It is likely that Jefferson borrowed the three rights from John Locke. Almost a century prior to the American declaration, the English philosopher had written in Two Treatises on Government that government existed to protect a person’s “life, liberty and estate.” By estate, Locke surely meant property or “the possession of outward things,” as expressed in A Letter Concerning Toleration. We can find, however, in Jefferson’s revision of Locke’s three rights, a synthesis of Lockean philosophy, particularly drawing upon Locke’s phrase the “pursuit of true and solid happiness” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Jefferson’s synthesis of Lockean philosophy marked a turn away from previous expressions of rights in the Americas, particularly in the “Virginia Declaration of Rights” adopted in his home state a month prior to the ratification of the U.S. Declaration.

What all this means in terms of political philosophy is for greater minds than mine to figure out. The idea of happiness and the pursuit of it ought to capture our attention. What is “true and solid happiness?” To answer this, we need to address the matter of what we mean by “the good life.” I like how Jonathan Pennington puts it in Jesus the Great Philosopher:

“The Good Life is not referring to the lives of the rich and famous as revealed in the tabloid or expose show. The Good Life refers to the habits of practiced wisdom that produce in the human soul deep and lasting flourishing.”

Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 29.

The good life requires an amount of practice in the habits of virtue. Only when well-practiced in the way of wisdom can a person experience “true and solid happiness.”

What is Happiness?

So what exactly is happiness? This is a question that goes all the way back to the ancient philosophers. Plato, for instance, understands happiness as the highest aim or goal of life. There is a moral aspect to this happiness encompassed in the word eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία). It could be the stronger feeling of unhappiness occurs when one falls short of this goal or target. Sin or hamartia (ἁμαρτία) in this understanding is a falling short of the highest aims of life or missing the mark, to draw upon the imagery of archery. This is the essence of tragedy, according to ancient writers. The individual who is not heroic enough to live up to the highest aim of life and yet is not truly a villain, falls short of the eudaimonic standard. Misfortune befalls that person though the simple circumstances of life, and that individual falls prey to their own frailty, thereby experiencing unhappiness not because they are the worst of villains, but rather because of not living up to the high ideal of the good life.

Plato spells out different forms of happiness in the allegory “The Charioteer” that is instructive. In the Phaedrus, he shares the story of a charioteer driving two winged horses each having an opposite character. The first is wild with passion and impulsivity. It is easily distracted by fleeting desires and would easily be led off course. This horse is most interested in instant pleasures. These characteristics make it such that the charioteer must ever be watchful over this horse and can never have a moment of ease, because he cannot trust the horse to guide itself toward the proper path ahead.

The second horse is a noble creature. It loves what is honorable, modest and temperate. Guided by a simple direction, this horse pursues a pathway to that end despite the many distractions that might meet it on the highway. The charioteer has instilled many good habits, training the noble horse such that the charioteer has implicit trust in the animal, safe in the knowledge that nothing could cause this horse to stray from the proper path ahead.

I think this allegory speaks to something within all of us. We are simultaneously the wild and the well-trained horse, contain both base passions and noble bearing. And yet, we can differ from one another in how much we entrust to which horse to guide us in life. It is this very idea that has caused confusion as to the meaning of Jefferson’s phrasing, “the pursuit of happiness.” In the guise of the first horse, this is the pursuit of fleeting desires, it is the distracted life of instant pleasures. These are simply not the hallmarks of the highest aim of life. Rarely would we say that a life spent in fleeting desires and instant pleasures is a life well lived. After many years inundated by advertisements that equate these desires and pleasures with the good life, we are often tempted to consider these as the status symbols of nobility. But I think this is hardly the Jeffersonian vision. It is certainly not envisioned in the ancient philosophical tradition. And hardly the biblical vision of the good life.

Our definition of happiness seems more associated with the second horse. The horse of noble bearing charts a course towards the true end of the journey, recognizing fleeting desires and instant pleasures as distractions from the deeply satisfying bliss of accomplishing life’s highest aim. Now it might be argued that we cannot arrive at that highest aim, so wouldn’t it just be good enough to simply enjoy the fleeting desires and instant pleasures life affords. But what one notices about the second horse is that the deeply satisfying bliss comes not in the conclusion of the journey, but on the entirety of the pathway towards that end. Whether we arrive at our highest aim or not, it is the pursuit of that deeply satisfying bliss that is itself deeply satisfying. This, then, must be our definition of happiness.

The Dopamine Problem

I alluded a moment ago to the fact that both horses reside within. It would be too simple to equate our dopaminergic system with the wild horse, even though dopamine generally gets a bad rap. Our motivational system utilizes an array of neurotransmitters to reward us, giving us that feeling of pleasure in response to stimuli our body wants more of. It would be all too easy to equate happiness with hormones in our brains. And yet, this whole system is entirely relevant.

Suffice it to say that the dopaminergic system is rather blind to the type of stimulus it receives. One can experience a dopamine release from reading a good book or taking a bite of cotton candy. You and I know there’s a significant difference in time invested as well as the relative the health benefits of these two activities. But our neurology cares not. There is a release of dopamine for either activity. To put it another way, both horses get fed even though one is a wild horse liable to go astray in pursuit of fleeting pleasures while the other is a noble and faithful creature.

A recent study was able to find, though, a dopaminergic answer to the question of instant versus delayed gratification. Yes, we get a dopamine hit regardless. However, a 2021 study investigated the dopaminergic (DAergic) release differential during delayed gratification in comparison to instant gratification. They write:

“We found remarkable and sustained DAergic activation when mice managed to wait longer and further demonstrated a causal link between DAergic activation and the increase in transient waiting probability. Furthermore, we found DAergic activity ramps up in a consistent manner during waiting, mimicking the value of waiting along with a series of states in our Continuous Deliberation RL model, both of which presumably contributed to pursuing a more valuable future goal and resisting the distraction of the less-optimal immediate options in our task.”

Gao, Zilong et al. “The neural basis of delayed gratification.” Science Advances vol. 7,49 (2021).

In exchange for an allegory of horses, we now have the mythology of mice in rather modern garb. Let’s break down what this study finds. For mice that waited, or experienced delayed gratification, the dopamine release was stronger, and there was more of it experienced over time. Not only that, but there was another impact in that the anticipation of a future goal caused an amount of dopamine to be released. In simple terms, the dopamine experienced with fleeting desires and instant pleases does not stack up against the dopamine experienced with deeply satisfying bliss. Or to put it yet another way. Although both horses get fed, one gets a basic meal while the other receives a more balanced diet.

So what keeps us from the pursuit of this better quality dopamine reward? Why is it that today we tend not to feed our better horse with a healthy diet and are quite happy to go on feeding a fattened wild horse? The answer to this is effort.

The pursuit of true happiness is effortful work. The pathway to deeply satisfying bliss is often not much fun and is associated with highly demanding practices. If we take seriously, however, the thesis of Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, it is the effortful work that is both rare and valuable in our world of distraction. What emerges is an economy of higher and lower values. I could scroll Facebook, and my dopaminergic system really likes that in the moment. In fact, it will tell me to keep on scrolling to squeeze out just a little bit more dopamine. But when I wake up from the rather shallow world of Facebook scrolling, I end up feeling empty and hollow. I get the symptoms of effortful work, but nothing to show for it. I feel like I did something, but in the end it amounts to nothing.

Compare this to, say, writing a 3000-word article on happiness (or reading a 3000-word article on happiness as you are now doing). It takes genuine effort to piece together a stream of thoughts. One must be careful to write clearly and accurately. There is intellectual work to be done both in the writing and in the reading of such a work. And when one is done with such a work, the feeling of tiredness occurs because effort was spent. It is demanding work. Attention must remain focused. There are moments when it is not quite fun. But in the end, not only does one feel like something was done, there is something of quality to show for one’s effort. Obviously, the reader will have to evaluate the relative quality of the writing and the thinking. But let’s say the writing is of rather middling quality. It still stands as something accomplished. Sure, one could go on to improve upon the ideas and the clarity of expression. The deep satisfaction comes at the thought that good effort has been spent, even if one has not arrived at the highest ideal.

Practicing Happiness

Practicing happiness has been a bit of a catch phrase in positive psychology. It is a method of proactively cultivating positive emotions to improve our wellbeing. When we cultivate gratitude, kindness, and optimism, there are positive effects that can be seen in our physical and mental health. In light of the discussion above, I want to add to this line of reasoning that effortful work put into our moral formation seems to be exactly the kind of endeavor that aligns with this concept of practicing happiness.

Many turn to positive psychology in an effort to alleviate stress. So it might seem strange to engage in effortful work. Here I think the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on “flow” gives us a framework for understanding how effortful work can actually be a stress management tool. A very basic understanding of flow is the experience a person has when they are fully immersed in what they are doing. I often imagine my son immersed in building with Legos when he was younger. He could sit for hours building without any real sense of an outside world. He was fully absorbed in what he was doing.

