The Positive Humanities: - Specialized Research AI at MIT

The Positive Humanities:
A Focus on Human Flourishing

James O. Pawelski

The Positive Humanities can be defined as the branch of learning concerned with cul-
ture in its relation to human flourishing. This new field advocates for a eudaimonic
turn in the humanities, an explicit recognition of and commitment to human flour-
ishing as a central theme of study and practical aim of the humanities. It holds that
this eudaimonic turn can reconnect the humanities with their initial values and goals
and provide a unifying and inspiring rationale for the humanities today, opening
pathways for greater individual and collective flourishing in societies around the
world. After exploring the historical roots and conceptual orientations of the Pos-
itive Humanities (which are inclusive of the arts), I present five recommendations
for strengthening the focus of the humanities on human flourishing: emphasize
1) wisdom as much as knowledge, 2) collaboration as much as specialization, 3) the
positive as much as the negative, 4) effective friction as much as increased efficiency,
and 5) the flourishing of humans as much as the flourishing of the humanities.

H uman flourishing is a basic and enduring concern of the humanities. In

cultures around the world and across time, a perennial desire to under-
stand the nature and enabling conditions of human flourishing and to
find ways to increase it has led to the creation of works exploring these themes
and to programs of study intended to equip individuals with the knowledge and
skills needed to help them and their communities flourish. For example, ancient
wisdom traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Ju-
daism–along with the later Christianity and Islam–focused on questions of how
to live life well. Although varying widely in their particulars, they shared the ba-
sic view that popular methods for advancing flourishing (like pleasure, wealth,
power, and fame) can often hinder it, and that flourishing can be achieved only
through the cultivation of virtue.1 These ideas were expressed, developed, com-
municated, and taught through religious, philosophical, narrative, and historical
texts, as well as through music, art, architecture, theater, and other cultural forms.
Historically, the humanities have their roots in ancient Greek and Roman cul-
ture. The Greek paideia was a program of study emphasizing intellectual, moral,
and physical development. Designed to promote human flourishing, what the

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Greeks called eudaimonia, by producing good citizens who would live their lives
well and help the polis thrive, the curriculum included instruction in language,
philosophy, mathematics, science, and the arts as well as training in gymnastics
and wrestling. The Romans included much of this curriculum in what they called
the “liberal arts” (artes liberales), a program of study intended to provide citizens
with the skills free persons needed to flourish and participate actively and wisely
in civic life. These subjects were eventually arranged into two groups: the trivium
(grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music,
and astronomy). Together, they formed the seven liberal arts and constituted the
general curriculum of medieval universities.

It was during the Renaissance that the humanities were developed as a distinct
program of study. Increasing numbers of scholars believed that scholasticism, the
dominant medieval approach to the seven liberal arts, had become disconnected
from human flourishing. In a sense, the humanities were the gift of a pandemic,
as these scholars were deeply influenced by the Italian poet and scholar Petrarch
and his response to a devastating and extended outbreak of the bubonic plague.
Known as the Black Death, this pandemic is the deadliest in history, killing an es-
timated two hundred million people across Europe, Asia, and North Africa in the
fourteenth century. Among the dead (estimated to have included between 30 and
60 percent of the population of Western Europe) were many of Petrarch’s friends
and associates, and even his own son.2 To cope with the personal and social dev-
astation wrought by the Black Death, Petrarch turned to the careful study of a se-
lection of Greek and Roman classics, where he found solace and strength. Schol-
ars who followed his lead and further developed his approach came to be called
“humanists,” since they focused on what Cicero had called “studies of human-
ity” (studia humanitatis).3 Humanists found the scholasticism of their day to be
overly pedantic and technical, fixating on the resolution of textual contradictions
through logical and linguistic analysis, and neglecting the wisdom that had in-
spired and informed so many of the classics. By contrast, humanists turned their
students’ attention precisely to this wisdom, seeking instruction on the nature of
happiness and its relation to virtue by turning away from the quadrivium and re-
designing the trivium. Keeping grammar and rhetoric, they replaced logic with
history, philosophy, and poetry in the search for practical guidance for their lives.4
Eventually, the scholasticism of European universities was largely replaced by this
new program of study focused directly on human flourishing.

