This past week, David Cameron has told us that he wishes to measure happiness and so help people to achieve 'the good life'. He says that measures of purely economic well-being are not enough and too simplistic. Cameron appears to be shifting his concern from a pre-occupation with material prosperity of the kind that the modern Conservative Party has fetishized for the past thirty years to a more holisitic appreciation of the good life for humans. In itself, this is to be applauded.
Cameron's announcement should strike chords with most people, even those (like myself) who greeted his remarks with a smidgin of cynicism. It would have been more heartening to hear the Prime Minister speaking in such terms during a time of economic prosperity but, even today, most people still say that the really important components of a good life are good health, the love of others, a sense of purpose, interior and exterior freedom, and the like.
So, to be fair, Cameron might be on to something. I hope, as he does his research, that he will look to Aristotle, who offers happiness (eudamonia) as the supreme good. The Greek word does not have a precise English equivalent, and it is sometimes rendered as 'human flourishing'. For Aristotle, this good life requires the exercise of the ethical virtues (arete) such as, for example, self-control (sophrosune), generosity (eleutheriotes), self-respect (megalopsychia), friendliness (philia), justice (dikaiosune), among others. The possession and exercise of these virtues points to the excellence of a person's character. However, Aristotle concedes that the exercise of good character, as well as the enjoyment of eudamonia, is vulnerable to events which lie beyond the control of the agent (tuche). Such events can poison all the excellences , or virtues, of character, grinding a person down so that they come to accept a more mundane conception of life. There is a very real sense, then, that the good life for humans is fragile, and vulnerable to events which are external to the agent.
David Cameron would do well to ponder this ancient wisdom, since the policies of this new coalition government would appear to be introducing all kinds of additional impediments to human flourishing. It is certainly the case that some groups of people are going to be far more affected than others. Those most adversely affected are in general those who benefitted least from the boom years. It is no good identifying 'happiness' in such as way that it is something understood to lie somehow outside a social context. The soon-to-take-effect of the latest hike in the regressive VAT to 20%, the removal or reduction of essential benefits to people in vulnerable situations and the effective closing-off of higher education to the poor along with the consequent frustration of their aspirations will all militate against true human flourishing for many thousands of people.
Aristotle's eudamonia, and Plato's Idea of the Good are both presented in terms of their being ultimately situated in intellectual or philosophical contemplation, suggesting that they are invulnerable to external events. But Aristotle, especially, acknowledges that relational goods (such as some of the virtues listed above) lie in the common life lived with others. This common life, Aristotle stresses repeatedly, has a necessary instrumental role in the development of the good character essential to a happy life. We need to belong. Social impediments can corrode good character and, in turn, diminish eudamonia. Deprivation from what is generally regarded as normal conditions for living causes frustration and, ultimately, alienation from what we are as human beings. Our prisons are full of people who cannot flourish. Some of our poorest communities are not so very different in this regard. Government policy which serves to exacerbate hopelesness, frustration and alienation militates against Cameron's new project.
Saturday, 27 November 2010
Thursday, 11 November 2010
What is education for?
The student protests in London over the issue of tuition fees prompts again the question of the purpose and value of education.
Over recent years, we have seen the question answered in an increasingly reductive way. You get educated so that you become better able to get a good, well-paid job at the end of it, thus securing for yourself a better life. Education has increasingly become defined in purely instrumental terms; the principle of utility has become paramount. Education is no longer intrinsically valuable; it is simply the means to an end.
The establishment of this principle allowed the Blair government to replace a system of grants with the requirement for students and their families to pay tuition fees, a policy now extended by the present government, in spite of its claims to a greater progressiveness. The policy is predicated upon two assumptions: firstly, that graduates can be expected to earn better salaries and so be able to pay the fees back as they embark upon their working lives; secondly, that the only beneficiary of the education provided is the person who has been educated, in spite of the fact that Blair repeatedly said that 'the country' needed to have a greater number of graduates and hence the expansion of the university sector.