In his work on “flow” Csikszentmihalyi considers two realities that are present. The first reality we might call detachment. The immersive state causes an individual to “forget all the unpleasant aspects of life.” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) Thus, a deep engagement in effortful work can be a practice of detachment from anxiety and stress. We frequently engage in stress relieving activities such as watching YouTube videos or playing video games to create a type of detachment. But these activities are rarely ones that get us into the flow state that Csikszentmihalyi describes. So, the next time you are beset with anxiety or stress, consider some kind of more effortful practice that could get you into a state of flow. It could be as simple as piecing together a puzzle, tending a garden plot or reading a book.

The second reality we might call experiential happiness. Csikszentmihalyi shares how the flow state is associated less with hedonic pleasure and more with eudemonic happiness. This sounds rather familiar! By choosing experiences that immerse us into effortful work, we build up a reservoir of happiness that deepens as we acquire greater skill, see progress in our work, and have something to show for our work. Consider the happiness that is gained as a puzzle is completed, a garden bed blooms in season after season, or our bookshelf showcases a number of beloved favorites. For me the practice of running has been a place of flow. For years I have tracked my mileage and feel a deep satisfaction in the places I’ve run, the people I’ve run with, and the insights I’ve gained out on the trails.

This kind of deep work, of entering into flow, is an investment in yourself and you reap the reward of better mental and physical health. Now what I would like to add to my basic thesis here is that effortful work on our moral formation can’t help but contribute to a betterment of our mental and physical health. This takes me back to the ancient philosophers. Happiness or eudaimonia occurred as a result of virtues or arete (ἀρετή). Both Plato and Aristotle see virtues as excellences that we practice.

Newport, for his part, seems to have a profound understanding of this philosophical tradition when he describes the “sacredness inherent in traditional craftsmanship.” (Newport, Deep Work). Virtues are practices just like a wheelwright or blacksmith practices their craft. We grow in the skill of courage or faithfulness. We don’t acquire courage and then consider that done. In other words, there is always more to learn as we exercise the moral part of ourselves.

This leads to a consideration of how all of life is the pursuit of virtue. I really like how Alasdair MacIntyre captures the interplay of the virtues and the good life in his book After Virtue. He writes:

“The virtues are precisely those qualities the possession of which will enable an individual to achieve eudaimonia and the lack of which will frustrate his movement toward that telos. But although it would not be incorrect to describe the exercise of virtues as a means to the end of achieving the good for man, that description is ambiguous.”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 148.

From this we gather that one cannot pursue happiness without the possession of virtues. This speaks to how important it is to set our young ones on a path of virtue from an early age. To do otherwise is to set them on a course of frustration throughout life. This does not mean that virtue cannot be acquired when older. But how much easier is it when a course is set properly from the beginning. MacIntyre goes on, though, to elaborate how the good life entails the continual practicing of virtues.

“But the exercise of the virtues is not in this sense a means to the end of the good for man. For what constitutes the good for man is a complete human life lived at its best, and the exercise of the virtues is a necessary and central part of such a life, not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such a life.”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 149.

This sounds like a call for daily exercise, not of the physical sort, but of the moral sort. The virtues are to be practiced like a basketball free throw is practiced. One considers good moral exemplars, and then tries to “follow through” like they do. Each new day brings a new opportunity to practice patience or moderation or humility or any other virtue. Many of us will have daily practices such as a time of prayer, a run, or a family dinner. These are highly commendable and worth maintaining. To these I would recommend a daily virtue practice. It might look like the virtue journal kept by Benjamin Franklin. Or it might simply be a daily contemplation of a virtue you will practice. The idea here is to treat virtue as something to be continually exercised in the pursuit of true happiness.

A Biblical Exposition on Happiness

Far from being a coda or a proforma addition to what has largely been a philosophical article up to this point, I find it striking how the biblical testimony has always had an undercurrent of moral direction connected to personal happiness in communion with God. I recollect coming across this in my research on 1 Peter where Peter quotes Psalm 34. Despite his reputation as an “uneducated, common” man (Acts 4:13), Peter’s epistle stands alongside the great philosophers for its depth of thought and expression.

Psalm 34 as he quotes it reads:

“Whoever desires to love life and see good days,

Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit;

Let him turn away from evil and do good;

Let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

And his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Surrounding this quotation, Peter calls his readers to live a blessed life through the practice of virtues. He list several in 1 Peter 3:8—unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, a humble mind. In this life, we won’t be able to follow the path of happiness unhindered. This he writes, “But even if you should suffer for righteousess’ sake, you will be blessed” (1 Peter 3:14).

What we can take from this is that the Christian life is a well-practiced life. I am quick to point out how much we are reliant on the work of Christ to make us righteous and to provide the energies of our sanctification. But let us be clear that in following in the footsteps of Christ (1 Peter 2:21), we are indeed a fellowship of virtue practicers. Our course in following Christ is set on seeing good days and desiring to love life.

I am mindful as I conclude that I haven’t mentioned one word about education. And that is fine. As this is the summertime, this article is meant first and foremost to feed the souls of educators rather than to provide a teaching methodology. Yet, I think one can discern in and through much that is written here how central these ideas are to a sound philosophy of education. What is the highest calling for us as educators, but to show our students the pathway to happiness in life. And that will come as we ourselves enter into this pursuit of happiness.

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This has been a deliberate rhetorical and pedagogical move: an attempt to begin with what is near at hand and understood by modern educators, before exposing its weaknesses and proposing a productive solution based in ancient wisdom. Sometimes on Educational Renaissance we begin with what is new before arcing back to what is past; other times it is appropriate to begin with the wisdom of the past before connecting it to modern research. It may sound strange to some, but in this case I think that Bloom provides the perfect entree to Aristotle.

In this article I will begin situating Aristotle’s intellectual virtues as a part of his holistic philosophy of education. And since Aristotle’s viewpoints are not necessarily authoritative, however much we may revere the accomplishments of “the philosopher,” as Aquinas called him, we will have to lay out how Christians might appropriate his philosophy within a Christian worldview. After all, the early Christian apologist Tertullian’s famous question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” still needs to be answered today, even if centuries of Christian thought have done so adequately in their own cultural moment. 

We will thus first delve into Aristotle’s philosophy in the opening book of the Nicomachean Ethics. It is necessary to lay a good foundation in Aristotle’s thought generally, if we are to understand his intellectual virtues specifically. Second, we will see how his intellectual virtues fit within his broader paradigm of human happiness as the proper goals of education. Third, along the way we will make reference to the Bible and Christian theology in order to show how Aristotle’s philosophy might be appropriated within a truly Christian understanding of life and education.

The Purpose of Education as the Purpose of Life

I opened this series by remarking on one of the major themes of the classical education renewal movement: rethinking the purpose of education as much broader and more holistic than modern education has been making it out to be:

It is not merely job training or college preparation, but the formation of flourishing human beings. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue is the purpose of education. There is joy in seeking knowledge for its own sake and as an end in itself.

Each one of these statements can be traced back to Aristotle. Human flourishing is a modern cipher for the good life or the life of eudaimonia, the Greek word for happiness or blessedness, which Aristotle proclaims to be the ultimate telos, end or goal, of human beings. All other goals are simply the means to this end (see Book I, Chapter 2). And the master art that aims at this end directly and encompasses all the lesser arts is called by him politics, under which he would lump strategy, economics, rhetoric and even all the sciences. Each in its own way aims at one of the goods that contribute to human happiness collectively.

It is interesting in this connection to compare the conception of Augustine’s City of God as a contrast to this polis or city of man. Because man is a political animal the appropriate unit of happiness for human beings is not the isolated individual, but the city. After all, who could be happy without friends? Or, for that matter, without the benefits of specialization and civilization?

But given the realities of a functioning city-state with the basic specialization that Plato had earlier described in his Republic, the most secure way for an individual to achieve this happiness is by the cultivation of virtue and wisdom, understood as the moral and intellectual excellences, respectively (see chapter 10 and 13). Moral excellence, Aristotle says, is attained by the cultivation of habits, whereas intellectual excellence is born and grown by instruction or teaching, requiring much experience and time (see Book II, chapter 1). 

Since human happiness consists in an active life in accordance with perfect virtue of the soul (see Book I, chapter 13), education becomes the prime means of attaining happiness through developing habits in accordance with the moral virtues and instructing the mind or rational principal in accordance with the truth. Another way of saying this is that the contemplative life, as opposed to the pursuit of pleasure or honor (see chapter 5), is the best method of attaining to happiness in this life, even if good fortune still plays some role (see the end of chapter 8 and 10-11). Aiming either at bodily pleasure or the emotional satisfaction of honor will ultimately fall short, while the cultivation of the mind or rational principle will lead to the proper ordering of the whole human person.

In earlier articles on Educational Renaissance, I have already laid out a couple ways of reconciling many of these reflections with a Christian understanding of the purpose of life. In “Aristotle and the Growth Mindset” I traced the renaissance arc back to Aristotle starting from Carol Dweck’s popular idea of a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset. Aristotle theorized that excellence or virtue was the main contributor to happiness—an idea that provides more of a solid philosophical foundation for Dweck’s social scientific study of “success”. As human beings, we may not be the masters of our own fate, but to confine human happiness (and therefore virtue as well) simply to chance or fortune does not seem to jive with reality. We have some level of choice and will in our own happiness, just as we can decide to pursue a life of virtue and make deliberate strides toward that end.

