishing that an expression of such a theory that does not give pride of place to education is almost inconceivable. What ‘makes the difference between a good political system and a bad one’ is its capacity to make its citizens good through education (Aristotle, 1985, p. 34 [1103b3–7]). It is one thing, however, to pay lip service to education, and quite another to engage it head-on. Murphy (2015) is right in that many contemporary Aristotelians have lost some, if not all, of Aristotle’s pedagogical focus and do not seem to be empirically savvy in the way that Aristotle himself would have wanted them to be. For example, it is rare to see Aristotelian virtue ethicists draw systematically on findings from developmental psychology (as correctly rued by Swanton, 2016). Although the present book has not had a didactic focus, I hope every chapter has made it abundantly clear that what is needed to move the current flourishing agenda forward is education, education and more education. I offer some further reflections related to advantages (11) and (12) in the penultimate section of this chapter.

Challenges and misgivings I have written at some length in the past about challenges and misgivings facing character education as an approach to moral education (esp. Kristjánsson, 2015, chaps. 2 and 8). In the present book I have highlighted ways in which education for flourishing goes beyond ‘mere’ education for good character, but the challenges facing those two approaches happen, in my view, to overlap to a great extent. In this section I single out for brief consideration six problematic areas: one where a focus on flourishing rather than on character helps fend off scepticism, three where this focus imports new challenges and two where previous misgivings remain mostly the same as before, even though their orientation and articulation may alter slightly. The political problem. Character education often finds itself in the unfortunate squeezed-middle position of coming under attack from both the political left and the political right. Leftists accuse it of disregarding social structures and focus instead, in politically passive (naïve or even reactionary) ways, on setting individual kids right. Right-wingers look down their noses at character education for importing one more brand of touchy-feeliness – or what former UK Education Secretary Michael Gove used to call ‘the Blob’ (drawing upon a Steve McQueen movie about a shivering amoeba eating up the world) – into classrooms, at the expensive of pedagogic rigour and by

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undermining traditional school subjects. I leave the credibility of these considerations aside here in order to note simply that both these sets of objections are bound to fall by the wayside once the focus shifts from character education to education for flourishing. No eminent flourishing theorist has, to the best of my knowledge, suggested that education for flourishing can succeed in a social or political vacuum. To be sure, some theorists may seem to slip at times from the politically realistic to the politically utopian in their theorising, but theorising on a wing and a prayer is not the same as being politically passive. Even more so, for any theory of educational flourishing that counts as being remotely Aristotelian, political concerns will be at its forefront. In many essential ways, flourishing is a shared, communal activity (cf. Cooper, 2010) and virtue is a social practice (Moulin-Sto˙zek, 2019). I hope the second section in Chapter 2 made it abundantly clear why political concerns cannot take a back seat in Aristotelian flourishing. Regarding the scepticism from the political right, the simple answer is, again, that no eminent flourishing theorist has so much as vaguely suggested, either explicitly or implicitly, that education for flourishing is meant to replace or lessen the emphasis on academic rigour (as distinct from an emphasis on its standard proxies or ‘totems’). Even John White’s radical suggestion, that the traditional arrangement of school subjects be rethought and reconceptualised via a focus on general aims, is made under the assumption that this will increase academic competence by aligning school teaching better with the increasingly interrelated and interconnected needs of the modern world, in which some of the skill sets for which traditional subject education prepared us are becoming obsolete. At all events, if the introduction of education for flourishing as an overarching aim of education leads to students getting worse at reading, writing and maths, then that introduction must count as a failure. Moreover, should the worry from the right be motivated by liberal, rather than conservative, misgivings about education for flourishing being essentially morally driven (i.e. non-value-neutral) and hence potentially open to charges of paternalism and indoctrination, the simple response is that this worry seems to be confined to a charmed circle of liberal thinkers and politicians. The overwhelming majority of parents and practitioners, according to surveys that my Centre has conducted and that can be accessed on our website ( Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2018), want schooling to have an explicit moral focus. It is not as if such a focus is being foisted uncritically upon an unwilling population. Indeed, ignoring this general orientation would itself be blatantly paternalistic. It never ceases to surprise me how much the ‘liberal’ worry continues to occupy the minds of those who take on the task of defending (some form or another of ) moral education in schools (see e.g. Hand’s 2018 book) when other worries are so much more pressing (e.g. those related to situationism and sentimentalism, explained below). That said, the problem of paternalism may resurface when the ideal of education

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for flourishing is applied in tertiary and adult education. Some of the ‘perfectionism’ underlying it (recall Chapter 1) can become problematic when dealing with mature students (Fowler, 2014; Carr, 2017). I realise it could be argued that the general public would not lose sleep over the situationist and sentimentalist worries explained below either. Is it not the job of theorists to raise concerns on behalf of a less enlightened public on matters that relate to their best interests? True, but the reason why the person in the street is not worried by situationism and sentimentalism is that it requires considerable background knowledge of both theory and empirical findings to grasp what these problems are about. The liberal worry is about a very simple issue, however: whether formal education should be concerned with ‘the care of souls’ (Locke, 2016, p. 192; recall my discussion in Chapter 2). The vast majority of parents do think that this is precisely the job of formal state education – alongside other tasks, of course – which is why I described any purported anti-paternalism in this domain as itself being paternalistic. Arguing that that the state should take on the task of promoting flourishing, for instance through formal educational provisions, is not, however, the same as casting all worries about the execution of such promotion aside (cf. Taylor, 2018, for an extremely nuanced and even-handed discussion of all the remaining issues). The problem of measurement. I explored this problem briefly in the fourth section of Chapter 1, in the context of a rehearsal of the basic tenets of character education. I do believe that an omnibus approach to capturing the different components of character virtues can obviate this problem, to a certain extent at least. For example, the clever use of a triangulation method to measure some core components of virtue, such as virtue reasoning and virtuous emotional responses to dilemmas, has provided evidence that – if nothing else – seems to deflate two common British myths about character education: that virtue is cultivated better in independent schools than in state schools and that sports are the ideal venue to cultivate character. The findings of our own extensive study of the virtue development of UK secondary-school students indicate that the leadership and encouragement of the headteacher are much more important than what type of school students attend (independent vs. state, rural vs. city, large vs. small), and that at least some core components of good character are more readily associated with participation in art, drama, singing and volunteering activities than with participation in sports (Walker et al., 2017). Although these findings support correlations rather than causal links, and although the research project in question was about good character, rather than flourishing, I venture to hypothesise that at least some of the findings would be replicated in research into flourishing schools. For example, it is difficult to see how a school can become a beacon of education for flourishing without the motivational leadership of the headteacher. The lessons learned from Chapter 3 indicate, however, that moving the agenda from evaluations of character to evaluations of flourishing will

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exacerbate the measurement problem considerably. First, there are many more variables to measure. Second, there are widespread misconceptions at work about how measurements of subjective happiness and objective flourishing are related. In addition to the examples already discussed in Chapter 3, consider an attempt by social scientists Kesebir and Diener to provide empirical evidence for the predictors (most notably, for present purposes, the virtue predictors) of eudaimonic well-being or flourishing. Misconceiving the virtues as potential causes, rather than constituents, of eudaimonia, they assume that evidence of successful predictions of subjective well-being will suffice, because ‘the two concepts are sufficiently close, and subjective well-being can reasonably be used as a proxy for eudaimonic well-being’ (2014, p. 288). Their account glosses over so many important distinctions, and betrays such an inadequate grasp of the virtue ethics landscape, that it is difficult to know where to begin in criticising it. I leave it to readers of Chapter 3 to fill in the missing counter-argument here. Third, even those empirical researchers who see the need to measure flourishing separately from happiness typically commit what from an Aristotelian perspective are the obvious missteps of (a) trying to assess an objective variable through exclusively subjective measures (namely self-reports) and (b) leaving moral and civic virtue out of the concept of flourishing. For example, three recent and potentially crucial studies of the relationships between education and flourishing that I cite in the following section ( Jongbloed, 2018; Skrzypiec et al., 2018; Datu, 2018) are marred by both missteps. At best, they give some indication of students’ perceptions (realistic or not) of their own flourishing in narrowly circumscribed areas of human well-being. The problem of motivational integration. Any Aristotle-inspired account of flourishing – such as the theory developed in this book – must hold that flourishing lives are in some sense reason-infused lives, so it becomes a challenge to explain how agents can (learn to) secure some sort of reasonable motivational unity in their lives. This is already a formidable challenge in standard forms of character education, where the onus is on the Aristotelians or neo-Aristotelians to make sense of the role of phronesis in adjudicating virtue conflicts. However, this is too often attempted merely theoretically, without recourse to any theory of psychological development (noted by Swanton, 2016). There are two reasons why this becomes an even bigger problem for a theory of education for flourishing. But before I explain those, let us begin with a few words about phronesis itself (recall also the discussion in Chapter 1). The intellectual meta-virtue of phronesis is, arguably, nothing less than the glue that holds the Aristotelian virtue-and-character system together and makes it unique. Yet three commentators of my 2015 book on character education happened to find (different) faults with my exploration of phronesis there, as cryptic or rhapsodic if not downright confused (Miller, 2016; Curren, 2016; Lapsley, 2016). I cannot entirely blame them. Although I make a new stab at understanding the nature and development of phronesis – about