This extreme individualism hasn't always held sway. In times past, there was something of a sense of education conducing to a notion of the public good. There have always been those who have seen education as being mainly to do with an end product defined in terms of comparative material prosperity; and indeed, seen like this, it has provided pathways out of poverty for some. But we seem today to have lost any widespread notion that education has an inherent value, and that a good education system makes a country a better place.
Now education has been reduced to something of merely economic worth, oriented towards providing the educated with a greater capacity to consume (and thereby in their turn made instrumental in the perpetuation of liberal capitalism), we see 'useful' subjects (defined as those which produce material wealth) preferenced over 'useless' ones in the arts and humanities. Yet these latter subjects produce greater civility and humanity in society. Their value cannot be stated in economic terms, yet they help to foster the healthy societal ethos which we have already largely lost, but which must be restored if people in this country are to rediscover a real sense of the shared or common good.
Over recent years, we have seen the question answered in an increasingly reductive way. You get educated so that you become better able to get a good, well-paid job at the end of it, thus securing for yourself a better life. Education has increasingly become defined in purely instrumental terms; the principle of utility has become paramount. Education is no longer intrinsically valuable; it is simply the means to an end.
The establishment of this principle allowed the Blair government to replace a system of grants with the requirement for students and their families to pay tuition fees, a policy now extended by the present government, in spite of its claims to a greater progressiveness. The policy is predicated upon two assumptions: firstly, that graduates can be expected to earn better salaries and so be able to pay the fees back as they embark upon their working lives; secondly, that the only beneficiary of the education provided is the person who has been educated, in spite of the fact that Blair repeatedly said that 'the country' needed to have a greater number of graduates and hence the expansion of the university sector.
This extreme individualism hasn't always held sway. In times past, there was something of a sense of education conducing to a notion of the public good. There have always been those who have seen education as being mainly to do with an end product defined in terms of comparative material prosperity; and indeed, seen like this, it has provided pathways out of poverty for some. But we seem today to have lost any widespread notion that education has an inherent value, and that a good education system makes a country a better place.
Now education has been reduced to something of merely economic worth, oriented towards providing the educated with a greater capacity to consume (and thereby in their turn made instrumental in the perpetuation of liberal capitalism), we see 'useful' subjects (defined as those which produce material wealth) preferenced over 'useless' ones in the arts and humanities. Yet these latter subjects produce greater civility and humanity in society. Their value cannot be stated in economic terms, yet they help to foster the healthy societal ethos which we have already largely lost, but which must be restored if people in this country are to rediscover a real sense of the shared or common good.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Contra Pelagius
Thanks to the willing availability of my two excellent priest-colleagues, I have had a very light day of duties today. Indeed, I sung the main Mass at 10.00am, and that was it! I didn't even have to give a homily, or celebrate the early Mass, or take the Blessed Sacrament to the sick and housebound. I got back home after the Sung Mass, put on my recording of yesterday's FA Cup First Round highlights and then had a light lunch.
After lunch, Karen and I then went out in the car for a drive. Even when we stopped at Greenlands Farm to look at all the middle class frippery they sell, along with the various Christmas gift options, I was engaged and relaxed and would like to go back on another occasion and get some of the stuff. After this, we went on up to Windermere, where I got towed around the big Lakeland shop they have there, where we looked at kitchen knives and bought a cheese box for the fridge. It was all very relaxing, refreshing and renewing, though I'm not sure I'd have set off had I known that we would be effectively shopping all afternoon.
The we went off to Morland church, in the middle of nowhere (well, near Penrith) for a choral evensong. There was a large assembled choir which had rehearsed all afternoon for this celebration to mark the centenary of the birth of the recently departed Canon Gervase Markham, the founder of the annual Morland Choristers' Camp. In spite of one or two minor anomalies, this was pretty tolerable even if it wasn't something I'd normally trek miles for. Then, on the way home, we called in at the Raj takeaway in Milnthorpe. I now feel ultra relaxed, after a very agreeable day, and fully prepared for the rather full week's work that lies ahead.