The Moral Virtues and Christian Salvation

From a Christian perspective, while divine gift and human responsibility may be reconciled in various ways, the participation of human beings in their ultimate good or blessing is a matter of both. True and lasting happiness comes as a result of God’s gracious action in salvation and believers “work[ing] out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling” (see Philippians 2:12). Christian sanctification and piety have traditionally been thought to involve the cultivation of all the moral virtues. Salvation involves the conversion of the heart.

In “Excellence Comes By Habit: Aristotle on Moral Virtue” I referenced the Christian idea of common grace to account for the fact that human beings can exhibit moral virtues even in an unregenerate state. For this reason, it is helpful to distinguish between moral and spiritual virtues. Medievals, in particular, adopted a sevenfold paradigm to sum up the moral virtues of Greek philosophy and the Christian virtues mentioned by Saint Paul at the end of 1st Corinthians 13. The cardinal virtues were justice, temperance, fortitude and prudence (interestingly this last was one of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues), and above them were the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. It might be possible for a noble pagan to display the cardinal virtues to some degree, but only a true believer could possess the theological virtues.

For Christians, then, true and eternal happiness involved the possession of both the theological and the moral virtues. As the writer of Hebrews said, “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord” (12:14). The purpose of life, and therefore the ultimate purpose of education as well, consists in the cultivation of moral and spiritual virtues for the enjoyment of eternal happiness. Of course, for Christians this happiness must be God-centered; it is the beatific vision of God himself that wells up in eternal joy for the everlasting life of the believer. Or as the Westminster Catechism has it, “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” And while salvation is in some sense future, the beginning of the happiness associated with eternal life in Christ is available in part to the believer even now through the process of sanctification. Holiness leads to happiness.

For Aristotle, on the other hand, eudaimonia is attained through the godlike cultivation of excellence in this life alongside good fortune and good friends. Active pursuit of the moral and intellectual virtues, without much emphasis on piety or spiritual virtues, seems for him to sum up the happy life. This life of contemplation, fortune and friends may be godlike but it does not focus upon God. Aristotle’s conception of happiness by excellence certainly leaves something wanting, but perhaps we can see it as providing a part of which the full Christian revelation is the whole. 

Where Have All the Intellectual Virtues Gone?

While Aristotle certainly has the greater lack (the centrality of God in human happiness), perhaps I am not going too far out of bounds to suggest that the traditional Chrstian virtue paradigm is missing something. Moral and spiritual virtues have been well accounted for, but what of intellectual virtues? Do they play no part in the Christian’s happy life? Of course, there is a rich Christian theme of relativizing the intellect to the spirit. And in light of Aristotle’s neglect of the spirit, we can easily see why the apostle Paul would say things like, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). Or why he would elaborate in detail on the folly of the cross over against the wisdom of the world in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. On the other hand, Paul does conclude that section by stating that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men,” and he goes on to claim that he and the other apostles do indeed impart “among the mature” a “secret and hidden wisdom of God” (2:6, 7). So perhaps the Bible finds more of a place for the intellect in the happiness equation than we might think. 

In fact, it is worth asking the extent to which the spiritual, intellectual and moral are overlapping and interpenetrating categories for Paul. We might say that, rather than excluding the intellectual virtues from the equation, the introduction of the spiritual reframes the nature of the intellect just as it does the heart. As he explains,

What we are saying is not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things in spiritual words. But the soulish man [“natural” ESV, but perhaps we should think of Aristotle’s soul-focused paradigm even in the Nicomachean Ethics] does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually evaluated. But the spiritual person evaluates all things, but he himself is evaluated by no one. For “who has known the intuition [Greek nous] of the Lord, who will teach him?” But we have the intuition of Messiah. (1 Cor 2:13-16, orig. trans.)

The spiritual frame provides an entirely new source and measure of evaluation for moral and intellectual categories. While hundreds of years and the introduction of various usages may have obscured the definitions of these words, perhaps it is not without significance that Paul is here using the words for two of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues in Greek, sophia or philosophic wisdom, and nous or the understanding of first principles that is wisdom’s necessary forerunner. Although more digging might be necessary to determine the extent to which Paul’s use of nous conforms to Aristotle’s definition of perceiving first principles, we can at least conclude from this passage that spiritual and intellectual virtues are not, for Paul, in the end contradictory.

Divine revelation and the Spirit of God may revolutionize the content of intellectual virtues even from their very starting points in perception of the world and human reasoning, but it is not as if wisdom and understanding are done away with. In fact, we might say that it is at the level of our intuition, the starting point for proper reasoning, that the greatest shifts have taken place. We have the Messiah’s new and spiritual perception of the world and so we reason from different first principles and even from different particulars. We see the world in a cross-centered way, a God-centered way, and not in a man-centered way. The Greek saying, attributed to Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things,” has been decisively demolished for the Christian as an intellectual stronghold in a way that even Plato’s transcendentalism could not match.

But the intellectual virtues themselves remain, or more properly are restored. After all, a “worthless intuition” is one of the things that God gave the Gentiles over to in Romans because of their idolatry (1:29). So Christians are “no longer to walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their intuition” (Eph 4:17), but instead should “be transformed by the renewal of the intuition” (Rom 12:2). In the New Testament, salvation involves the reclaiming of the mind, as much as the heart. And the Spirit of God is the source of this intellectual restoration.

This is no less than we would expect from the example of the Old Testament. For instance, consider the inspiration of Bezalel in his craftsmanship for constructing the holy articles of the tabernacle:

The Lord said to Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. (Exodus 31:1-5 ESV)

The multiplication of intellectual virtue terminology fused with the language of spiritual filling clearly points to a beautiful harmony between the intellect and the Spirit. In this passage we even have Hebrew words that evoke the whole gamut of intellectual virtues. The word translated ‘ability’ by the ESV is the well-known hokma or wisdom made famous by the book of Proverbs, followed by a word for ‘skill’ or intelligence, knowledge and craftsmanship (think of Aristotle’s techne). This biblical support for the role of intellectual virtues could, of course, be multiplied from the book of Proverbs itself, which sees wisdom as a tree of life and more valuable than any earthly good. In a developed Christian view of sanctification, then, we would do well not to neglect the intellectual virtues.

A Christian, Classical Purpose of Education

We can then propose the active cultivation of the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues as the proper purpose of life. And therefore, education’s grand goal is itself the same as that of Christian discipleship: the preparation for eternity through the cultivation of holiness in all aspects of life. While the biblical conception of holiness may not be confined to the pursuit of moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues, it certainly includes it. After all, Peter himself instructs us to add to our faith virtue, and to virtue add knowledge (see 2 Peter 1:5), perhaps deliberately endorsing the spiritual, moral and intellectual realms. 

We can compare this trifold purpose of education with that of John Amos Comenius, the great Czech Christian educational reformer of the 17th century. In his Great Didactic he argues that this life is but a preparation for eternity, since as we have said, “the ultimate end of man is eternal happiness with God” (p. 36; trans. by Keatinge). As creatures made in the image of God, human beings are rational creatures, stewards of creation and the image and glory of their creator (p. 36):

From this it follows that man is naturally required to be: (1) acquainted with all things; (2) endowed with power over all things and over himself; (3) to refer himself and all things to God, the source of all.

Now, if we wish to express these three things by three well-known words, these will be

(i.) Erudition.

(ii.) Virtue or seemly morals.

(iii.) Religion or piety.

Under Erudition we comprehend the knowledge of all things, arts, and tongues, under Virtue, not only of external decorum, but the whole disposition of our movements, internal and external; while by Religion we understand that inner veneration by which the mind of man attaches and binds itself to the supreme Godhead. (pp. 37-38)

Comenius later sums up these three goals of Christian education, which is intended to prepare students both for this life and the life to come, under the titles of learning, virtue and piety. The first would correspond to the cultivation of intellectual virtues, the second to moral virtues, and the last to spiritual virtues. These three areas fulfill man’s nature and fit him for eternal happiness with God. 

But what of Aristotle’s concern for good fortune and good friends to constitute human happiness in this life? The role of earthly goods is relativized to the point of insignificance by the introduction of God and eternity into the equation. The excellences of the body (being born with good looks or good health… remember that the intellectual virtues would cover bodily skill and the moral virtues proper care of the body) are excluded as “extrinsic ornaments” and not ultimately necessary to eternal happiness in light of the resurrection. Learning, virtue and piety are the proper goals of Christian, classical education:

In these three things is situated the whole excellence of man, for they alone are the foundation of the present and of the future life. All other things (health, strength, beauty, riches, honour, friendship, good-fortune, long life) are as nothing, if God grant them to any, but extrinsic ornaments of life, and if a man greedily gape after them, engross himself in their pursuit, occupy and overwhelm himself with them to the neglect of those more important matters, then they become superfluous vanities and harmful obstructions. (pp. 37-38)

Comenius’ reframing of these age-old philosophical questions in Christian terms provides a solid foundation for our restoration of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues as proper goals of education. The intellect is not the entire story, but it should be situated over the heart and under the superior direction of the Spirit. 