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which Aristotle himself is so coy – in almost every paper or book I write, the goal of making full sense of it remains elusive. Miller (2016) wonders why I did not engage Burnyeat’s (1980) classic piece on Aristotelian moral development towards phronesis more directly in my 2015 book. The simple answer is that I have done so elsewhere (Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 3). Yet I continue to find myself torn between Burnyeat’s two-stage model, which posits a qualitative difference between early-years habituation and later-stage education for phronesis, and Sherman’s (1989) more accommodating interpretation, which sees the development of phronetic critical thinking during adolescence as different only in degree from the budding reflections of the child. At different junctures I am inclined towards different answers to the question of what was really taking place when I tried to explain to my 5-year-old son why he should display gratitude for gifts received. Did my moral argument simply fall on deaf ears – at best teaching him to get used to moral injunctions being based on reasons – or was I tapping into and nourishing a reflective moral capacity, which my son subsequently honed and refined? Contrary to the message that Lapsley (2016) elicits from my critical comments about social-scientific theories of wisdom, I do think that the best bet for resolving the phronesis conundrum is to subject it to further psychological inquiry (Darnell et al., 2019). Does some kind of magical change happen in late childhood in the way children negotiate virtue conflicts (which is a key role of phronesis), or is there seamless continuity between such moral reflections in early and late childhood? At the moment, the Centre where I work is in the process of developing the first ever psychological measure of phronesis, but it is still too early to judge whether that enterprise will be successful (Darnell et al., 2019). The two reasons that I mentioned above, as making the issue of rational integration even more complex when the discussion turns to education for flourishing, are as follows. First, the learner needs to cultivate the meta-­ cognitive, higher-order processes that help to adjudicate not only virtue conflicts but also a host of wider, potentially conflicting considerations: about political, institutional, health-related and psychological issues that all are germane to an overall flourishing life – beyond the narrower goal of just developing and maintaining ‘good character’. Second, if readers accept my claim that a flourishing life does not require full phronesis-guided virtue, but rather that effective self-control or ‘continence’ may often suffice, the following question beckons: Which intellectual virtue do the continent then utilise to orchestrate their response to moral and other dilemmas? Well, it cannot be Aristotelian phronesis, because the continent are not virtuous or even necessarily on their way to full virtue; and it is not mere cleverness (deinotes, cf. Aristotle, 1985, p. 169 [1144a24–31]), because cleverness, as Aristotle explains it, is about non-moral means–end reasoning. My proposal is that neo-Aristotelians need a new intellectual virtue to describe the decision­making performed by the continent, and I suggest that ‘integrity’ is a helpful

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designation for it. ‘Integrity’ elicits the relevant qualities of unification without importing the heavy baggage carried by the strict motivational unity demands of Aristotelian phronesis. There is even a reason for resisting an exclusive developmental take on integrity – as a mere incomplete stepping stone to phronesis – if we understand it as an intellectual virtue unique to continence; for I have been arguing that, in some domains of life at least, flourishing requires no more than that. My own view is that the typically flourishing person is not a person of full virtue – however laudable that ideal is – and not an exclusively continent person either, but a person with a mixed character who exhibits virtue in some significant areas and continence in others. And this may even be continence that sometimes slips into incontinence (as distinct from vice) in areas that do not undermine flourishing in significant ways: the odd over-drinking or over-eating on a special occasion, for example. The required ratio of virtuous (intrinsically motivated) character traits to continent (extrinsically motivated) traits for the conditions of flourishing to be satisfied in a ‘good-enough’ way will depend, to a large extent, on individual constitution and circumstance – for example, on how the person tends to be genetically predisposed to pro-social functioning through possession of the Big-Five personality traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness. The typically flourishing person may come close to Arpaly’s (2018) vivid description of the ‘morally mediocre person’ (as distinct from the amoral or immoral person), although I do not agree with Arpaly that once the person has crossed the threshold of flourishing, she has no good reason to try to become more virtuous – which is different from saying that she has a good reason to turn herself into a virtuous superhero. In any case, I challenge readers (at least those who do not share Cigman’s 2018 antipathy to artificially created character sketches) to explore Arpaly’s close sketch of a morally mediocre, but apparently flourishing, person and ask themselves whether that person still needs to improve (and then in what sense of ‘needs’) to be good enough to flourish – or to ideally take the already flourishing life to an even higher level. Here is a final complication about integration. Aristotle is sometimes read as claiming that the incontinent person is overcome by pleasures in ways that bypass reason altogether (see e.g. 1985, p. 190, esp. [1050a11–14]). But actually being incontinent requires considerable planning and cunning also and needs to draw upon the intellectual virtue of deinotes, which helps the incontinent to find means to their ends and keeps them at least integrated long enough for their incontinent acts to be executable. Apart from phronesis, integrity and cleverness, the intellectual virtue of techné will obviously guide activities aimed at making rather than doing: creating a statue, for example. Lapsley (2016) thinks that this whole problematic – e.g. ‘to fuss about what is techne and what is phronesis’ – is symptomatic of the sort of ‘parsing and score-keeping that is of interest only to [Aristotelian] exegetes’. I could not

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disagree more. For example, whether we understand the emotional trait of gratitude as guided by techné or phronesis has significant ramifications as to how gratitude is conceptualised, educated and practised (Morgan, Gulliford & Carr, 2015). With full respect to the judgemental skills of the sculptor, I fail to see why studying those would be the ideal method for a confused teenager to learn how to negotiate a virtue conflict between loyalty and honesty. The problem of academic ecumenism. The third problem where a focus on education for flourishing, rather than just on education for good character, imports new challenges, or at least adds to existing ones, is in the field of academic ecumenism between philosophy and social science (in particular psychology). Now, ecumenism between philosophy and psychology is all the rage these days. At worst, it can degenerate into psychologists showering philosophers with a deluge of empirical data (as if philosophers had never been interested in facts about the real world before) or philosophers sitting psychologists on their knees, teaching them some elementary conceptual analysis (as if psychologists had never given any thought to the concept of a ‘concept’). At best, however, transdisciplinary work of this kind can be mutually enriching and illuminating. The most natural place to start an exploration of what appears to be the new ecumenism between philosophy and psychology on virtue is with the methodological approach that seems to be the driving force behind it. That approach is the naturalism that I explained in Chapter 1. Animating virtue ethics, this naturalism constitutes the reason why many social scientists see virtue ethicists as a group of moral philosophers they can finally do business with (see e.g. Lapsley & Narvaez, 2008). Yet when Elizabeth Anscombe (1958b) (re)launched virtue ethics with her famous edict that moral philosophy be laid to rest until we had a decent account of human nature, action and flourishing, there is little indication that she considered this best done by exploiting psychological evidence, gathered among ‘the many’, as distinct from more rigorous philosophical insights about human psychology, uncovered in the armchairs of ‘the wise’. Whatever Anscombe’s view may have been, however, the standard interpretation by both philosophers and psychologists who are currently active in this discourse is that since it is an empirical rather than a conceptual fact that people ‘need’ the virtues, philosophical virtue ethics must be informed by a ‘bottom-up approach’ that settles moral questions by providing empirical evidence about what makes people tick. On this view, Aristotelian virtue ethics has to be aligned with experimental moral psychology in order to be viable and plausible. The input of psychological evidence is then ideally seen as happening on two levels: the conceptual level, where philosophical theories of virtue are informed by conceptualisations of ‘the many’ of what those virtues ‘mean for them’, and the normative level, where questions of the value of specific hexeis (virtues or vices) are settled by providing evidence of how they make actual people flourish or flounder (Gulliford, 2016).