Much has changed since the introduction of this humanistic approach to the
university curriculum. In contemporary American colleges and universities, the
humanities tend to be thought of less as a comprehensive program of study to in-
crease human flourishing and more as a collection of separate disciplines, each
with its own interests and methodological approaches to scholarship. Located
within institutions of higher learning, these disciplines are subject to the norms

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151 (3) Summer 2022James O. Pawelski

and values of these institutions, and individual scholars are shaped by their sys-
tems of recruitment, retention, and reward. Although early American colleges
saw the moral formation of students as central to their mission, the rise of re-
search universities has led to a prioritization of the creation of new knowledge.
This change of emphasis has resulted in important breakthroughs in research, but
these advances have often come at the cost of shifting attention away from ques-
tions of how to live life well. Scholars, under enormous pressure to “publish or
perish,” tend to specialize in particular areas of knowledge creation, focusing on
increasingly narrow points of scholarship to establish their careers as professional
academics. Meanwhile, enrollments in humanities courses and programs at four-
year colleges and universities continue to drop, due at least in part to increased
vocational pressures on students.5 In response, humanities scholars feel the need
to proclaim the economic value of taking courses in their disciplines. These shifts
toward professional and economic interests come at a time when students, per-
haps now more than ever, are in need of the eudaimonic benefits of the human-
ities. Even before COVID-19, surveys of American students showed alarming in-
creases in anxiety, depression, and suicidality, and the pandemic has made things
even worse.6

The current situation in the humanities bears some troubling resemblance
to the conditions that gave rise to the humanities in the first place. Although the
present pandemic is, thankfully, not as severe as the Black Death, some of the
same basic problems that troubled Petrarch and his heirs are now faced by mil-
lions of students. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated a number of societal
issues, including the unique mental health challenges of this new generation. And
students are entering institutions where the focus of research and teaching has
largely drifted away from what they need: an emphasis on the understanding and
cultivation of individual and collective human flourishing. What can be done to
renew the focus of the humanities on human flourishing?

This is the fundamental question motivating the new field of the Positive Hu-
manities. In view of the Oxford English Dictionary’s broad definition of the hu-
manities as “the branch of learning concerned with human culture,”7 the Positive
Humanities can be defined as “the branch of learning concerned with human cul-
ture in its relation to human flourishing.”8 The word “culture” is a horticultural term,
coming from the Latin cultura, meaning “cultivation.” The Positive Humanities
hold that just as the successful cultivation of plants results in their flourishing,
so too a successful human culture should lead to human flourishing. The Positive
Humanities recognize the wide variety of interests that influence the creation of
human culture and that determine its roles in society. Many of these interests ap-
proach culture instrumentally, focusing on its professional, academic, vocation-
al, and economic value. Although the Positive Humanities are interested in the
implications of these instrumental uses of culture for human flourishing, they

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Positive Humanities: A Focus on Human Flourishing

are more centrally concerned with the intrinsic benefits of culture, including its
eudaimonic effects on personal enjoyment, individual and societal growth, and
meaning-making.9

The Positive Humanities advocate for a eudaimonic turn in the humanities, an
explicit recognition of and commitment to human flourishing as a central theme
of study and practical aim of the humanities.10 The Positive Humanities seek in-
sights into the nature and development of human flourishing from the wisdom,
narrative, aesthetic, and performance traditions of cultures across time and
around the world (and are thus inclusive of the arts). None of these traditions is
perfect, of course–far from it–and each has both positive and negative lessons
to teach about flourishing. The Positive Humanities understand that a concept
as complex as human flourishing calls for collaboration across a wide range of
methodological approaches and thus also look to relevant work in the social sci-
ences. The Positive Humanities are especially interested in the practical effects of
the relationship between culture and flourishing. Under what circumstances and
for whom does cultural engagement increase human flourishing? Are there ways
in which culture presents obstacles to flourishing? If so, who is most affected by
these obstacles? Perhaps most important, how can cultural engagement be inten-
tionally optimized to help all individuals and communities thrive? These prac-
tical questions connect the Positive Humanities to the educational institutions,
cultural organizations, and creative industries through which the humanities are
typically studied and experienced. With all this in mind, the Positive Human-
ities can be defined in more detail as “the interdisciplinary, multi-industry, and
cross-sector examination and optimization of the relationship between the expe-
rience, creation, and study of human culture and the understanding, assessment,
and cultivation of human flourishing.”11 In the remainder of this essay, I discuss
five specific recommendations from the Positive Humanities for strengthening
the focus of the humanities on human flourishing.12

T he first recommendation is to emphasize wisdom as much as knowledge.