In Christian education, the ornaments of life can be relativized in a way that is impossible from the standpoint of mere classical education. Test scores and advancement, money and influence, fame and success are not the proper goals of a truly Christian education, because they are liable to becoming “superfluous vanities and harmful obstructions”; that said, they may serve as helpful sign-posts and markers along the way, as long as our true goals remain clearly in view: moral, intellectual and spiritual virtue, for the eternal enjoyment of God himself. It is in this context that we can then explore the cultivation of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues as part of the purpose of a truly Christian, classical education.

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In this blog, I’ll take a closer look at the notion that virtue is the pathway to happiness through exploring the idea that a person’s everyday habits, not choices, are the building blocks for the happy life. Ultimately, I’ll show, however, that good habits are a necessary but insufficient part of the equation. The search for happiness finds its ultimate end in God, the divine creator, bestower of wisdom, and mastermind behind real human flourishing.

Practice, Practice, Practice

You might remember from last time that Shawn Achor, an author from Harvard University, made a bold claim in his 2010 bestseller The Happiness Advantage. While most people believe that happiness follows success, Achor argues that modern research has shown that precisely the opposite is the case: success follows happiness. And the way to become happy is through a life of activity, striving after one’s potential, beginning with putting into practice the right everyday habits that will enable this striving to occur. 

Aristotle has something similar to say, though he clarifies what type of pursuits, or forms of excellence (arete: virtue), are worth striving for: physical, moral, and intellectual virtues (you can check out my previous blog for a definition of these). These virtues are the pathway to happiness and develop in a person through practice. But how exactly?

Virtue theorists, those who follow Aristotle in this regard, believe that ideals of character, or virtues, ought to guide our understanding of what is right or wrong, good or bad. An action is deemed good or bad based on whether a virtuous person, acting in character, would perform it. In this way, moral understanding, or wisdom, is not simply a matter of knowing a bunch of moral facts. Otherwise, a child prodigy with a brilliant mind could be the wisest among us! No, according to virtue theorists, wisdom is attained only through following the example of virtuous people. And this “act of following” takes practice. Over time, through intensive moral practice, a person can become wise, that is, develop the know-how to navigate with virtue the complexities of life (Landau 241-243). And as one gets better and better at this moral navigation, along the pathway of virtue, his life will become increasingly filled with wise choices and worthy pursuits. The ongoing state of this well-lived life, thinks Aristotle, is human flourishing, or happiness.

Becoming Virtuous

Aristotle emphasizes that moral virtue is the result of repeated practice, or habit, in the second book of his Nichomachean Ethics. Contra the idea that people are born either virtuous or not, or that the virtues are implanted in us by nature, he argues that each person is “equipped with the ability to receive them [i.e. the virtues], and habit brings this ability to completion and fulfillment” (II.1,1103a20-25). Just as people learn the arts, such as playing the guitar, by doing, so people become virtuous through doing. 

Likewise, people can become unvirtuous by doing. Aristotle writes,

“The same causes and the same means that produce any excellence or virtue can also destroy it, and this is also true of every art. It is by playing the harp that men become both good and bad harpists, and correspondingly with builders and all the other craftsmen: a man who builds well will be a good builder, one who builds badly a bad one.” (II.1, 1103b, 6-10) 

So while it is a real possibility for a person to grow in virtue throughout a lifetime, which is the pathway to happiness for Aristotle, there is real danger involved, too. The moral choices one habituates change the very person who performs them… for the better or worse. Aristotle explains,

“In our transactions with other men it is by action that some men become just and others unjust, and it is by acting in the face of danger and by developing the habit of feeling fear or confidence that some become brave men and other cowards…Hence it is no small matter whether one habit or another is inculcated in us from early childhood; on the contrary, it makes a considerable difference, or rather, all the difference.” (II.1, 1103b, 20-24)

Habits for a Secular Age

As I said, Achor does not use the language of virtue, but he seems to think nonetheless that the adoption of the right habits is essential for the happy life. With interesting ties to Aristotle, he writes that “Happiness is not a mood, it’s a work ethic” (50). The key to becoming happy, according to Achor, is to submit oneself to certain routine practices that over time become habits. He explains further,

“As you integrate these happiness exercises into your daily life, you’ll not only start to feel better, but you’ll also start to notice how your enhanced positivity makes you more efficient, motivated, and productive, and opens up opportunities for greater achievement.” (56)

Here Achor links these practices geared toward increasing happiness to a positive mindset. Why is that? Because the human brain, according to current neuroscience, is plastic: it has the capacity to change over time. As the brain, which is the material control center for human activity, issues the same commands over and over again, its neural pathways gradually rewire to accelerate both those commands and their corresponding actions. In a very literal sense, then, the practices Anchor recommends turning into habits have the ability to reform the brain toward a positive, happy mindset. 

So just what are these practices Anchor recommends? I know you’re dying to know! While I would recommend checking out Achor’s book for yourself, here is the latest list of practices he recommends to habituate over 21-30 days, taken from this article:

1. Gratitude Exercises. Write down three things you’re grateful for that occurred over the last 24 hours. They don’t have to be profound. It could be a really good cup of coffee or the warmth of a sunny day. 
2. The Doubler. Take one positive experience from the past 24 hours and spend two minutes writing down every detail about that experience. As you remember it, your brain labels it as meaningful and deepens the imprint.
3. The Fun Fifteen. Do 15 minutes of a fun cardio activity, like gardening or walking the dog, every day. The effects of daily cardio can be as effective as taking an antidepressant.
4. Meditation. Every day take two minutes to stop whatever you’re doing and concentrate on breathing. Even a short mindful break can result in a calmer, happier you.
5. Conscious act of kindness. At the start of every day, send a short email or text praising someone you know. Our brains become addicted to feeling good by making others feel good.
6. Deepen Social Connections. Spend time with family and friends. Our social connections are one of the best predictors for success and health, and even life expectancy.

Fascinating list, isn’t it? If you’re like me, one of the first things you may have noticed is how much overlap there is between these secular practices and Christian spiritual disciplines. Take meditation, for example. The idea of sitting calmly and silently, alone with yourself and with your thoughts, is similar to the Christian practice of prayer, sitting silently and humbly before the Lord. “Be still, and know that I am God,” declares the psalmist (Ps. 46:10 ESV). Or how about the gratitude exercises? The idea of expressing gratitude to God is pervasive throughout both the Old and New Testament. Towards the end of his letter to the Philippians, for example, Paul writes, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6 ESV). Prayer, gratitude, kindness, and relationships are indeed core disciplines in the Christian life.

The Cry of Wisdom

Really, there is nothing new about this list of habits. In fact, the seeds for these ideas are quite old… ancient even. This list of six “exercises” is nothing more than ancient wisdom clothed in modern research. Shawn Achor actually admits as much in his book:

“Positive psychology draws on ideas from many esteemed sources ranging from Greek philosophers, to hallowed religious traditions, to modern-day writers and thinkers… the principles and theories are then empirically tested and validated.” (145)

Achor’s statement here is significant; it reveals, in one sense, that nothing is new under the sun. Although modern thinkers have worked diligently the last few centuries to untether themselves from the religious landscape from which modernity emerged, it seems we have now come full circle. Modern research, at least in this case, has come to confirm some elements of ancient wisdom.

Still, from a Christian perspective, we see that something is lacking. Both Aristotle and Shawn Achor are leaving out a major player in all this talk about happiness, the well-lived life, and human flourishing: God himself, the divine mastermind behind it all.

God has revealed specific details for acquiring happiness in scripture. Those in search of such an elusive object as happiness, therefore, would do well to listen carefully to such revelation. In the Old Testament, in the Book of Proverbs, a vivid image is evoked, the desperate plea of Lady Wisdom:

Wisdom cries aloud in the street,

    in the markets she raises her voice;

at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;

    at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing

    and fools hate knowledge?

If you turn at my reproof,

behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;

    I will make my words known to you.

Because I have called and you refused to listen,

    have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,

because you have ignored all my counsel

    and would have none of my reproof,

I also will laugh at your calamity;

    I will mock when terror strikes you,

when terror strikes you like a storm

    and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,

    when distress and anguish come upon you.

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;

    they will seek me diligently but will not find me.

Because they hated knowledge

    and did not choose the fear of the Lord,

would have none of my counsel

    and despised all my reproof,

therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,

    and have their fill of their own devices.

For the simple are killed by their turning away,

    and the complacency of fools destroys them;

but whoever listens to me will dwell secure

    and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”

-Proverbs 1:20-33 ESV

What a striking, even haunting, passage! In the Old Testament, wisdom is the art of godly living. It is the practical skill and know-how for living a life that is pleasing to God. It includes not only the proper beliefs to hold about the world, but also the right choices to make. Proverbs, in particular, provides practical details for everyday situations and relationships that shed light on human flourishing from a divine perspective. 

While there is much that could be said about this passage, I will share just two observations. First, notice that Lady Wisdom is benevolent–generous even–towards those with whom she is speaking. She genuinely wants to provide this important practical knowledge for all who desire a peaceful and secure life. This knowledge is readily available, accessible to all, but there is one catch: it must be sought after. It seems that you cannot force someone into the good life. The person must choose this path for himself. He must choose to heed the voice of Lady Wisdom and seek to put the instruction into practice. 