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Now it is easy to encourage philosophers, on the one hand, to ‘leave the gated community of a priori-ville’ (Asher, 2017, p. 177) and psychologists, on the other, to engage more with theoretical and conceptual issues. However, in previous books I have identified various issues that problematise any happy-courtship narrative about academic ecumenism in this area (Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 8; 2018, chap. 10). The marriage of virtue ethics and empirical psychology is not made in heaven, and their courtship is not free from tiffs and spats. Unfortunately, Chapter 3 in the present book added insult to injury by reminding us of various methodological and substantive assumptions in the psychological well-being literature that neo-Aristotelians will find it impossible to stomach. A theory of education for flourishing, such as the one developed in this book, simply cannot make do with subjective measures of flourishing only, nor can it accept the idea that the difference between subjective and objective well-being does not matter so much in the end, for methodological or pragmatic reasons. It is understandable that practically minded educationists and educators will find themselves torn between very different academic approaches here, which poses a serious challenge to the actualisation of the ideal of flourishing as the aim of education. Beyond the potentially conflicting orientations of philosophers, psychologists and educationists exploring flourishing in an educational context, further cross-disciplinary challenges beckon. Because of the broadness of the term, we also need to draw on findings from sociology, the health sciences, economics, politics and so forth, while at the same time acknowledging that we must avoid any single-discipline-driven, reductionist definition that psychologises, medicalises, economises, geneticises, socialises or politicises the ideal of educational flourishing beyond good measure (cf. Michalos, 2017, pp. 277–299). Finally, in this section, let me mention two standard challenges to character education that migrate naturally to the ideal of education for flourishing, if that ideal is seen as complementing or replacing character education. Both challenges have to do with scepticism about the necessary reason-responsiveness of the traits that need to be cultivated in students. Are those not ultimately shaped by situational forces, or by genetically pre-programmed drivers, rather than by reason? The problem of situationism. Although the idea that human agents are swayed by the force of situational factors, rather than by robust character traits, never achieved the same cult status in psychology as in philosophy (Doris, 2002) – and seems to have gone into something of a remission even there (see e.g. Jayawickreme et al., 2014) – many psychologists (especially social psychologists) will consider virtue ethicists to be too cavalier about situationist findings. Notably, Aristotelian ‘dispositionists’ have developed a standard and much-rehearsed set of objections to situationism (see e.g. Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 6). The most famous of those is the anti-behaviouristic objection, according to which the mainstay of moral

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character lies not in behavioural reactions – which may be panic-ridden and ‘out of character’, especially if agents are placed in unfamiliar situations where experience-derived scripts do not kick in – but rather in (often retrospective) emotional reactions. In general, virtue is supposed not to be about correct behaviour exclusively, or even essentially, but to entail a multi-component schema of perception, cognition, motivation and reason-responsive emotion. Situationists may acknowledge this objection, but they will be quick to point out that the proposed stability and robustness of those additional factors (beyond behaviour) then needs to be established through empirical research – a request that philosophers have typically spurned. Another tack taken by philosophers is to argue that much of the situationist debate is conducted at cross-purposes, as the opposing camps simply operate with different sets of conceptual understandings of the very notion of a ‘situation’. So, whereas situationists focus on situations that are broad, passive, extraordinary and subject to strong contextual pressures, dispositionists confine their attention to situations that are narrow, active, ordinary and subject to weak pressures (see e.g. Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 6). Some psychologists have contributed to this conceptual discourse; yet the mainstream view in psychological circles is to be sceptical of any ‘solutions’ to psychological quandaries that are meant to rely on mere conceptual manoeuvers. It may well be that what we see in some of the situationist experiments, which are meant to demonstrate lack of stable dispositions or habits, is ‘habit interference’ rather than ‘habit non-existence’ – for example, where the strong habit of obeying orders from superiors interferes with and overrides the disposition of not harming others (Murphy, 2015). Yet, all these possible explanations and strategies notwithstanding, the practical question that remains for educators is the one that Miller (2016) asks: What can they do in order to prepare students for situations where the overall reason-­ responsiveness of their reactions will most likely be tested beyond the breaking point? In other words, at which point does education for flourishing move from an attempt to develop reasonable reactions to simply teaching students to avoid situations where their resolve is likely to falter in ways that can seriously diminish flourishing? If nothing else, the problem of situationism elicits a practical educational question to which I have no ready-made answer at the moment. The problem of sentimentalism. I use ‘sentimentalism’ here as an umbrella term for a range of interrelated theories that Jonathan Haidt (2007) has chosen to call ‘the new synthesis in moral psychology’: theories marrying hard sentimentalist ontology with nativism, social intuitionism and modularism. The ‘new synthesis’ draws, inter alia, upon state-of-the-art neuroscientific evidence, purported to show that in moral judgement, ‘intuition comes first, strategic reasoning second’ (Haidt, 2013, p. 286). Findings about how our emotion-and-intuition-controlled ‘dog’ simply wags its rational ‘tail’ ex post facto are meant to demonstrate that the typical virtue ethics view of the

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reflective and rational expression and development of moral traits is essentially misguided (Haidt, 2001). The new sentimentalism is also sometimes referred to as ‘social intuitionism’ because the purported affective and motivational primacy of genetically pre-programmed, pro-social intuitions notwithstanding, socialisation is said to exert ‘normative governance’ on those intuitions by helping us steer them into conformity with dominant familial or cultural norms. As a matter of fact, some of the critique by Haidt and his colleagues of hard rationalist moralities will be music to the ears of Aristotelian virtue ethicists. After all, no other moral theory is as sensitive to the emotional construction of self hood and morality. Yet virtue ethicists will consider the pendulum in the new sentimentalism to have swung too far away from reason, and they will in the end take no less serious an objection to Haidt than they do to Kant, seeing the former as representing the deficiency, and the latter the excess, of the golden mean of ‘soft’ (emotion-imbued) rationalism (Kristjánsson, 2018, chap. 2). But the sentimentalists remain unfazed, arguing – with some reason, it seems – that it is then incumbent on virtue ethicists to offer alternative explanations of the empirical findings in question. Implicit in this demand is also the charge that Aristotelian virtue ethics is seriously out of touch in not taking account of current neuroscientific research. The scientist Aristotle would probably be dividing his time between the philosophical armchair and the MRI lab if he were alive today, but it is true that not many current virtue ethicists seem to share Aristotle’s willingness to get his hands dirty. In what most count as a surprising twist, the new sentimentalists are eager to enlist Aristotle as an ally. Although Haidt sometimes suggests that we abandon the Greek worship of reason wholesale (2001, p. 822), at other times he wants to co-opt Aristotle to his camp. He understands and appreciates the idea of the ‘automaticity of virtue’ in Aristotle. He likes the idea that virtue qua second nature is but ‘a refinement of our basic nature, an alteration of our automatic responses’; and he absolutely ‘loves’ Aristotle’s ‘emphasis on habit’. In general, Haidt considers virtue ethics the moral theory that best accords with recent findings in moral psychology (Haidt & Joseph, 2004, pp. 61–62; Haidt, 2012b; 2012c). Unfortunately, Haidt’s sporadic Aristotelianism is largely based on misunderstandings. He seems, for instance, to labour under the illusion that ‘natural virtue’ in Aristotle is a primitive stage of virtue with which we are born and which we later refine. ‘Natural virtue’ is anything but that in Aristotle. It is actually a somewhat infelicitous name for a stage of habituated but non-phronetic virtue (see Curzer, 2012, pp. 305–307). There is, indeed, not a hint of the idea of any innate natural virtue in Aristotle. For while we are adapted by nature to receive virtue through being endowed with its raw materials, virtue does not ‘arise in us […] by nature’ (Aristotle, 1985, p. 33 [1103a23–26]), and we are born neither good nor bad. Furthermore, when writers on Aristotle mention ‘habit’, that term is actually used as an (unhelpful) rendering of his notion of hexis. A hexis is a dispositional state