In an academic environment that prioritizes and rewards the creation
of new knowledge, it is easy to succumb to a kind of intellectualization,
focusing more, for example, on the analysis of texts than on the practice of the
wisdom contained in those texts. Literary scholar Helen Small gives a definition
of the humanities as the study of “the meaning-making practices of human cul-
tures, past and present, focusing on interpretation and critical evaluation, pri-
marily in terms of the individual response and with an ineliminable element of
subjectivity.”13 It is easy for the study of meaning-making practices in the human-
ities to become an intellectual exercise, quite removed from the practical abili-
ty to make meaning effectively oneself, and the humanities today tend to focus
more on the analysis of meaning-making than on the creation of meaning. To be

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151 (3) Summer 2022James O. Pawelski

sure, knowledge about meaning-making is important, as are skills of interpreta-
tion and critical evaluation, but they are insufficient to meet the practical goals
of human flourishing that initially inspired the humanities as a program of study.
The humanities were intended not just to be a theoretical enterprise but a deep-
ly practical one. I remember one of my philosophy professors in graduate school
sneering about the undergraduates coming to him for wisdom, thinking that what
he studied and taught could provide guidance for their lives. In the academy, the
humanities curriculum has all too often become a way of knowing, with ways of
living relegated to student services divisions and campus counseling centers. Im-
portant as the work of these divisions and centers is, however, it is vital to under-
stand human flourishing as a central part of the research and teaching mission of
higher education. The acquisition of knowledge must not be disconnected from
the practice of wisdom. Aristotle argued that the aim of the study of ethics is not
just to learn what virtue is, but to become virtuous; so, too, the aim of the study of
the humanities should not be merely to know what human flourishing is, but to
flourish.14

There are, of course, many scholars in the humanities who resist the pressures
of intellectualization and remain committed to the practical goals of the human-
ities. And there are many students who resist the pressures of approaching the hu-
manities merely as a set of academic requirements, a body of knowledge to master
on the way to obtaining a degree. They value not just learning about the humanities
but also learning from them. My concern is that doing so requires these scholars
and students to overcome a misalignment between the basic purposes and goals
of the humanities and the conditions under which they are typically taught and
studied. My further concern is that so many scholars and students do not over-
come this misalignment, depriving them of the most important benefits of the
humanities for human flourishing and making it less likely that students will value
the humanities enough to continue to engage with them.15

T he second recommendation for strengthening the focus of the humanities

on human flourishing is to emphasize collaboration as much as special-
ization. Many humanities scholars are used to working alone, or even in
isolation. This approach may be effective for producing articles and monographs
on specialized topics, but it is inadequate for exploring the full range of meanings
and practices of human flourishing. And it is especially inadequate for applying
them in ways that are fitting and effective for fostering individual and collective
flourishing. The common goal of conceptualizing and cultivating human flour-
ishing can bring together scholars within and across different disciplines in the
humanities, as well as bridge divides between scholars and makers of culture. A
renewal of the focus of the humanities on human flourishing also requires collab-
oration between the academic humanities, chiefly located within institutions of

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Positive Humanities: A Focus on Human Flourishing

higher education, and the public humanities, which emphasize the work of the
humanities in communities, cultural organizations, and creative industries be-
yond colleges and universities.16

Just as important for human flourishing is collaboration between the human-
ities and the sciences. These two domains have always been included in the lib-
eral arts, but there have been quarrels between them since ancient times.17 The
divide between them was widened by Renaissance humanists, who excluded the
quadrivium from their program of study, as they considered the sciences unhelp-
ful for human flourishing.18 Whether or not this was true of ancient and medieval
approaches, it is certainly not true of the sciences today. Although questions of
human flourishing have traditionally belonged to the domain of the humanities,
the sciences–and especially the social sciences–have devoted much attention to
them over the last few decades. Much work has been done in psychology, econom-
ics, political science, sociology, and neuroscience, which has influenced domains
as diverse as psychiatry, medicine, public health, organizational studies, educa-
tion, law, and government. Psychology, for example, has undergone a eudaimon-
ic turn, catalyzed in large part by the founding of a new branch of the discipline:
positive psychology. It is worth pausing to explore this development in psychol-
ogy in more detail, as it has important implications for the Positive Humanities.