Second, notice that those who ignore the voice of Lady Wisdom, above all else, “hated knowledge” and “did not choose the fear of the Lord.” Elsewhere, Proverbs is clear that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10a ESV). Contra the glimmering secular narrative of our age, humans are not autonomous entities, endowed with the right and freedom to live however they would like. They are creatures, indeed, creatures made in the Creator’s image, brought into existence to do his bidding and cultivate the created world into all God intended it to be. Because humans are creatures–created beings, that is–there is a fundamental posture necessary to take on in order to live properly: fear and reverence before the Lord. It is precisely this posture that allows humans to navigate the complexities of this life, both joyful occasions and inevitable moments of suffering, knowing that God’s will is both sovereign and wise. 

Happiness Achieved

So while there is great value in the insights of Aristotle and Shawn Achor, and we would do well, in fact, to put much of what they suggest into practice, we must remember that the foundation for a happy life, even more foundational than the pathway of virtue, is God himself. We must confess, following Augustine, the great church father, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee” (Confessions, Book 1.1). Only then will we experience the lasting happiness for which we were created.

Works Cited:

Laundau, Russ Shafer. The Fundamentals of Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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Next installment – Part 2: The Way of Wisdom.

The book earned a coveted place on the New York Times bestseller list for 186 weeks, 48 of which sitting at the top for non-fiction. It launched Peale onto the national spotlight, leading him to write over forty books during his career and achieve success as a popular author, motivational speaker, and television guest. Perhaps most importantly, it helped popularize a new way of seeing the world and approaching life’s problems through positive thinking.

Since its publication, “the power of positive thinking” has become something of a mantra in the self-help world. For those who haven’t read the book themselves, they have certainly heard the phrase and, generally speaking, accept it as a truism. Even as the self-help genre of literature has expanded in the last few decades, it seems that few book titles and ideas have taken root in people’s minds quite like Peale’s.

Shawn Achor and the Happiness Advantage

Fast-forward about sixty years. In 2010, Shawn Achor, a graduate of Harvard University with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, published The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work. In it he distills current research in neuroscience and positive psychology for a mainstream audience, showing how the effects of positive thinking can be leveraged for enhancing performance. And with the right culture in place, he argues, positive thinking can transform the future success and performance of not just individuals, but organizations, including businesses, non-profits, and, most relevant to our work at Educational Renaissance, schools. 

So what exactly is Achor’s novel idea? What makes his book different from the growing mound of self-help literature? If you have seen his TED talk, the one that slingshotted him into the national spotlight, you will know that it is his work on the science of happiness.

In it Achor observes that people typically believe a common formula about how to attain happiness: work hard, become successful, and become happy. This process seems fairly intuitive after all. The most successful among us have certainly clocked long hours working, at least, most of them, in order to reach peak performance. And it would seem that the experience of success and all its accompanying benefits–compensation, fame, material comforts–would lead to happiness, or, at least, some forms of happiness for a brief time. This is the underlying principle of the American Dream, is it not? 

But what Achor goes on to show from his research, which is quite fascinating, is that we have the formula precisely backwards. Success doesn’t lead to happiness, Achor argues, but rather, happiness leads to success. Happiness, optimism, and positive thinking fuel performance such that those in the workplace or the classroom who are happy regularly outperform those who tend to work with negative attitudes. This is the happiness advantage that Achor speaks of and it is his grand solution for not simply increasing profit margins in corporations, but for helping teachers achieve better results in their classrooms. 

What is Happiness?

Of course, Achor’s entire theory hinges on two big ideas: 1) his definition of happiness and 2) how to obtain it. So what is his definition? On the one hand, he follows findings in positive psychology to define happiness as “the experience of positive emotions–pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose” (39). In this way, Achor’s understanding of happiness is easily attainable, at least brief moments of it, because it is simply a temporary emotional experience. Barbara Frederickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, for example, lists the top ten positive emotions as joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. At least a few of these emotional states are easy to come by, at least, for a short while. 

But notice that Achor doesn’t limit his understanding of happiness to mere emotional experience. This we might expect of him, especially given his book’s categorization in somewhat of a notorious genre. But Achor, who has a master’s degree in religious ethics, connects happiness to something classical educators should find much more amenable: meaning and purpose. In fact, Achor goes on to crystallize his definition of happiness as “the joy we feel striving after our potential” (40).

This definition hits much closer to home in the classical tradition. In fact, it shares some conceptual likenesses to the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s writings. In general, Aristotle’s definition of happiness can be summarized as life-fulfillment and human flourishing, but a closer look will reveal the integral relationship that exists for the philosopher between happiness and virtue. We will then see that Aristotle’s definition of virtue and Achor’s idea of “striving after our potential” aren’t all that dissimilar, and that both play a role in their views of happiness.

Aristotle on Happiness and Virtue

Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics, writes that, “The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity to virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement” (X.6, 1177a1-2). Virtue, for Aristotle, is the quality that makes something excellent, or that which enables its possessor to perform his own particular function well (Ostwald 304). For example, the virtue of a shoemaker is his functional excellence to produce good shoes, especially as he acquires a growth mindset. An excellent shoemaker has arete, or virtue, with regards to his shoe-making. So the happy life, for Aristotle, is the life in which a person is conformed to excellence, or virtue, qua human being.

The question becomes, then, what does it mean to be excellent as a human being? Aristotle spends quite a bit of time contemplating this question and ultimately concludes that to be excellent as a human being is to possess and practice the virtues. This approach to life, though full of effort, leads to happiness.

There are two chief categories of virtues in Aristotle’s mind, three if you count activities like shoemaking: physical, moral, and intellectual. Physical virtues are those virtues having to do with physical activities, like shoemaking or weightlifting. Moral virtues are those virtues having to do with character such as courage, justice, patience, and truthfulness. And intellectual virtues are those virtues having to do with the mind that one contemplates, such as intuitive understanding, science, craft expertise, practical wisdom, and theoretical wisdom. For Aristotle, the greatest intellectual virtue to contemplate is theoretical wisdom, i.e. knowledge of necessary truths, because it contains the very form of happiness (VI.12, 1144a3-4). However, it is worth clarifying that all the virtues are worthy of practice and contemplation insofar as they entail the pursuit of excellence, which as I’ve said, is the route to happiness. 

Lasting Joy and Life-Fulfillment

So if, for Aristotle, virtue–striving for excellence–is the foundation for happiness, whether the excellence be physical, moral, or intellectual, then we can see that Achor’s definition of happiness as “the joy we feel of striving after our potential” isn’t that far off. When we apply ourselves to deep and meaningful work, getting in the flow and cultivating valuable skills along the way, a certain lasting joy and fulfillment is the result throughout the process. And while Aristotle would be quick to distance emotion from virtue, even joy, he wouldn’t deny there is a relationship. He would simply insist that emotions, which he would view as stemming from the beastly part of being human, be kept in check by the mind, the rational and superior part of being human.

It appears, then, that there is concord between Achor’s and Aristotle’s views on happiness, particularly observed in their insistence on the importance of striving for excellence. Through living a life focused on living out one’s potential, one can experience life-fulfillment, which can lead to flourishing amidst that ongoing process. Of course, it is possible for one to be pursuing the virtuous life and still become the victim of great misfortune. This is why Aristotle himself hesitates to give a perfect formula for happiness. Life is too complex and unpredictable. Nevertheless, the general road to happiness is marked by effort and seeking to apply oneself to an external standard of excellence. This is the pathway of virtue.

But how does this square with Achor’s idea that we should start with happiness rather than end with it? And are these ideas consistent with a Christian worldview? In Part 2 of this blog series, “The Way of Wisdom” I will explore this question as I examine Achor’s recommended practices for experiencing happiness both on the front end as well through the process of striving for excellence. These practices, I will show, have interesting parallels with what Aristotle has to say about habit as well as what scripture says in Proverbs.

Works Cited

Ostwald, Martin. Nicomachean Ethics. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1999

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Given the hype for STEM, defending the value of the humanities (as Martin Luther did, for one) is an important move in the broader education dialogue. And it’s one that’s not very hard to make, when there are articles like this one on how Google was planning to hire more humanities trained employees rather than more programmers. It turns out that technological change and the job market aren’t making the humanities irrelevant after all.

But for a while I’ve felt that the trade-off between STEM and the humanities is an unfortunate false dichotomy. (Logic lesson: false dichotomy – when two things are posed as mutually exclusive options when both can be embraced at the same time.) The seven liberal arts of the classical tradition encompassed BOTH the language arts of the trivium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, or perhaps humanities in a general sense) AND the mathematical arts of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy).

In a way, astronomy was the paradigmatic STEM discipline, since it wove together the science of the natural world with mathematical calculations to “save the appearances” and had applications to the travel technologies of the day.