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of character, incorporating emotion and reason as well as action; it is not the site of a spontaneous knee-jerk reaction. Haidt’s Aristotle thus constitutes a lean counterpart, if not a caricature, of the real Aristotle (see further in Kristjánsson, 2016). In what can truly count as fortunate developments for Aristotelian moral psychology, recent findings in affective and behavioural neuroscience seem to support Aristotle’s theories but to undermine the new sentimentalism. The picture of the intuitive system that is emerging is of an experience-based, statistically sophisticated and reason-friendly, even positively reason-stimulating, learning system that attunes us, in collaboration with our intellect, to reality (for overviews, see esp. Railton 2014; 2016a; 2016b, Sauer, 2017). The affective system seems to be constantly active in the business of evaluating and adjudicating alternatives – and in doing so, it draws on previous experiences and stored implicit knowledge. It thus recruits the human capacity for meta-cognition. What is more; it does not only do so at crunch moments when we meet with unexpected quandaries; rather, more like the Google search engine, it prepares ‘answers’ to ‘possible questions’ long before we ask them – by processing all the information that is already in the system and metabolising the past to simulate possible futures (Railton, 2016a, pp. 45–46; 2016b). The quickest of glances at the most recent findings from brain research thus seems to indicate that the ‘new synthesis in moral psychology’ is not so new after all, but rather empirically outdated. Emotions that trigger moral action are not non-cognitive, intuitive thrusts but rather mechanisms that are infused with reason and experience: mechanisms that both draw prospectively on intellectual considerations and stimulate further reflections as new situations evolve (cf. Sauer, 2017). Obviously, empirical brain research cannot corroborate directly Aristotle’s taxonomy of intellectual virtues or their role in moral decision-making, but it should encourage us to take a fresh look at his system and ask how it can enhance our understanding of the interplay between intuition and reason in people at different developmental and qualitative levels of moral functioning. All this said, I would not want to be understood as cavalierly brushing the new sentimentalism aside as not offering any challenge to Aristotle-inspired theories of character education and of education for flourishing. Any such theories will assume that people can be taught to make better and more reflective decisions about matters related to their character virtues (in character education) and also to many other factors that affect flourishing (such as diet, exercise, political orientation, choice of job and leisure activities) in education for flourishing – and that the processes leading up to those decisions are essentially reason-responsive and educable. Although a complete rejection of this assumption does not seem to be well grounded in current neuroscience, recent research findings do point in differing directions, and the recent rise of knee-jerk populism in some of the world’s best-educated countries does cast persistent doubts on the power of reasoning faculties to

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inform and infuse our gut reactions. It is precisely those doubts that are being exploited in different ways by both situationists and sentimentalists, and they do continue to pose serious threats to a theory such as the one proposed in the present book. Just as I was about to submit the manuscript of this monograph, an even more serious threat seemed to materialise with the publication of Robert Plomin’s much-publicised book Blueprint (2018), which argues for an extreme form of genetic determinism regarding almost all individual variables, including psycho-moral ones. It is not startling to see claims that about 50% of personality traits (including the Big-Five traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness) and the same proportion of people’s levels of subjective well-being are genetically pre-programmed (as illustrated, for example, by research into identical twins brought up in different environments); this has been known before. What is bold and startling about Plomin’s book is the claim that the 50% normally attributed to ‘nurture’ are (a) unsystematic, serendipitous and almost arbitrary effects, or (b) cases of ‘nature’ seeking out ‘nurture’ by preselecting environments that are in line with the person’s genetic predispositions, or (c) effects that mostly wash out anyway after adolescence. This includes the educative effects of parenting and schooling, which Plomin reduces mostly to random noises – with the exception of extreme nurture traumas, such as child abuse, which he writes off as statistical anomalies. I confess that I find these empirical claims implausible, in particular because of Plomin’s extreme selection bias with respect to background literatures. However, I leave that empirical misgiving aside to make a more fundamental conceptual point: Plomin seems to be completely oblivious to the nature of socio-moral contexts. Thus, when he argues that ‘agreeableness shows no influence of shared environment’, he equates this with the claim that nurture ‘does not teach children to be kind’ (2018, p. 74). What he forgets is that the Big-Five trait of agreeableness is a completely amoral one and does not necessarily have anything to do with what we would normally commend as ‘kindness’. The agreeable person simply has a tendency to be friendly to peers, irrespective of contexts. It could be friendliness to fellow members of a drug gang or a pedophile ring, for example (see further in Kristjánsson, 2013, chap. 3). So even if it were true that parents and teachers could not change a child’s overall level of agreeableness, it does not follow that they cannot teach the child to be kind in a moral sense. Personality is not the same as moral character. Given Plomin’s repeated stress on the ‘generalist’ nature of genes (2018, chap. 6), it would be completely alien to his theory if genes taught people to be agreeable to the right persons, at the right time, for the right reasons, in the right amount, as a moral concept of kindness would require. Indeed, it would require nothing less than a miracle of nature if genes pre-programmed people to identify the morally proper contexts for the exhibition of their traits. So, even if everything Plomin says about the effect of genes on subjective

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well-being and various personality variables were true, it would not render obsolete our efforts to help young people flourish in the morally laden Aristotelian sense.

Some further reflections on educational practice for flourishing While acknowledging at the beginning that this book is not a teaching manual and that some of the educational implications of flourishing theories may seem bland (at least from the perspective of those who already favour so-called liberal education), every chapter has touched upon potential classroom practice, in some form or another. Underlying the whole discourse on education for flourishing is the fundamental issue that John White (2011) reminds us not to overlook: what schools are really for. I agree with White that schools are basically there to help students fulfil their potential and flourish as human beings – although some disagreements with the nuts and bolts of White’s account have emerged at various junctures. In any case, there is no serious disagreement among flourishing theorists that education, in terms of both its content and the experiences of being in school, is vital for a flourishing life (and vice versa). This is also borne out in empirical studies (see Clement, 2010, for an overview of various older research findings). A recent study of nearly 3,000 primary and middle-school students in mainland China revealed school satisfaction as the strongest predictor of flourishing (Skrzypiec et al., 2018). A study of more than 50,000 individuals in 27 European countries found tertiary education to be significant for both satisfaction with life and flourishing ( Jongbloed, 2018). Recent studies of about 1,000 students in the Philippines showed that flourishing positively predicted self-report academic achievement of Filipino undergraduate students after controlling for age, gender and subjective well-being. Similarly, flourishing positively predicted objective measures of academic achievement, behavioural engagement and emotional engagement in Filipino high-school students after controlling for the influence of demographic variables and subjective well-being (Datu, 2018). I grumbled earlier about the ways in which ‘flourishing’ is measured in these (and many similar) studies, but I am not going to poke the methodological bear further here. Most likely, even if more objective measures had been administered, the link between education and flourishing would have remained strong. While not proposing to weigh in on any detailed pedagogical or curricular issues in this penultimate section, I will offer three sets of observations and clarifications as afterthoughts. The first observation is an apology. This book has been about what it means to be a flourishing person and how education can contribute to that ideal qua aim. I have systematically avoided larger structural questions of the flourishing school as an institution and of the complex policy changes that need