Positive psychology has been defined as “the scientific study of what enables
individuals and societies to thrive.”19 Launching the field during his presidential
address to the American Psychological Association in 1998, Martin Seligman ar-
gued that psychology had become fixated on the study and treatment of psycho-
pathology. He claimed that work on mental illness is valuable but that on its own
it is too narrow to achieve psychology’s broader mission of making the lives of all
people better. This mission cannot be fulfilled merely by removing obstacles to
better lives, he contended, but also requires the study and cultivation of the actual
constituents of individual and collective flourishing.20

Positive psychologists typically study human flourishing in terms of well-
being, which can be defined as “optimal psychological functioning and experi-
ence.”21 As I have observed elsewhere, positive psychology is proceeding in both
a complementary and a comprehensive mode in its study of well-being.22 In its
complementary mode, it understands mainstream psychology as focused on what
delays or destroys well-being–on the mitigation of ill-being–and thus as “indi-
rectly positive.” Positive psychology, by contrast, is focused on what causes or
constitutes well-being–on the promotion of well-being–and thus is “directly
positive.”23 Accordingly, work in the field includes topics like gratitude, awe, love,
flow, grit, character strengths, healthy relationships, psychological richness, and
meaning and purpose in life. In its comprehensive mode, positive psychology re-
lies on a balance between indirect, mitigative approaches and direct, promotion-
al approaches in support of what is contextually optimal, of what is desirable or

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151 (3) Summer 2022James O. Pawelski

preferable under specific conditions and in particular settings. In most real-life
situations, the best way to make life better is through a combination of removing
ill-being and increasing well-being. The ideal here is sustainable preference, in which
the short- and long-term well-being interests of each individual and of all groups
in a society are respected and supported.24 This ideal cannot be achieved–or even
approached–without deep collaboration across all disciplines and fields with a
connection to human flourishing.

T he third recommendation is to emphasize the positive as much as the neg-

ative. It is not only in mainstream psychology that the focus has been on
ill-being, on the obstacles to human flourishing. Across much of the work
in the humanities over the past few decades, there has been a strong focus on sur-
facing latent psychopathologies and corrosive ideologies in texts and other forms
of culture.25 In some circles, the methodology of critical theory, using what philos-
opher Paul Ricoeur identified as a “hermeneutics of suspicion,”26 has been used
so extensively for these purposes that there has not been much room for other ap-
proaches.27 It is important, of course, to be aware of very real problems like alien-
ation, injustice, and malfeasance and the surreptitious ways they can obstruct
flourishing for so many individuals and groups. A fixation on what can go wrong,
however, often obscures what can go right, leading to missed opportunities for
direct action to foster flourishing. At its founding, the World Health Organiza-
tion defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”28 In a similar way, it is impor-
tant to understand flourishing as more than just the absence of languishing. For
this reason, it is crucial to make room for what Ricoeur called “hermeneutics as
a restoration of meaning”29 and has been referred to as a “hermeneutics of affir-
mation.”30 Flourishing requires as much attention to its conceptualization and
direct cultivation as it does to the understanding and overcoming of obstacles to
its realization.

Similar to positive psychology, the Positive Humanities function in both a
complementary and a comprehensive mode. In their complementary mode, they
emphasize the study of the nature and constituents of human flourishing. Some
important work along these lines has already begun to emerge in a variety of hu-
manities disciplines. Examples include Darrin McMahon’s work on the intellec-
tual history of happiness;31 Daniel Haybron’s and Valerie Tiberius’s work on the
philosophy of happiness, well-being, and the good life;32 Menachem Mautner’s
exploration of the central role art can play in human flourishing;33 Ellen Char-
ry’s positive theology and Miroslav Volf’s theology of joy;34 and in literary stud-
ies, Eve Sedgwick’s call for “reparative” interpretations, James O. Pawelski and
D. J. Moores’s advancement of a eudaimonic turn, and Rita Felski’s advocacy for
a “positive aesthetics.”35

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Positive Humanities: A Focus on Human Flourishing

In their comprehensive mode, the Positive Humanities advocate for a balanced
integration of suspicion and affirmation in the interests of optimizing flourishing
in real-life circumstances. Just as a garden requires both weeding and planting to
flourish, so our lives and communities require both attention to what delays or
destroys human flourishing and to what causes or constitutes it. The optimiza-
tion of well-being in any context requires a balanced integration of indirect, mit-
igative approaches and direct, promotional approaches to human flourishing. In
this comprehensive mode, for example, the Positive Humanities value critique for
the insights it can yield into ways culture sometimes undermines flourishing, and
they seek to integrate these insights with reparative and constructive work for ad-
vancing individual and collective human flourishing.