Problems with the Trade-Off Between STEM and the Humanities

Part of the problem with the whole dichotomy is that we’re left arguing about whether to privilege STEM over the humanities or the humanities over STEM, when embracing both would be mutually beneficial. After all, scientists still need to write and publish those rhetorical masterpieces we call academic papers to advance the discipline. And what culturally savvy hipster could not benefit from some of the scientific precision of mathematics and design thinking?

But the other problem, which is more to the point for this blog article, is that a utilitarian focus doesn’t serve either the humanities or STEM careers very well. And that’s because too much focus on money-making skills for the job market doesn’t end up creating the best professionals in either domain. That comes from deep work, passionately and regularly pursued. The best programmers get good at it because they love programming!

STEM and the humanities, or the seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium, were discovered and developed in the first place, because getting into the flow of thought is a source of happiness and joy for human beings. Thinking along the lines of the liberal arts is more like a mental game than a utilitarian bid for power, money or success.

We get support for this notion from an unlikely source, the modern positive psychologist Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial 2008), he writes:

“It is important to stress here a fact that is all too often lost sight of: philosophy and science were invented and flourished because thinking is pleasurable. If thinkers did not enjoy the sense of order that the use of syllogisms and numbers creates in consciousness, it is very unlikely that now we would have the disciplines of mathematics and physics.” (126)

The background for our psychologist’s claim is his idea that our consciousness as human beings is naturally disordered and chaotic, and so one of the primary ways to build human happiness is to engage in activities that order consciousness. While he explores many other ways of achieving flow, that optimal state where our skills meet our challenges and our focus is absorbed by a meaningful activity, one of his chapters is on the flow of thought, or how thinking itself can be an avenue into flow.

Mathematicians and physicists didn’t make their greatest discoveries and push the bounds of human knowledge because of utilitarian motives, but because they got lost in the joy of thought. As he goes on to explain, this claim flies in the face of many historians’ standard explanations of key discoveries:

“The evolution of arithmetic and geometry, for instance, is explained almost exclusively in terms of the need for accurate astronomical knowledge and for the irrigational technology that was indispensable in maintaining the great ‘hydraulic civilizations’ located along the course of large rivers like the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Chang Jiang (Yangtze), and the Nile. For these historians, every creative step is interpreted as the product of extrinsic forces, whether they be wars, demographic pressures, territorial ambitions, market conditions, technological necessity, or the struggle for class supremacy.” (126)

Yes, these developments in arithmetic and geometry coincided with applications to “irrigational technology,” but that doesn’t mean that the individuals who invented them did so for such utilitarian reasons. Often it happens that the knowledge necessary for some practical application is discovered first with no thought of its usefulness or application. Then only later, and often by someone else, that knowledge is applied to a practical problem felt by the civilization.

For instance, Csikszentmihalyi tells of the discovery of nuclear fission and how the arms race of World War II is often urged as the inciting historical factor. However, the advancements in knowledge necessary to its development came before and were discovered in a more pleasurable and altogether collegial manner:

“But the science that formed the basis of nuclear fission owed very little to the war; it was made possible through knowledge laid down in more peaceful circumstances—for example, in the friendly exchange of ideas European physicist had over the years in the beer garden turned over to Niels Bohr and his scientific colleagues by a brewery in Copenhagen.” (126)

The joy of thought, of discovery and of solving abstract problems lies at the base of the advance of knowledge, in every age, time and place. As our psychologist summarizes:

“Great thinkers have always been motivated by the enjoyment of thinking rather than by the material rewards that could be gained by it.” (126)

This is supported by several quotations from the Greek philosopher Democritus, a highly original thinker: “It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new”; “Happiness does not reside in strength or money; it lies in rightness and manysidedness”; “I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia” (127).

The seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium are those tools of knowledge that are so pleasurable in the handling. Let’s take some time to break down a few of them and see how they work, just for the joy of it.

Gaming the Liberal Art of Grammar

In the classical tradition grammar referred to a much broader category of skills that the modern subject does today. It included all the complex skills involved in reading and interpretation, as well as the mechanics of writing. The term was derived from the Greek word for ‘letter’ (gramma), and thus referred to the holistic study of letters. The famous Roman orator and teacher Quintilian explained in the 1^st century that the best Latin translation of the term was the Latin word litteratura from which we get ‘literature’ (see Institutes of Oratory II.1).

It’s not an accident that in our psychologist’s many studies, one of the most cited ‘flow activities’ that people self-report is the act of reading (Csikszentmihalyi 117). Deep reading, getting lost in a book, is for many a pleasurable activity—the title of Alan Jacob’s book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (which I highly recommend) says it all.

Of course, the foundation of this great grammatical activity of piecing letters together into words is the activity of naming itself. Brining order to consciousness relies on some sort of ordering principle and words provide that. They name persons, places, things or ideas, therefore creating order in the mind for an experience or phenomenon, where only chaos existed before:

“The simplest ordering system is to give names to things; the words we invent form discrete events into universal categories.” (124-5)

In both the Judeo-Christian worldview and the Greek roots of the classical tradition, this primacy of the word is endorsed:

“In Genesis 1, God names day, night, sky, earth, sea, and all the living things immediately after He creates them, thereby completing the process of creation. The Gospel of John begins with: ‘Before the World was created, the Word already existed…’; and Heraclitus starts his now almost completely lost volume: ‘This Word (Logos) is from everlasting, yet men understand it as little after the first hearing of it as before….’” (125)

Readers of the Bible will know that in Genesis 2 God assigns the task of naming the animals to Adam in the sequence leading up to the creation of Eve. Adam, whose name means ‘humanity’ in Hebrew, is given the honor and joy of naming the animals that God brings before him—a task that is fitting for him, given how human beings were made in the image of God according to the chapter before.

In its broadest sense then, grammar and the other trivium arts of dialectic and rhetoric involve the practitioner of them in the process of bringing order out of chaos. It is a godlike activity, to borrow the phrase from Heraclitus, to name and distinguish and describe reality. Why should we wonder that such a process would be pleasurable?

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Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!

You can download “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom” on the flow page. Share the page with a friend or colleague, so they can benefit as well.

Embarking on the Quest of the Quadrivium

As with the language arts, it is to the ancient roots of the classical tradition that Csikszentmihalyi goes in order to explain the flow of thought along the lines of the quadrivium:

“After names came numbers and concepts, and then the primary rules for combining them in predictable ways. By the sixth century B.C. Pythagoras and his students had embarked on the immense ordering task that attempted to find common numerical laws binding together astronomy, geometry, music and arithmetic. Not surprisingly, their work was difficult to distinguish from religion, since it tried to accomplish similar goals: to find a way of expressing the structure of the universe. Two thousand years later, Kepler and then Newton were still on the same quest.” (125)

The point that our psychologist is eager to make in this recitation is that the quadrivium arts were not abstract skills aimed at utilitarian ends. Instead, Pythagoras and his students had religious goals of a monumental nature in their numerical and mathematical work. The birth of the quadrivium was nothing less than a “quest” to “find a way of expressing the structure of the universe.”

We can easily see how such a pursuit would catch the hearts and minds of students. Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain present a similar picture of the quest of the quadrivium in their book The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education (which is coming out soon in a revised and updated version!). They point out that “there was deeply spiritual element to it as well…. Pythagoras thought that the harmony of the spheres, part of the liberal art of music, was established by the power of ‘the One’” (version 1.1, p. 53). This, along with their suggestion that “the study of mathematics ought to strike a balance between wonder, work, wisdom and worship,” seems suggestive of the type of joy and pleasure attained in a flow activity.

Of course, for that to be the case, there would need to be, not only a transcendent quest, but also a series of sub-goals and intermediate tasks with clear feedback and of limited scope, so that the rules for a flow activity could be met. When a challenge exceeds the person’s skills by too much, anxiety tends to crush the possibility for flow; likewise, make the activity too easy and boredom ensues (Csikszentmihaly 74).

The development of rules, representations and proofs seem to assist in the process of defining discrete next steps in the grand quest:

“Besides stories and riddles all civilizations gradually developed more systematic rules for combining information, in the form of geometric representations and formal proofs. With the help of such formulas it became possible to describe the movement of the stars, predict seasonal cycles, and accurately map the earth. Abstract knowledge, and finally what we know as experimental science grew out of these rules.” (125)

It seems that the experience of flow and the advancement of discovery almost require the phenomenon of the absent-minded professor. That is because one of the demands of flow is that the mind be wholly absorbed in a meaningful activity. The scientist or mathematician so absorbed has “temporarily tuned out of everyday reality to dwell among the symbolic forms of their favorite domain of knowledge” (127). A great example of this is how the philosopher Immanuel Kant placed his watch in a pot of boiling water while holding carefully onto his egg in the other hand, ready to time out its cooking.

As our psychologist concludes:

“The point is that playing with ideas is extremely exhilarating…. Not only philosophy but the emergence of new scientific ideas is fueled by the enjoyment one obtains from creating a new way to describe reality.” (127)

The Games of the Mind and the Tools of Learning

Such observations about how the liberal arts of both language and number are pleasurable activities may raise a brow of confusion for some teachers and parents.

After all, knowing that great professors, scientists and philosophers can have a grand old time in their work doesn’t solve the angst of my child or the child in my class, who is either bored by a particular discipline or filled with anxiety and self-consciousness.