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to be spun, brokered and made (see e.g. Arthur, 2017; Spratt, 2017) before this ideal can be realised. Once again, the worry may obtrude that I rely too heavily on the individualist-sounding virtue ethics employed by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics but ignore equally important, but more collectivist, insights from his Politics (see e.g. Curren’s 2016 complaint). Although I do invoke the Politics whenever I meet with the objection that the ideal of education for flourishing is essentially individualistic – by pointing out that the Aristotelian form is clearly anything but, and that the historical Aristotle is more typically accused of excessive collectivism – I have not elaborated upon this response with anything like the care it deserves (compared e.g. to Curren’s 2000 classic). What Curren alerts us to is that eliciting insights from the Politics may involve more than simply adding an extra set of virtue ethical (in this case, communitarian or civic) considerations. In fact, the arguments presented by Aristotle there may motivate us to depart altogether from an exclusive virtue ethical foundation of flourishing. Now, I am not a virtue ethical fundamentalist and do not (e.g. contra Annas, 2015) find anything objectionable about suggesting that virtue ethics and other moral considerations complement each other at any level of engagement. In my native Iceland, for instance, I tend to be known as ‘the utilitarian philosopher’ for having defended utilitarianism repeatedly against crude objections lodged against it. At the end of Chapter 4 in my book on Aristotelian character education (2015), I endorsed Russell’s (2014) view that virtue ethics may need to borrow standard utilitarian manoeuvres to deal with pervasive global-scale problems. Curren (2016) is thinking more, however, in terms of laws, rules and duties – and in that case even Annas (2015) would agree that there are certain institutional and role-specific domains of morality in which rule-governed considerations are indispensable. I whole-heartedly agree with Curren that one cannot seriously imagine schools without rules, school leaders who do not refer to principles in modelling responsible decision-making, or practice in ‘good habits’ that is not rule-guided. Attention to just, respectful and measured rules and procedures becomes even more important as the research lens turns from flourishing individual students to schools as potentially flourishing institutions. Virtue-ethically-minded theorists tend to rue the over-reliance on carrots and sticks in professional training and practice (Schwartz & Sharpe, 2010). However, if I have created the impression that Aristotelian education for flourishing does not require a background of just laws and rules – and an institutional ethos characterised by mutual respect and goodwill – I can truly be accused of being an Aristotelian vulgariser. I take Curren’s point that I need to pay more explicit attention to those socio-political conditions in future work, despite my brief forays into some of the relevant issues in Chapter 2. Part of this apology is also to acknowledge that much more would ideally have to be said about the role and education of teachers as educators for

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flourishing. A paradigm of education for flourishing will need the contribution of teachers as much as teachers need such a paradigm to thrive as professionals (cf. Higgins, 2011, p. 10). It would be an egregious mistake to think, however, that a reconceived role as a facilitator of flourishing will come easily to the average teacher. Recent empirical literature teems with examples, from all over the world, of how badly teachers deem themselves prepared for tackling life’s biggest questions in the classroom. They complain about a dearth of attention to normative issues in teacher training and about their own lack of moral language and moral identity (see various references in Kristjánsson, 2015, chap. 7). As Higgins correctly observes, ‘restoring to its central place the flourishing of the practitioner is the first step in constructing a virtue ethics of teaching’ (2011, p. 10). In other words, before teachers can help students explore and answer adequately the question of what kinds of persons they want to become, in order to fulfil their potential, the teachers themselves need more extensive training in how to ask and answer such questions about themselves, at both the professional and personal levels. Indeed, it is hard to see how those two levels can be separated in practice: a consideration that casts doubt on the plausibility of de Ruyter’s example of someone who is flourishing as a teacher but not overall as a person (2004, p. 379). On my neo-Aristotelian theory of flourishing, at least, flourishing is not domain-specific in that way; it applies across the whole of one’s life. The second set of observations that I wish to add at this late juncture involves a warning signal about the ideal of education for flourishing being taken over by the crudest elements of what has become known as positive psychology (e.g. Layard, 2005, as distinct from the more sophisticated work by Peterson & Seligman, 2004; cf. Kristjánsson, 2013), or even being reduced, by educational bean counters, to a set of tick-box exercises where the boxes would mainly have to do with students’ subjective satisfaction scores or some purely economic outcomes. Even more so than positive psychology, economics is, as we know, an extremely self-satisfied discipline that tends to usurp findings from other disciplines for its own self-aggrandizement. The obsession with economic criteria has seen much of contemporary education descend into stale technocratic managerialism. Guilherme and Freitas (2017) raise all the right alarms here about what an impoverished school policy of education for happiness might look like (cf. also Cigman, 2018). MacAllister (2018) similarly warns against the possibility of a school curriculum that enhances only ‘pseudo’, as opposed to ‘real’, well-being by not paying heed to the basics insights of Nussbaum and Sen’s Aristotle-inspired ‘capabilities view’, but simply focusing instead on satisfying subjective well-being preferences. As Athanassoulis (2017) notes, a curriculum geared towards flourishing needs, for example, to leave considerable space for unhappiness experiences in terms of negatively valenced emotions and constructive failures (cf. also Miller, 2017). I choose to end this section with a third set of observations that add backbone to a recurring theme pervading this book – observations about the

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indispensable role of art in education for flourishing. My most significant departure from Aristotle’s own eudaimonic theory is perhaps the insistence that flourishing requires (at least intermittent) experiences of spine-shivering, breath-catching awe, as distinct from mere wonder (cf. Long, 2018, for some practical implications). I believe the arts – and education in the arts – can serve as an ‘ecstatic portal’ (Evans, 2017, p. 60) and may be as important as any discrete course on moral or character education could possibly be in terms of guidance towards the flourishing life. Menachem Mautner (2018, chap. 4) has recently written a spirited defence of the arts, art education and state support of the arts as necessary ingredients in what he calls ‘the liberalism of flourishing’ and which coincides substantially with an Aristotelian approach. Regarding the educative role of art, he believes it can (a) serve as a source of wisdom, (b) provide insight, (c) arouse political awareness and (d) serve as a means of moral education (2018, p. 91). I agree with all of Mautner’s points and have indeed often argued for point (d) before, although never in sufficient depth (cf. also Carroll, 2002). Mautner does not explicitly refer to arts education as an ‘ecstatic portal’ to self-­transcending experiences, but he does reference Charles Taylor and Gadamer on the role of artistic insight in the ‘eclipsing of familiarity’ (2018, pp. 103–104), and thus Mautner’s point (b) seems to include the features that I have been foregrounding in this book as belonging to the awe-inducing properties of artistic experiences. Let me return briefly to John White’s contention, taken to task in Chapter 5, that children should be introduced to ‘wonder’ but not to ‘awe’ proper (2011, p. 98). As an afterthought to White’s view, I could not help thinking of two pieces of poetry that transmit radically divergent messages on what children need to thrive spiritually. One by Martin (1999, chap. 35), often cited enthusiastically in Facebook posts, encourages us not to ask our children to strive for extraordinary lives but rather to find the wonder and the marvel of ordinary life, as in the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Compare that message to the following poem, written by my father: My mother lived in an earthen hut She could kindle Christmas with a little candle Once the fairy queen showed her Her palace And forever after its beauty Lived on in the eyes of that woman I was allowed to peek Under her arm (frá Djúpalæk, 1977, p. 24) Martin’s piece of poetry encapsulates White’s vision of education for wonder, rather than awe. White wants to exhaust awe of its breath of faery: of

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the danger of elevating children to a spiritual-cloud cuckoo land where they feast their senses upon mere chimeras. However, as White notes himself, by assuming that the extraordinary will somehow ‘take care of itself ’, an ideal of education for flourishing runs the danger of becoming ‘uninspiring’ (2011, p. 97); the heavenly alchemy, the blissful exuberance of awe, is missing – in whatever way we care to understand the ‘heavenly’ part. Just focusing on the ‘daily grind’ in the education of young people may stultify rather than enthral. On the view of awe that I have been proposing in this book, we should allow, even encourage, children to ‘peek under the arms’ of their educators and catch a glimpse of the sunlight that exists outside the cave of mundane human experiences. For only through emotional encounters with transcendence will we be able to live our lives to the full. I am well aware of the danger of artistic experiences descending into the sort of consumerist thrill-seeking, for the thrill’s own sake, against which the children’s author Philip Pullman, for one, has warned (cited in Evans, 2017, p. 22). Addiction to sensation can inspire, and be inspired by, unsavoury elements such as populism and religious fundamentalism (Evans, 2017, pp. 132–134). Yet empirical research also indicates that the arts constitute one of the domains (along with leisure-time physical activities and health-­enhancing exercise) where hedonic and eudaimonic well-­ being are significantly correlated (Huta, 2016). If there is one educational message to be taken away from this book, it is that education about and in arts remains the strongest bulwark against the sort of disenchantment that eats away at the roots of human flourishing. In the words of the great filmmaker Tarkovsky, Touched by a masterpiece, a person begins to hear in himself that same call of truth which prompted the artist to his creative act. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognize and discover ourselves, the depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions (Tarkovsky, 1989, p. 43).