T he fourth recommendation is to emphasize effective friction as much as

increased efficiency. One of the most common critiques of the human-
ities is that they are inefficient. As mentioned earlier, students are facing
rising vocational pressures, with education often viewed merely in terms of job
preparation. If the only goal of education is the short-term aim of landing a job–
and one that pays as well as possible–then it makes sense to study subjects that
will lead directly to desirable employment. Since jobs in technology, business,
and medicine pay more than jobs in the humanities, the thinking goes, it is best to
spend one’s time in the classroom studying STEM subjects or completing profes-
sional programs. Taking courses in the humanities is seen as unnecessary at best
and wasteful or distracting at worst.

It is not just in education that efficiency is extolled. Psychologist Barry Schwartz
argues that the “modern world is characterized by the worship of efficiency.”36
Citing examples from manufacturing, commerce, and finance, he observes that
increasing efficiency by removing friction from these processes is seen as essen-
tial to progress. Economists, he notes, hold that the only way to improve a soci-
ety’s standard of living is to increase efficiency. Schwartz points out, however, that
while some efficiency is no doubt good, more efficiency may not be better, especial-
ly in cases where there is uncertainty. He cites insurance as an example. In a world
where you know your house will not burn down, carrying fire insurance is a waste.
But in the world we live in–a world characterized by uncertainty–fire insurance
is a wise inefficiency, a worthwhile friction. Schwartz concludes that in our uncer-
tain world, the most reasonable goals are not ones that maximize efficiency under
normal conditions, but rather options that lead to satisfactory results under a wide
range of possible conditions. In a world of uncertainty, narrow efficiency is unlike-
ly to be the most effective path to long-term success. This is especially true when
that narrow efficiency is limited to economic considerations but success is under-
stood broadly in terms of human flourishing. Economic factors are important for
human flourishing, but they are by no means the only things that are.

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151 (3) Summer 2022James O. Pawelski

Emotion research supports this understanding of the limited value of efficien-
cy under conditions of uncertainty. Negative emotions like anger, fear, disgust,
and sadness are quite efficient, often co-opting our physiology to prepare us for
attack, escape, avoidance, or withdrawal even before we are consciously aware of
having a problem. Positive emotions like joy, serenity, and awe also have physio-
logical components, but it is not as easy to identify what, if anything, they pre-
pare us to do. This led to a bias against positive emotions until psychologist Barba-
ra Fredrickson proposed the “broaden-and-build” model of positive emotions.37
Her research showed that while negative emotions helpfully narrow our atten-
tion, cognition, and behavior in times of danger, positive emotions broaden at-
tention, cognition, and behavior in times of safety. This broadening does not just
feel good, but it makes us more creative and allows us to build enduring physical,
psychological, and social resources. Negative emotions can be life-saving in the
short term, but positive emotions can be life-saving in the long term by helping us
to be better prepared for as-yet-unseen dangers when they do arise. From a short-
term perspective, positive emotions are inefficient; their effectiveness becomes
clear only over the long term.

Similar to economic friction and positive emotions, the humanities can seem
inefficient when considered in the short term. Courses in ethics, literature, or the-
ater may or may not teach skills that lead directly to employment, but they can
broaden our experience of the world and allow us to build enduring resources that
may help us remain creatively resilient in times of unforeseen adversity. We live in
a world of uncertainty, where novel problems often arise, for which it is not possi-
ble to prepare directly and efficiently. In these situations, broad preparation in the
humanities may help us be most effective in facing the difficulties. And although
studying the humanities may or may not be the most effective means of taking
maximal advantage of immediate employment opportunities, it may be of great
value in preparing for the employment needs of the future.

The key here is an Aristotelian mean between excess and deficiency. Too much
efficiency can lead to ruinous rigidity, but too little efficiency can lead to a waste-
ful squandering of time and resources. Keeping human flourishing in mind as the
ultimate goal can provide a prudent corrective to both extremes. The humanities
should not be forced to yield immediate returns on investment; nor, however,
should they be absolved from making significant eudaimonic contributions to
our lives.