So how can we help turn the tools of learning into games of the mind for our students who struggle?

Part of the advice our psychologist’s book seems to imply is a reframing of the teacher’s task. While we might be inclined to think that teachers are primarily supposed to deliver correct information to students, perhaps instead teachers should be designers of flow activities within the discipline. If our goal is to cultivate a love of learning in students, then they will have to experience the challenge and discovery of learning for themselves. Receiving the answers is not an empowering, godlike task that optimally challenges your current skills (unless you’re at least required to narrate them back…).

Some examples are probably in order here. In a humanities class, perhaps students should be involved in the process of naming new experiences and ideas that they encounter in their books. How often, I wonder, does a humanities teacher think of the work of reading as an activity in which students will encounter new realities that they will then try to make sense of through concept formation? Are we asking them to notice and describe, to discuss and distinguish? That takes a lot of time devoted to classroom dialogue and is not so efficient as telling students the answers that teacher or students have diligently culled from SparkNotes.

For mathematics instruction Ravi Jain has discussed the importance of puzzle, proof and play. If we can get students puzzling and playing with numbers and formulas, then they will get in flow and start loving the process of discovery. Answers and alternate methods will generate excitement and be stored in their memory, as they strive for greater levels of skill along the quest. It can’t just be about chugging problems and memorizing formulas for an extrinsic reward, like a grade. The best programmers weren’t grade-chasers in their programming class (if they took one and weren’t just self-taught).

After all, the quest for ordering reality through language and number isn’t just about money and success. It’s a transcendent human activity, naturally pleasurable and desirable in and of itself. When we treat it as less than that, we fail to initiate our students into their full God-given inheritance as image-bearers and culture makers.

What other ideas do you have for turning the tools of learning into flow activities?

New Book! The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow Through Classical Education

Enjoying this series? Jason Barney revised and expanded it into a full length book that you can buy on Amazon. Complete with footnotes and in an easy-to-share format for teacher training or to keep in your personal library, the book aims to help you apply the concept of flow in your classical classroom.

Make sure to share about the book on social media and review it on Amazon!

Past installments – Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake, Part 2: The Joy of Memory, Part 3: Narration as Flow. Future installments – Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

The post The Flow of Thought, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games appeared first on .

However, there’s always a diamond in the rough, a silver lining to every “sable cloud”. I recently found such a rare jewel in the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Besides being one of the best written books I’ve read, Csikszentmihalyi’s thesis seems to confirm so many insights of the great philosopher Aristotle.

Future installments: Part 2: The Joy of Memory, Part 3: Narration as Flow, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games, Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

By this point I probably shouldn’t be surprised, given that I’ve already analyzed how the roots of the growth mindset lay in an Aristotelian view of virtue or excellence, along with more recently noting how the importance of habits for moral excellence mirrors the findings of neuroscience.

In Flow Csikszentmihalyi argues that happiness or optimal experience, as self-reported by people in numerous social-scientific studies, does not come where they or we often think it does, in unstructured leisure time. In fact, TV watching, for instance, is correlated with mild depression! Instead, the best experiences of a person’s life occur when in a state of flow, where the person is engaged in a challenging activity that has clear goals and feedback, requires ever more skill and therefore total concentration, such that he is swept into an almost timeless state of loss of self-consciousness (Harper Modern Classics ed.; 49-66).

The happy life, then, is a life full of the sort of activities that order consciousness optimally and crowd out what Csikszentmihalyi calls “psychic entropy” (36-39), which is when our consciousness is filled with the disorder of negative emotions, like anxiety, boredom, pain, fear, or rage. Throughout the book he discusses how to order one’s consciousness to achieve flow through the body (sports, dance, sex, music, tasting), through work and career at all levels of the social strata, through times of solitude and with other people, and even in the chaos of tragedy. In this way, his book is a life treatise on attaining happiness or meaning through flow, with many natural connections to Aristotle’s discussions of eudaimonia (happiness/blessedness) and excellence or virtue.

But the chapter that I found most exciting was entitled “The Flow of Thought,” in which were contained more reasons for a classical education per page than many of the best classical education books out there. So for this reason, I’m going to unpack his chapter on the flow of thought in a series of blog posts, setting Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas in dialogue with Aristotle, Charlotte Mason and other classical education thinkers. I think we’ll find much of value to bolster our convictions from this unlikely source in modern positive psychology.

Lacking the Flow of Thought: The Natural Disorder of Consciousness

Our psychologist starts off the chapter with a stunningly obvious and yet profound truth:

“Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos. Without training, and without an object in the external world that demands attention, people are unable to focus their thoughts for more than a few minutes at a time.” (Csikszentmihalyi 119)

The disorder of our minds, the waywardness of our fleeting thoughts, is, of course, something we all experience. But we are perhaps not aware enough of how we much we rely on external stimuli for relief. The pain of “psychic entropy” is significant, and escaping it drives us into all manner of entertainment and timewasters.

We’ve all heard the statistics on shortening attention spans, though apparently Gen Z is the first to sink below the level of a goldfish (clocking in at 8 sec. compared to the goldfish’s 9). But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised with attention grabbers more readily available than ever before. One of the quaint features of our psychologist’s tour de force is his attack on TV. As he states:

“Compared to other sources of stimulation—like reading, talking to other people, or working on a hobby—TV can provide continuous and easily accessible information that will structure the viewer’s attention, at a very low cost in terms of the psychic energy that needs to be invested. While people watch television, they need not fear that their drifting minds will force them to face disturbing personal problems.” (Csikszentmihalyi 119)

This analysis of why we give in to easy sources of entertainment rather than productive thought, relationships or hobbies could easily be updated to include more recent addictions to social media, click bait or silly YouTube videos. The reason we are seeking escape is the “disturbing personal problems” in our lives that we should be doing something about. If our minds were left to their wandering, these personal problems would quickly rise to the surface of our consciousness and fill our attention with fear, dread and pain.

But this isn’t just a challenge when we’ve neglected the moral demands of our lives, such that personal problems cloud around us; Csikszentmihalyi explains:

“Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or longterm frustrations. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness—a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.” (Csikszentmihalyi 119)

In other words, our minds are naturally in a state of chaos. They are attracted to problems and pain, which is good if we can do something about them, but we can’t always. And our minds are even inclined to make up problems, imagining them where none exist. It’s a useful skill that we have—to be able to plan and anticipate all sorts of problems—but the imaginative faculty is liable to getting out of whack.

From a Christian perspective we might think of the effects of the Fall on our hearts and minds. It’s no coincidence that a few chapters after Genesis 3, the text says: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5 ESV). Perhaps this continual evil of our minds speaks to the disorder of consciousness that our psychologist discovered in his research.

Our psychologist has a lot of compassion for reliance on TV or any other external stimulus to relieve the pain of this natural state, but his warnings are still dire: “once one develops this strategy for overcoming psychic entropy, to give up the habit becomes almost impossible” (Csikszentmihalyi 120). The logic is that of a crutch. The more you use it the weaker your limb becomes. The weaker your limb becomes, the more dependent you are on using it. So goes our ability to focus our minds internally.

The internal flow of thought is, accordingly, a “better route for avoiding chaos in consciousness” because it comes “through habits that give control over mental processes to the individual, rather than to some external source of stimulation, such as the programs of network TV” (Csikszentmihalyi 120). This leads our psychologist to recommend the type of life of learning and educational leisure pursuits that the classical tradition has championed. He begins with training in memory, symbol systems, writing, history, science and philosophy, ending with reflections on being an amateur and the challenge of lifelong learning.

The training of the mind through the classical liberal arts and sciences is thus the antidote to the natural disorder of the mind.

Aside: Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!

You can download “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom” on the flow page. Share the page with a friend or colleague, so they can benefit as well.

Aristotle on Happiness as the Goal of Education

Our psychologist’s reasoning for why training the attention internally is better mimics Aristotle’s famous privileging of the theoretic life. The happiness of TV watching is not really a very exalted state. I already mentioned above Csikszentmihalyi’s finding that it’s correlated with mild depression. Relying on external stimuli to order consciousness is more like temporarily holding unhappiness at bay. As if the great flood waters of mental chaos are briefly halted by an unstable dam, so external attention grabbers simply stave off the inevitable.

Instead, training the mind in the liberal arts and sciences, even or especially in leisure time, is the surer route to happiness. This is because challenging leisure activities are actually the most rewarding and enjoyable. As our psychologist explains,

“To enjoy a mental activity, one must meet the same conditions that make physical activities enjoyable. There must be skill in a symbolic domain; there have to be rules, a goal, and a way of obtaining feedback. One must be able to concentrate and interact with the opportunities at a level commensurate with one’s skills.” (Csikszentmihalyi 118-119)

The liberal arts and sciences meet these conditions whereas TV does not. And they meet them in the highest way because they don’t require the vagaries of fortune.