Concluding remarks and future directions The subtitle of this book is ‘A Neo-Aristotelian View’. I have already taken up considerable space in justifying why ‘neo-Aristotelian’ is an apt designator. However, I would like to add a few words about the modest-sounding word ‘view’ here – as used by an author for whom modesty does not normally figure as a signature strength. In Chapter 2, I argued – albeit briefly – that the view advanced in this book about flourishing as the aim of education

Conclusions and reflections  191

deserves the label ‘theory’, at least on Sarid’s (2018) modest characterisation of what an educational theory is. A ‘theory’ distinguishes itself, on this characterisation, from a mere ‘view’ (or an ‘account’) that can simply comprise a loose amalgam of assumptions and ideas. A common objection levelled against those ethicists and educators who purport to be advancing ‘a theory’ is that the proposal on offer lacks specific-enough action guidance to count as a theory. This is a familiar objection to the whole enterprise of virtue ethics, for example (as discussed in Kristjánsson, 2002, chap. 2). I anticipate the concern that the action-guiding elements of my view of flourishing as the aim of education (in particular for standard classroom practice) have not been elicited with sufficient specificity to constitute a theory. I could try to bite that bullet and point, for instance, to Rousseau’s novel-cum-treatise on Émile that most educationists would want to characterise as offering an ‘educational theory’; yet historic doubts remain about what precise action guidance to wrench from it. Should all students be educated in the same way as Émile, out there in the woods, or is the way he is raised just some sort of a utopian ideal that the ordinary grind of school work can at best approximate intermittently? Another argumentative route would be to elicit Aristotle’s own observations on how theories in ethics and education can be expressed only ‘roughly and in outline’ (for why else would we need phronesis?). In any theoretical inquiry, the most important task is to identify the ‘first principle, i.e. the origin’, which in the case of a theory about the human good is eudaimonia, and a theory that outlines this ‘origin’ seems to be ‘more than half the whole’, whereas too many ‘digressions’ into details may ‘overwhelm our main task’ (Aristotle, 1985, pp. 4 and 18 [1094b20–21 and 1098a32–1098b5–7]). I do not want to labour this point here, however, nor rock any boats unnecessarily. If readers wish to understand this book as having just adumbrated a ‘view’ of education, rather than a full-blown ‘theory’, then I am fine with that label – and that is why I retained it in the subtitle. Truly remarkable as the renaissance of various Aristotelian approaches to education in recent years is (Curren, 2010), the crucial remaining question is not whether these approaches constitute a coherent ‘theory of education’ in their present form but, rather, whether they have what Lapsley (2016) calls ‘the markings of a progressive research program’. I am more optimistic about those prospects than Lapsley, but only if the approaches coalesce more than they have done so far and continue to move in the right directions (cf. various papers in White, Slemp & Murray, 2017). Those directions would, in my view, need to include the following: • •

More attention paid to the political and institutional conditions of flourishing schools and education for flourishing. More explicit departures from simplistic subjective measures to measures of flourishing as an objective variable.

192  Conclusions and reflections

• • •

• •

More detailed attempts to counter the threats posed by situationism and sentimentalism, both theoretically and educationally. More systematic exploration of the changes in curriculum and teaching methods that will be required for the aim of flourishing to be achieved (without presupposing that any educational magic bullets exist). More engagement with developmental psychology, especially the psychology of individual differences, to be able to individualise efforts at education for flourishing more effectively and to reach out to disenfranchised individuals and groups. More collaborations between teachers and parents to figure out how schools and homes can draw mutual benefit from each other’s efforts in enhancing the flourishing of young people. Better integration of a flourishing paradigm (including, but not confined to, character education) into teacher training.

Until recently, flourishing (eudaimonia) was rarely discussed outside of the hermetically sealed hothouse of Aristotelian philosophy. In the last few decades, hordes of academic psychologists have come on board, although their embrace of the basic tenets of eudaimonic philosophy is sometimes hesitant, lukewarm or skewed. At present, educationists and educators are joining the party also. Some academic trends become abortive, while others continue to catch on. I appeal to you, the readers of this book, to help move the flourishing discourse forward in order to make it enrich educational policy and practice.

Food for thought for practitioners 1 After reading through the ‘retrospective roadmap’ in the first section of this chapter, which of the arguments rehearsed there have you found most persuasive, and which least so, and why? 2 Do you agree with the author that the twelve features listed in the second section of this chapter all constitute ‘advantages’ of a flourishing theory of education? Or could some of them be viewed as disadvantages – and if so, why? 3 Which of the remaining problems discussed in the third section of this chapter is the most serious one facing a theory of education for flourishing, and why? 4 Which institutional features would characterise a ‘flourishing school’, above and beyond individual efforts by individual teachers in individual classrooms? 5 Does the view on flourishing as the aim of education advanced in this book contain sufficient action guidance for educational practitioners to warrant the label of ‘theory’?

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Index

admiration 136–41, 147–56, 158–9, 161, 167 Aldridge, D. 133 Algoe, S. B. 135, 151–2 Annas, J. 3, 16, 58–61, 65–6, 70, 80–1, 86, 135, 139, 164, 187 Anscombe, G. E. M. 170, 180 Aquino, K. 153 Ardelt, M. 139 Aristotelian character education 3–4, 14–24, 34, 75–80, 87, 93, 105, 110, 120–3, 135–6, 139, 159–60, 162–3, 170–92 Aristotle 2–5, 7–10, 12, 15–23, 27, 30–8, 40–3, 45–6, 48, 53–4, 56–65, 67–70, 73–81, 83–91, 93–101, 103, 107, 109–110, 114, 120–3, 130, 132–6, 138, 140–2, 145, 147–9, 151, 153–75, 177–181, 183–4, 187, 189, 191–2 Armor, D. A. 128 Arpaly, N. 179 art 66, 94, 105, 111, 129–30, 132–3, 154, 149, 161, 176, 189–90 Arthur, J. 3, 17–18, 35, 38, 186–7 Asher, K. 97, 120, 181 Athanassoulis, N. 140, 188 authenticity 6, 57, 140, 172 autonomy 7, 10, 20, 29–30, 46, 55, 98, 118, 124, 167 awe 2, 31, 33, 93–9, 102, 104–9, 111–3, 117, 122, 128–34, 138, 151–4, 158–9, 161, 163, 165–9, 189–90 Baehr, J. 16–17 Batson, C. D. 116 Battaly, H. 123–4 Baumeister, R. F. 7 Bennett, J. 111

Besser-Jones, L. 20, 29, 61–2 Bien, T. 117 Big Five 78, 123, 153, 179, 185 Björnsdóttir, K. 36 Blackie, L. E. R. 36, 128 Bohlin, K. 43 Bondeson, W. 121 Brecht, B. 144 Brighouse, H. 4, 7, 10, 26, 29, 32, 37, 45, 47–8, 63, 110 Broadie, S. 93 Brooks, D. 79, 135, 144–6, 167 Bundick, M. J. 44 Burke, E. 131 Burke, K. 39 Burn, E. 18 Burnyeat, M. F. 178 Calhoun, C. 63 Campbell, E. 38–40, 51 Carr, D. 18, 61, 69, 98, 111, 176, 180 Carroll, N. 189 Chan, S. Y. 157–8 Chapman, A. 12, 35 Chappell, T. 100, 111, 120 Cherkowski, S. 26 Cigman, R. 49–50, 63, 139, 164, 179, 188 Clement, N. 186 Colby, A. 79, 135, 146–7, 167 Confucius 16, 19, 34, 80, 95, 157–60, 167 contemplation 23, 64, 74, 79, 84–90, 94–6, 98–9, 103, 108, 122–3, 165–6, 168 continence see self-control Cooper, J. 175 Cottingham, J. 94, 103, 117 Crain, E. 138 Crespo, R. F. 70