T he fifth and final recommendation is to emphasize the flourishing of hu-

mans as much as the flourishing of the humanities. In particular, I would
like to recommend the establishment of a new set of indicators for track-
ing the relationship between the humanities and human flourishing. Since 2009,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has published the Humanities Indi-

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cators, collecting and disseminating key data about the infrastructure of the hu-
manities in the United States.38 The Humanities Indicators do an excellent job
of gathering, analyzing, and reporting quantitative data on the humanities, but
they are aimed at measuring the flourishing of the humanities and not the flour-
ishing of the humans engaged in them. They are aimed at measuring many of the
extrinsic benefits of the humanities, but not their intrinsic benefits, things like
captivation, pleasure, empathy, cognitive growth, social bonds, and communal
meaning.39 Given the traditional connection between the humanities and the un-
derstanding and fostering of human flourishing, I believe it is time to create Hu-
manities and Human Flourishing Indicators. Building on the tremendous work of
the Humanities Indicators, this new set of measures would focus on tracking how
successfully the humanities support the understanding and cultivation of human
flourishing. Do the humanities increase human flourishing? If so, in what specific
ways? Who is benefiting from this increase? Who is not yet benefiting? Are there
unseen harms that are sometimes caused through the humanities? Are there par-
ticular ways of engaging with the humanities that are more effective at leading to
greater flourishing? How can we optimize the well-being effects of engagement
with the humanities?

The social sciences can make considerable methodological contributions to
this work. For decades, psychologists have been assessing human flourishing
through validated measures of subjective well-being (consisting of high life sat-
isfaction, high positive affect, and low negative affect)40 and psychological well-
being (understood in terms of six dimensions: autonomy, environmental mas-
tery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-
acceptance).41 Psychologists continue to develop new instruments (such as the
Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving, the PERMA-Profiler, and the Psychologi-
cally Rich Life Questionnaire)42 and to invent and refine methods (such as ques-
tionnaires, experience sampling methodologies, and Big Data) for the scientific
study of human flourishing.43 Well-being is not merely a matter for psychology, of
course, and it is important to move beyond psychology’s traditional emphasis on
the study of individuals to include work from other social sciences that focuses on
ways in which communities and societies function. Epidemiologist Tyler Vander-
Weele, for example, takes a more comprehensive approach to human flourish-
ing, integrating perspectives from across the social sciences, including psychol-
ogy, economics, medicine, public heath, and other disciplines. He has developed
a measure of human flourishing that covers six different domains: happiness and
life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character
and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability.44 This
measure is part of a Global Flourishing Study to assess the flourishing of nearly
a quarter of a million participants in twenty-two countries over five years.45 The
Humanities and Human Flourishing Indicators could also be informed by work

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that is being done in the arts and well-being in collaboration with the sciences and
medicine.46

However competently and comprehensively work on the Humanities and Hu-
man Flourishing Indicators is carried out, it will be crucial to keep in mind that
empirical assessment of the role of the humanities in human flourishing can only
complement and not replace the more traditional ways scholars have thought and
written about culture and well-being. A broad range of approaches is necessary to
examine something as complex as the relationship between the humanities and
human flourishing. It is just as crucial to keep in mind that empirical assessment of
the role of the humanities in human flourishing must be a collaborative enterprise
that includes humanities scholars and practitioners as equal partners with scien-
tists, since they have invaluable insights into the nature of human flourishing and
the various ways the humanities can foster it. Scientific investigation must be in-
formed and guided by the experience and reflection of those who dedicate their
lives to the creation and study of culture. Finally, it is equally crucial to make clear
that this empirical assessment is not about measuring the worth of the humanities.
The intrinsic benefits of the humanities must be distinguished from their intrinsic
worth, which will no doubt forever remain beyond the reach of scientific measure-
ment. Research on the intrinsic benefits of the humanities cannot be legitimately
used to try to create hierarchies of cultures or of cultural forms, and any attempts
to do so must be strongly repudiated. With these important caveats in mind, how-
ever, collaborative empirical assessment can be uniquely valuable for measuring a
range of definable and observable effects of engagement with the humanities on
specific aspects of individual and collective human flourishing. The great promise
of this work is not only the creation of new knowledge but also the development of
evidence-based practices for optimizing the positive effects of humanities engage-
ment on human flourishing across a variety of cultural contexts.

I believe that these five recommendations from the Positive Humanities can

help support a eudaimonic turn in the humanities. As I noted at the outset of
this essay, human flourishing is a basic and enduring concern of the human-
ities. There is a real sense, then, in which a eudaimonic turn in the humanities
is, in fact, a eudaimonic return, not to some idyllic past (no society has fully real-
ized the promise of human flourishing), but to the questions and concerns that
gave rise to the humanities in the first place and that have been at their core for
most of their history. It is a return that is required of each generation of scholars as
they explore and develop ways of flourishing fitting for their times. In the contem-
porary context, this return must address the basic questions and concerns of the
humanities in fresh ways, informed by the considerable depth and range of new
knowledge at our disposal and guided by the complex opportunities and challeng-
es presented by our current cultural realities.47