Back at the end of the fourth/beginning of the fifth century, there was a lay theologian called Pelagius who propagated the belief that human beings can achieve personal salvation by their own efforts. This teaching effectively rendered God's grace redundant, and was condemned as erroneous and heretical by the Church. If there is an established religion in Britain, it is arguable that it is Pelagianism. People speak to me regularly, at visits prior to funerals, about the virtues of the deceased person; how they would help anyone and all the rest. Others tell me that 'you don't have to go to church to be a Christian', or that 'Christians are no better than anyone else' (has anyone said they were?). Behind all these expressions is the idea that we can somehow justify ourselves before God by being good and especially by doing good works, with the implication that we can deserve or earn our eternal salvation. As if.
In spite of Pelagianism having the status of heresy, we priests often go about our business like good Pelagians. Priests often feel guilty about having time off, or setting aside time for reading or for our hobbies and interests, as if we really should be doing something, and as if everything depends upon us. But, of course, the Christian life is about being - it's about standing consciously in a particular relationship to God. Anything we do, as Christians, springs from this relationship of being, from this ontology of Being to being, Creator to creature, self-subsistent Being to contingent being.
Scripture tells us that Christ came to give us abundant life, not to enslave us in guilt or to flog us so hard that we never take time for ourselves and those near and dear to us. I would never have guessed that I could be reminded of this though a visit to a farm shop, a Lakeland shop and a visit to a village church for evensong.
After lunch, Karen and I then went out in the car for a drive. Even when we stopped at Greenlands Farm to look at all the middle class frippery they sell, along with the various Christmas gift options, I was engaged and relaxed and would like to go back on another occasion and get some of the stuff. After this, we went on up to Windermere, where I got towed around the big Lakeland shop they have there, where we looked at kitchen knives and bought a cheese box for the fridge. It was all very relaxing, refreshing and renewing, though I'm not sure I'd have set off had I known that we would be effectively shopping all afternoon.
The we went off to Morland church, in the middle of nowhere (well, near Penrith) for a choral evensong. There was a large assembled choir which had rehearsed all afternoon for this celebration to mark the centenary of the birth of the recently departed Canon Gervase Markham, the founder of the annual Morland Choristers' Camp. In spite of one or two minor anomalies, this was pretty tolerable even if it wasn't something I'd normally trek miles for. Then, on the way home, we called in at the Raj takeaway in Milnthorpe. I now feel ultra relaxed, after a very agreeable day, and fully prepared for the rather full week's work that lies ahead.
Back at the end of the fourth/beginning of the fifth century, there was a lay theologian called Pelagius who propagated the belief that human beings can achieve personal salvation by their own efforts. This teaching effectively rendered God's grace redundant, and was condemned as erroneous and heretical by the Church. If there is an established religion in Britain, it is arguable that it is Pelagianism. People speak to me regularly, at visits prior to funerals, about the virtues of the deceased person; how they would help anyone and all the rest. Others tell me that 'you don't have to go to church to be a Christian', or that 'Christians are no better than anyone else' (has anyone said they were?). Behind all these expressions is the idea that we can somehow justify ourselves before God by being good and especially by doing good works, with the implication that we can deserve or earn our eternal salvation. As if.
In spite of Pelagianism having the status of heresy, we priests often go about our business like good Pelagians. Priests often feel guilty about having time off, or setting aside time for reading or for our hobbies and interests, as if we really should be doing something, and as if everything depends upon us. But, of course, the Christian life is about being - it's about standing consciously in a particular relationship to God. Anything we do, as Christians, springs from this relationship of being, from this ontology of Being to being, Creator to creature, self-subsistent Being to contingent being.
Scripture tells us that Christ came to give us abundant life, not to enslave us in guilt or to flog us so hard that we never take time for ourselves and those near and dear to us. I would never have guessed that I could be reminded of this though a visit to a farm shop, a Lakeland shop and a visit to a village church for evensong.
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