Index 211 Crisp, R. 77, 81, 85 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 7, 60, 66, 108 Curren, R. 171, 177, 187, 191 Curzer, H. J. 9, 11, 15, 35, 37, 48, 75–8, 81, 83–4, 87–8, 90 Cyrus, M. 138 Damascus experience 102, 114, 116, 123, 125–6, 129, 145, 166; see also moral conversion Damon, W. 42–4, 51, 79, 112, 135, 146–7, 167 Darbor, K. E. 95 Darling–Hammond, L. 33 Darnell, C. 178 Datu, J. A. D. 177, 186 Davis, J. 126 De Freitas, A. L. S. 188 De Nicola, D. R. 31 Deci, E. 7, 29, 55, 57 Dees, R. H. 117 Diener, E. 61, 177 disenchantment 2, 23, 91–4, 98–102, 107–10, 129–30, 132, 138, 165–6, 169, 190 Dissanayake, E. 94 Doddington, C. 112 D’Olimpio, L. 40 Doris, J. 181 Dostoyevsky, F. 50, 104, 115 Duckworth, A. 17, 34, 172 Dunlop, W. L. 135 Dunne, J. 94 Ecclestone, K. 28 ecstasy 66, 93, 95–6, 98–100, 108, 111, 120, 126, 130–1, 153, 189 Egan, K. 106 elevation 2, 96, 111, 117, 131, 135, 137–8, 141, 148, 150–6, 158–161, 166 elitism 22, 44–7, 78, 163 Emerson, R. W. 101, 154 emotion 1, 7, 10, 12, 15–17, 21, 30, 69, 74, 76, 80, 88–9, 91, 95–9, 106–7, 117, 122–3, 127–8, 130–2, 135–42, 147–62, 165–7, 173, 182–4, 190 emulation 50, 74, 79–80, 135–62, 67; see also role modelling enchantment 2, 89, 91–113, 115, 123, 132, 145, 163, 165–6, 168 Enright, J. 4 epiphanies see moral conversion

eudaimonia 1–2, 5–9, 12, 23, 27, 29–31, 34, 41, 45, 53–60, 86–7, 91–6, 99, 109–10, 122, 128, 146, 154, 162–4, 168–72, 177, 189–92; Evans, J. 44, 46, 94–5, 98, 101, 107–8, 133, 189–90, 193 exemplar methodology see role modelling Fattore, T. 30 Ferrari, M. 138–9 Fessler, D. M. T. 152 Fetter, J. T. 85 Flanagan, O. 5, 13, 40, 42, 45, 52, 94, 99–101, 104–5 flatness see disenchantment flourishing see eudaimonia; education for 23–51, 71–2, 79–80, 89–90, 105–13, 131–4, 139–40, 159–61, 167, 174, 186–92; external necessities for 10–11, 30, 33–40, 74, 78, 85–6; measurement of 6, 18–19, 53–60, 70, 176–7; politics of 3, 13, 22–4, 33–40, 44–51, 173–4 flow 7–9, 20, 31, 33, 60–6, 98, 108, 172–3 Foot, P. 33 Formby, E. 44 Fowers, B. J. 9, 57 Fowler, T. 176 Francesconi, D. 12 Frankl, V. E. 99 Frá Djúpalæk, K. 189 Frede, D. 142 Fu, P.-J. 158 Gibbs, J. C. 119, 126–7, Grant, C. A. 39–40 Greyson, B. 127 Griffin, E. 127–8 Griffin, J. 98 Grönroos, G. 61, 67 Guilherme, A. 188 Gulliford, L. 18, 67, 83, 180 Hadzigeorgiou, Y. 106–7 Haidt, J. 108, 130–1, 135, 150–4, 159, 161, 167, 182–4 Haldane, J. 106 Hall, A. 55, 63, 71 Han, H. 41, 140 Hand, M. 46, 175

212 Index Hanley, R. 79 happiness 6–7, 37, 52–73, 75, 83–4, 92, 164, 168, 173, 177, 188; see also pleasure Harari, Y. N. 43 Harðarson, A. 61 Hardy, A. 92, 94 Harkness, K. L. 126 Harrison, T. 18 Hay, D. 94, 105, 111, 169–73 Haybron, D. M. 4, 6–10, 21, 56, 65, 169–73 Hayes, D. 28 health 11, 22, 34–6, 55, 61, 118, 178, 181, 190 Heidegger, M. 36 Henderson, C. 96, 106–9 Higgins, C. 39, 188 Hills, A. 29 Hogan, P. 133 Homiak, M. 35 Hornby, N. 64 Howell, R. J. 141 Hume, D. 169 Huppert, F. 55–6 Hursthouse, R. 35 Huta, V. 57, 154, 190 Huxley, A. 133 ideal theory 3, 15–16, 20, 24, 27, 37, 47–52, 69–70, 76, 80, 100, 112, 163 Immordino-Yang, M. H. 149 incontinence 22, 48, 68–9, 76, 140, 179 individualisation see pluralism integrity 178–9 Irvine, W. B. 117–18 Irwin, T. H. 149, 154, 156 Ivie, S. D. 100 Jacobs, J. 5 James, W. 117, 125–7, 143, 167 Jayawickreme, E. 36, 128, 181 Jonas, M. 117, 119, 133 Jones, M. L. 98, 107 Jordan, K. 171 Joseph, C. 183 Joyce, J. 115 Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues 16, 175 Kant, I. 47, 53, 65, 76–7, 81, 118–19, 140, 169, 171, 183 Kárason, Ó. 66, 68, 92, 103, 111–12

Kazmierczak, M. 115 Keltner, D. 108, 130–1, 151 Kemp, R. 124 Kesebir, P. 61, 177 Kessler, T. 150, 152 Keyes, C. L. M. 55 Kim, M.-S. 157–8, 160 Kinghorn, W. 20 Knobel, A. 121 Knoop, H. H. 31–2 Knuuttila, S. 98–9 Kohlberg, L. 22, 76, 114, 118–22, 166 Kotzee, B. 89 Kramer, R. 118 Kripke, S. 136 Kristjánsson, K. 2–5, 13–14, 17–18, 20–1, 28, 30, 33–6, 41, 43, 45, 47, 54, 57, 60, 73–4, 76, 78–9, 82–3, 85, 87, 93, 95–7, 100, 116–117, 120–1, 123, 130–1, 135, 138–9, 141, 144–5, 153–4, 157–9, 165, 169–71, 173–4, 177, 180–5, 188, 191 Kuhn, T. 107 Kwon, S. 43 Landis, S. K. 152 Lapsley, D. 170, 177–80, 191 Laven, M. 153 Laxness, H. 66, 92 Layard, R. 188 Lewes, G. H. 93 liberal education 24, 31, 186 liberalism 30, 38–9, 44–6, 89, 134, 175–6, 189 Locke, J. 44, 176 Lonergan, B. J. F. 116 Long, K. 111, 189 Longinus, C. 133 Lorimer, D. 127 MacAllister, J. 39, 45, 188 Machura, P. 45 MacIntyre, A. 39–40, 51, 82, 169 MacLaughlin, A. J. 117–18, 126–9 MacLeod, A. K. 19, 54, 56–7, 59–61 Macmurray, J. 173 McCrae, R. R. 123 McFerren, B. 153 McPherson, D. 94, 103 magnanimity see megalopsychia Marquez, M. J. 140 Martin, W. 189 Maslow, A. 100–1, 119, 126, 158