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This eudaimonic turn in the humanities can bring a number of important
benefits. It can help address what literary scholar and essayist Louis Menand has
called a “crisis of rationale” in the humanities, with scholars themselves in dis-
agreement about the fundamental nature and purpose of the humanities and thus
unable to communicate their value clearly to students, parents, philanthropists,
policy-makers, and the general public.48 A eudaimonic turn can provide a unify-
ing and communicable rationale for the humanities. It can enable scholars to work
together to understand more deeply how human flourishing has been defined and
fostered in the past in cultures across the globe and how it can be more effectively
conceptualized and cultivated in our world today. The goal here is not the estab-
lishment of an orthodoxy. On the contrary, a diversity of perspectives can pro-
vide a much-needed richness of inquiry, helping to inform and guide well- being
research in the sciences, and opening up new possibilities for human flourishing
that are more equitable and widespread than ever before and that support the
flourishing of the nonhuman world as well. Moreover, these types of approaches
are likely to attract and retain students in humanities courses and programs.

More importantly, these new approaches, with their benefits for the human-
ities, can also benefit humanity. An explicit focus on understanding and foster-
ing individual and collective human flourishing can be of considerable benefit to
the millions of students who study the humanities each year. Because of the cen-
tral role the humanities play for so many students across so many educational lev-
els and programs, such a focus promises significant and enduring positive effects.
Outside the classroom, a eudaimonic turn in the humanities can inform, inspire,
and support the work of museums, libraries, performing arts centers, and even en-
tire creative industries (such as in music, movies, and publishing) to advance hu-
man flourishing more broadly and justly in our society. Although such work is not
easy, it is deeply meaningful, with the aim of exploring and enriching the relation-
ship between culture and human flourishing, and, in so doing, carrying forward a
central and perennial purpose of the humanities and opening new possibilities of
flourishing for humanity.

author’s note

This essay was supported, in part, by grants from the Templeton Religion Trust and
the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as by resources provided by the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. The opinions expressed in this essay are mine and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust, the National Endow-
ment for the Arts, or the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to my gratitude
for this financial support, I am thankful to the growing international network of

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151 (3) Summer 2022James O. Pawelski

more than 150 scholars, researchers, practitioners, and students whose collabora-
tive participation in the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project over the years
has deeply informed and shaped this work. Finally, I am grateful to Rob Townsend,
Norman Bradburn, and the other contributors to this issue of Dædalus on “The
Humanities in American Life,” as well as to my colleagues Darrin McMahon and
Sarah Sidoti, for their support and insightful questions and suggestions for improv-
ing an earlier draft of this essay.

about the author

James O. Pawelski is Professor of Practice and Director of Education in the Posi-
tive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2014, he has served
as Founding Director of the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project, which has
been designated as a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab. He is the au-
thor of The Dynamic Individualism of William James (2007) and editor of The Eudaimonic
Turn: Well-Being in Literary Studies (with D. J. Moores, 2013), On Human Flourishing: A Poetry
Anthology (with D. J. Moores, Adam Potkay, Emma Mason, et al., 2015), and The Ox-
ford Handbook of the Positive Humanities (with Louis Tay, 2022). He is also editor of the
Humanities and Human Flourishing book series with Oxford University Press.

endnotes

1 Darrin M. McMahon, “The History of the Humanities and Human Flourishing,” in The
Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities, ed. Louis Tay and James O. Pawelski (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 48.

2 Christopher S. Celenza, Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer (London: Reaktion Books, 2017),

100.

3 Cicero, Pro Archia, 3.

4 Paul O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts (New York: Harper
& Row, 1965), 178; and Robert E. Proctor, Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tra-
dition Can Improve Our Schools, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 10,
38–39.

5 Jill Barshay, “PROOF POINTS: The Number of College Graduates in the Humanities
Drops for the Eighth Consecutive Year,” The Hechinger Report, November 22, 2021,
https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-the-number-of-college-graduates-in-the
-humanities-drops-for-the-eighth-consecutive-year.

6 National College Health Assessment, American College Health Association, “Publica-
tions and Reports,” https://www.acha.org/NCHA/ACHA-NCHA_Data/Publications_and_
Reports/NCHA/Data/Publications_and_Reports.aspx?hkey=d5fb767c-d15d-4efc
-8c41-3546d92032c5 (accessed December 11, 2021).