David Hicks describes Aristotle’s views on happiness and education in his Norms and Nobility:

“According to Aristotle, the perfect end of education will be an activity that is engaged in for its own sake, complete and sufficient unto itself. Aristotle calls the activity for which education prepared man – happiness. So far, all might agree. But as to the nature of happiness, the opinion of mankind is divided. Many believe that happiness attends the life of pleasure; others credit the practical life with producing happiness; but the wise – Aristotle has no doubt – find it in the theoretic life, as the true end of education.” (Hicks 20)

Happiness, for Aristotle, is the ultimate human good and therefore is the ultimate goal of education, just as of everything else. Of course, he doesn’t mean by happiness the type of flippant pleasure dependent on circumstances that we tend to think of. That would be simply the feeling of pleasure and could be experienced temporarily while doing any pleasing activity, even if the chaos of disorder and mental evil is simply being held at bay.

In fact, eudaimonia might better be translated as “blessedness,” “fulfillment” or “human flourishing.” It is found in the life of virtue or excellence, meaning not only moral rectitude, but an active excellence of using one’s human powers to the best of one’s ability. It is in this context that Aristotle advocates for the theoretic life, or life of the mind, as the best method for attaining happiness. As Hicks goes on,

“Aristotle defends the theoretic life as the true end of education and the source of happiness. One does not require more than the bare necessities of life to achieve happiness in thought, nor is the active life of the mind dependent upon the inherently unequal endowments of nature. One need be neither strong nor handsome, well-born nor gregarious, nay, not even brilliant to participate happily in the theoretic life. The theoretic life completes the individual, holding him against the warmth of the divine spark in his nature and making sense of an existence otherwise consumed by the infinite wishing of one thing for the sake of another. Indeed, the theoretic life is the life of virtue, so long as we mean by virtue all that the Greek arete expresses: the life that knows and reveres, speculates and acts upon the Good, that loves and re-produces the Beautiful, and that pursues excellence and moderation in all things.” (21)

Training the attention through the liberal arts and sciences is thus the path to fulfillment in life. We might think of it as a sort of gateway on the road to bliss. Virtue, moderation, and meaning are companions along the way, but it starts with training the consciousness through the flow of thought.

A Christian analogy to this idea is the claim that wisdom is more valuable than any earthly good:

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed. (Prov 3:13-18 ESV)

Wisdom is this tree of life bringing peace to our chaotic minds and ultimate blessing to our lives.

New Book! The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow Through Classical Education

Enjoying this series? Jason Barney revised and expanded it into a full-length book that you can buy on Amazon. Complete with footnotes and in an easy-to-share format for teacher training or to keep in your personal library, the book aims to help you apply the concept of flow in your classical classroom.

Make sure to share about the book on social media and review it on Amazon!

Future installments: Part 2: The Joy of Memory; Part 3: Narration as Flow; Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games; Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

The post The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake appeared first on .

Dweck’s portrayal of how our beliefs influence our behavior is truly mind-altering, especially given how she bolsters it with numerous studies of children, teachers, athletes and businesses. The importance of adopting a growth mindset as a parent, teacher, coach or business leader can hardly be overstated. There’s a reason her work has made a significant splash and been called “one of the most influential books ever about motivation” (Po Bronson, author of Nurture Shock).

But perhaps it’s worth asking whether what Carol Dweck is saying here is fundamentally new. For those participating in an educational renaissance, it’s worthwhile to step back and consider the extent to which the new ideas of modern research are confirming (rather than discovering) the traditional insights of the classical tradition of educational philosophy. After all, as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9 ESV) and “of the making of many books there is no end” (12:12). In this case, I think we need look no farther than Aristotle, the great philosopher himself, for an anticipation of the growth mindset.

Near the beginning of his Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle announces a very similar research question to that posed in Dweck’s research:

“whether happiness is to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by chance.” (Book I, ch. 9, trans. by W. D. Ross, accessed at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html)

The word translated happiness (Greek: ‘eudaimonia’) is not the flippant feeling that we often mean today. In fact, some circles are inclined to prefer the term ‘joy’ to happiness to imply something longer lasting—a life satisfaction or fulfillment rather than momentary excitement or the absence of challenges. Of course, Dweck uses the term ‘success’ in her study, which resonates better with the modern American focus on advancement in work and career. But both terms are meant to tap into the fundamental human drive for contentment, fulfillment, human flourishing, the good life.

And the question that is posed concerns whether or not our fate is fixed. Can we learn such that we succeed and find joy, fulfillment, blessedness, through our accomplishments? Or are we stuck with what we’ve got, such that we’d better hope we were one of the lucky ones, blessed by the gods (or by the random lottery of our DNA) with intelligence, talent, or whatever that it-factor is in our particular field or endeavor? Aristotle’s answer to this question is ultimately a nuanced one: No, if someone gets to the end of their life and dies horribly without friends and alone, all their accomplishments turning back on them and coming to naught, that person cannot be said to be blessed, no matter how successful they seemed earlier in life. Some external luck must play a role, but excellence, virtue can be developed, and it is virtue which ultimately makes a life blessed.

The key to Aristotle’s growth mindset is a proper conception of virtue or excellence (Greek areté) as an activity. The truly happy person finds fulfillment in the continual pursuit of excellence. As he explains,

“For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences), and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are happy spend their life most readily and most continuously in these; for this seems to be the reason why we do not forget them. The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always, or by preference to everything else, he will be engaged in virtuous action and contemplation, and he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously, if he is ‘truly good’ and ‘foursquare beyond reproach’.” (Book I, ch. 10)

Virtuous activities, for Aristotle, seem to be those physical, moral and intellectual virtues discussed throughout his Ethics, often described as a mean between two extremes: for instance, courage is a mean in having the right amount of fear, not too little (rashness) or too much (cowardice). Others, however, include the excellence of art, or skill in producing some good through a true course of reasoning; practical wisdom, or the ability to weigh correctly what things are good or beneficial for oneself; knowledge, or the ability to demonstrate the truth of something; and friendship (see Nic. Ethics VI.3-7 and VIII). In other words, the pursuit of excellence in school, work, business or relationships is the most likely course of action to bring about happiness.

And as he explains, part of the reason for that is that if you are seeing every opportunity as a chance to grow and improve in virtue (i.e. a growth mindset), then no matter what life throws at you, you will find satisfaction (eudaimonia) in that pursuit. Virtuous activities are durable sources of happiness, because they don’t flit away like less noble ones: money, sex, or power. There are very few circumstances, however challenging or disastrous, that don’t allow you the opportunity to contemplate or reflect on how you could improve. Even nobly bearing up under suffering is an exercise of virtue and will therefore give a measure of its own satisfaction.

One of the weaknesses of Dweck’s book is her narrow focus on success in specific life goals and endeavors, like school, sports or work, to the exclusion of this broader conception of the ultimate goal of a life well lived. But other researchers have made a stronger case for the connection between vigorous striving after excellence and happiness more broadly understood. For instance, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi conducted a study conducted in the 90s, in which subjects would subjectively rate their mood at random times throughout the day. Cal Newport describes in his findings in his own book Deep Work:

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile…. Csikszentmihalyi calls this mental state flow (a term he popularized with a 1990 book of the same title). At the time, this finding pushed back against conventional wisdom. Most people assumed (and still do) that relaxation makes them happy. We want to work less and spend more time in the hammock.” (84)

The opposite is actually true; people rated their work time much higher than their leisure time, in spite of thinking that they enjoyed their leisure time more. As human beings we were made to be most joyful when striving in pursuit of excellence, when engaged in deep work, or deliberate practice. As the wise author of Ecclesiastes had said, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil” (Eccl. 2:24). Toil is not all pain and drudgery, but can actually be enjoyed… if we believe we can grow and see each task as an opportunity to strive for excellence.

What difference should this make for the work of education? Well, educators themselves should embrace the life of growth. Excellent teachers are not born, they are made. We should strive for excellence in the craft of teaching, but also for the practical wisdom of living life well. But more than that, teachers should cast a vision for their students of pursuing excellence in each and every ability, skill or type of knowledge that the curriculum calls them to. They should explicitly teach students to believe that they can develop their abilities, and learning activities and practice sessions should be framed so as to reinforce that belief. Teachers should aim to get their students willingly and joyfully engaged in the hard work of learning through inculcating a growth mindset. John Milton, in his tractate Of Education, described it this way:

“But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them such lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”

Here Milton claims that the most important and foundational task of the educator of youth is to put them into a certain mindset: that of being on fire with a zeal for learning and with a deep appreciation for excellence. Students also need hope, “high hopes” that they can make something of their lives, by living in service to their country and to God, and perhaps even becoming so excellent at what they do that their names go down in history. If this isn’t a growth mindset, I don’t know what is.

At the school where I work (Clapham School) these ideas are reflected in part of our mission, which is to “inspire students with an education… approached with diligence and joy.” This attempts to capture the powerful combination of hard work in the pursuit of excellence and the deep satisfaction that is the natural result. We call it joyful discovery for short. How will this influence your life, learning and pursuits? How will you teach, coach or parent differently because of your newfound understanding of the classical growth mindset?

For more on the growth mindset see my article on “Charlotte Mason and the Growth Mindset” here!

References:

Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton, 1984. Also accessed at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html.

Carol S. Dweck. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine: New York, 2016.

Cal Newport. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central: New York/Boston, 2016.

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