Index 213 Mason, J. 30 Mautner, M. 30, 46, 124, 189 meaning(fullness) 1–2, 7, 10–11, 26, 30, 40–4, 57, 66, 91–2, 98, 103, 112, 126, 162–3, 168 megalopsychia 11, 21, 23, 37, 41, 65, 73–90, 95, 149, 164–5, 168 Mencius see Mengzi Mengzi 138, 156–60, 167 Merry, M. S. 102 Mesurado, B. 70 Metz, T. 42, 101 Metzger, E. 171 Meyer, S. S. 21 Michalos, A. C. 181 Mill, J. S. 30, 46, 54, 142–3, 167 Miller, A. 133, 188 Miller C. 177–8, 182 Monin, B. 140 Monk, R. 63 Monroe, S. M. 126 moral conversion 2, 31, 100, 102, 114–34, 141, 145, 158, 166–7; see also Damascus experience moral virtue 9, 16, 18–22, 36, 41, 64, 66, 73–90, 96, 106–7, 110, 122, 128, 146, 165; see also virtue Morgan, B. 18, 83, 184 Morland, P. 118 Morris, I. 3 Morton, J. M. 35 Mossman, A. 131 Moulin-Stożek, D. 175 Müller, J. 67 Murdoch, I. 99–100 Murphy, J. B. 174, 182 Murray, A. S. 191 Nagel, T. 103 Narvaez, D. 26, 31, 180 naturalism 2, 5, 70, 91, 93–4, 99, 101–6, 126, 154, 170, 180 Navarro, M. A. 152 near-death studies 116, 126–7, 129, 166 neo-Aristotelianism 2, 5, 9, 14, 29, 35, 39, 69, 79, 86, 91, 93–4, 103, 109, 135–6, 141, 162–81, 188, 190–1 Newberg, A. B. 114, 116 Noddings, N. 6, 45 Nussbaum, M. C. 6, 33, 38, 44, 86, 95–6, 104, 108, 188 Nye, R. 94, 105, 111

Onu, D. 150, 152 Oswald, A. J. 56–7 Pakaluk, M. 82, 84–5 paternalism 44–7, 51, 163, 175–6 Paul, L. A. 125 Paul, S. K. 35 Peterson, C. 57, 110, 172, 188 philistinism 64–5, 69, 72, 84–5, 93–7, 103, 111, 159, 165 phronesis 16–22, 30, 41, 46, 57, 76–7, 83, 86–8, 121–3, 128, 134, 141, 156, 160, 177–80, 183, 191 Pieters, R. 149 Pinker, S. 14, 168 Plato 2, 20, 48, 80, 93, 96, 98–100, 104, 107, 111, 113, 119–20, 122, 128, 130, 133, 145, 153, 155–7 pleasure 6–8, 29, 53–4, 59–62, 67, 71, 84, 87, 95, 141, 173; see also happiness Plomin, R. 185 pluralism 13, 19–23, 30, 45, 71, 77–8, 171–92 Poe, E. A. 68 positive psychology 3–7, 19, 29, 55, 60, 99, 101, 110, 126, 130, 135, 151, 172, 188 postmodernism 10, 13, 39, 169 Proctor, C. 57 progressivism 12, 14, 162, 168–9 purpose(fullness) 1–2, 10–11, 23, 40–4, 51, 55, 85–6, 91–2, 102, 112, 126, 162–3, 168, 172 Rabbås, Ø. 45 Railton, P. 184 Reber, R. 44 Relativism 19, 118, 171 religion 2, 34, 53, 93, 101–6, 110–12, 114, 116, 125–9, 134, 145, 159, 166, 190 Roberts, M. P. 28 Roberts, R. C. 67, 83, 137, 151 role modelling 15, 44, 74–5, 79–80, 123, 135–61, 164, 167; see also emulation Rönnlund, A. R. 14 Roper, J. 152 Rosling, H. 14 Rosling, O. 14 Rousseau, J.-J. 191, 128, 145 Rubin, D. C. 127 Russell, D. C. 11, 78, 187

214 Index Ruyter, D. J. de 4, 7, 9–10, 24, 26–33, 37, 40, 46–50, 52, 102, 106, 110, 163, 188 Ryan, R. 7, 29, 55, 57, 124, 154 Ryff, C. D. 54–5, 57 Ryle, G. 137 Ryncarz, R. A. 119 Sanderse, W. 76, 79, 100, 135, 138–9 Sarapin, S. H. 139, 150 Sarid, A. 27, 191 Sauer, H. 184 Sawyer, P. J. 126–7, 140 Schindler, I. 150 Schinkel, A. 9, 24, 27–9, 31, 33, 46–50, 52, 108, 112, 117, 119 Schnall, S. 152 Schneider, K. J. 128–9, 132 Schwartz, B. 187 science education 33, 92, 106–13 Segvic, H. 41 self-change see moral conversion self-control 2, 18, 21–2, 48, 62, 76, 121, 123, 140, 160, 163, 172, 178–9 self-determination theory (SDT) 7, 29, 55, 58 self-report 18, 55–7, 70, 153, 177, 186 selftranscendence 2, 84, 94–113, 119, 131, 151, 163, 165–6, 168, 189–90 self-transformation see moral conversion Seligman, M. E. P. 29, 33, 57, 110, 172, 188 Sen, A. 38, 188 sentimentalism 169, 175–6, 182–5, 192 Sharpe, K. E. 187 Sheldon, K. M. 58–62, 65, 70–1 Sherman, N. 178 Shiota, M. N. 131 Shmotkin, C. 55 Siegel, H. 45 Siegel, J. T. 152 Silvers, J. 152 Sim, M. 80, 95, 157 situationism 175–6, 181–2, 185, 192 Slemp, G. R. 191 Smith, J. R. 150, 152 Snow, N. 20–1, 29, 61, 112, 133 So, T. T. C. 55–6 sobjectivism 8, 57–61, 172 social intuitionism 147, 182–3 spirituality 2–3, 93–4, 101–5, 110–12, 126, 133, 151, 166, 190; see also religion Spratt, J. 186–7

Steutel, J. 21–2 Suissa, J. 34 supernaturalism 91, 93, 101–6, 127, 165 Svanaeus, F. 36 Swann, W. B., Jr. 123–4, 134 Swanton, C. 141, 174, 177 Sylvan, L. 149 Talarico, J. M. 127 Tan, Y.-C. 158 Tang, T. Z. 128 Tarkovsky, A. 190 Taylor, C. 93–4, 98–9, 101–4, 130, 169, 189 Taylor, S. E. 128 Taylor, T. E. 176 Tessman, L. 63 theism see religion Thoma, S. 17, 35 Thomson, A. L. 152 Thórarinsdóttir, K. 36 Thorburn, M. 28, 36 Thrash, T. M. Tiberius, V. 29, 53–5, 63, 71 Tietjen, R. R. 133 Tobia, K. P. 96 Tough, P. 17 transcendence see self-transcendence Tung, W. Y. 158 Tweed, R. 57 universalism 12–13, 20, 162, 168–9 Van de Ven, N. 149 Van der Ritj, J.-W. 140, 149 Van Kessel, C. 39 Vanderweele, T. J. 57 Vasalou, S. 96 Ventis, W. L. 116 virtue 2–4, 6–9, 11, 13–23, 25, 27, 32, 34–7, 40–1, 46, 48–9, 53, 55–67, 69–70, 73–8, 92, 95–100, 102, 106–7, 109–110, 119–23, 128, 131, 133, 136–9, 140–41, 144, 146, 149, 151, 156–67, 170–2, 174–84, 187–8, 191; see also moral virtue Vittersø, J. 53 Vogler, C. 133 Vos, P. H. 139 Wake Forest University 135 Walker, D. I. 17, 28, 43, 176

Index 215 Walker, K. 26 Walker, L. J. 135 Walker, M. 6 Watson, E. 30 well-being: as subjective see happiness; as objective see eudaimonia Weststrate, N. M. 139 White, J. 4–6, 10, 13, 26, 28–33, 37–9, 42, 47–50, 101, 105–6, 110–111, 163, 165, 175, 186, 189–191 White, M. A. 191 Wierzbicka, A. 155 Wilcken, M. 74, 85 Williams, B. 67–8, 72 Wilson-Strydom, M. 6 Wittgenstein, L. 49, 63–4 Wolbert, L. S. 4, 9, 24, 26–9, 31, 33, 37, 46–50, 52

Wolf, S. 11, 42 Wollstonecraft, M. 65 Wolstenholme, C. 44 wonder 31, 33, 73–4, 84, 86, 88–90, 95–99, 105–9, 122, 165–6, 168–9, 189 Wong, D. B. 157, 160 Wu, S. 56–7 Xun, L. 115 Yaden, D. B. 114, 116 Yu, J. 157–8, 160 Zagzebski, L. 79, 136–8, 141, 147–56, 159, 167 Zeelenberg, M. 149