7 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “humanities,” https://www-oed-com.proxy.library
.upenn.edu/view/Entry/89280?redirectedFrom=humanities#eid311537170 (accessed De-
cember 11, 2021).

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8 James O. Pawelski, “The Positive Humanities: Culture and Human Flourishing,” in The

Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities, ed. Tay and Pawelski, 20.

9 Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth H. Ondaatje, Laura Zakaras, and Arthur Brooks, Gifts of
the Muse: Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND
Corporation, 2004), 44–52; and Yerin Shim, Louis Tay, Michaela Ward, and James
O. Pawelski, “The Arts and Humanities: An Integrative Conceptual Framework for
Psychological Research,” Review of General Psychology 23 (2) (2019): 166–167, https://doi
.org/10.1177/1089268019832847.

10 James O. Pawelski, “What is the Eudaimonic Turn?” in The Eudaimonic Turn: Well-Being in
Literary Studies, ed. James O. Pawelski and D. J. Moores (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dick-
inson University Press, 2013), 3; and Pawelski, “The Positive Humanities,” 26.

11 Pawelski, “The Positive Humanities,” 33.
12 For more information on the Positive Humanities, see Tay and Pawelski, eds., The Oxford
Handbook of the Positive Humanities. Also, an important source of support for the Positive
Humanities is the Humanities and Human Flourishing (HHF) Project at the University
of Pennsylvania. Since its founding in 2014, the HHF has developed into a growing in-
ternational and multidisciplinary network of more than 150 humanities scholars, sci-
entific researchers, creative practitioners, college and university educators, wellness
officers, policy experts, members of government, and leaders of cultural organizations.
For more information on the HHF, visit www.humanitiesandhumanflourishing.org.
13 Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 23.
14 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II. ii. 1.
15 For a further discussion of this misalignment, including steps that can be taken to over-
come it in the teaching of philosophy, see James O. Pawelski, “Teaching Philosophy:
The Love of Wisdom and the Cultivation of Human Flourishing,” in Philosophy and Hu-
man Flourishing, ed. John J. Stuhr (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
16 For more information on the public humanities and attempts to bridge the gap between
them and the academic humanities, see essays by Susan Smulyan, Carin Berkowitz and
Matthew Gibson, Denise Meringolo, and Fath Davis Ruffins in this issue of Dædalus.
For a review of the empirical literature in one of these collaborative domains, see Kath-
erine N. Cotter and James O. Pawelski, “Art Museums as Institutions for Human Flour-
ishing,” Journal of Positive Psychology 17 (2) (2022).

17 Small, The Value of the Humanities, 37–38.
18 Proctor, Defining the Humanities, 21–23.
19 Constitution of the International Positive Psychology Association, Article 1, Section 2.
20 Martin E. P. Seligman, “The President’s Address,” American Psychologist 54 (8) (1999):

559–562.

21 Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review
of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being,” Annual Review of Psychology 52
(2001): 142.

22 James O. Pawelski, “Defining the ‘Positive’ in Positive Psychology: Part II. A Normative
Analysis,” Journal of Positive Psychology 11 (4) (2016): 361–362, https://doi.org/10.1080/
17439760.2015.1137628; and Pawelski, “The Positive Humanities,” 28.

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23 Pawelski, “Defining the ‘Positive’ in Positive Psychology,” 358–359.
24 Ibid., 363; and Pawelski, “The Positive Humanities,” 28.
25 D. J. Moores, “The Eudaimonic Turn in Literary Studies,” in The Eudaimonic Turn, ed.

Pawelski and Moores, 27.

26 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 1970), 32–36.

27 Moores, “The Eudaimonic Turn in Literary Studies,” 27; and Rita Felski, Uses of Literature

(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), 3.

28 Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization, Official Records of the
World Health Organization, No. 2 (New York: World Health Organization, 1948), 100.

29 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 28.
30 Moores, “The Eudaimonic Turn in Literary Studies,” 27.
31 Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).
32 Daniel M. Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008); Valerie Tiberius, The Reflective Life: Living Wisely with Our
Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Valerie Tiberius, Well-Being as Val-
ue Fulfillment: How We Can Help Each Other to Live Well (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2018).

33 Menachem Mautner, Human Flourishing, Liberal Theory, and the Arts (Oxford: Routledge,

2018).

34 Ellen Charry, God and the Art of Happiness (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans,
2010); and Miroslav Volf and Justin E. Crisp, eds., Joy and Human Flourishing: Essays on
Theology, Culture, and the Good Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015).

35 Eve K. Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: Or, You’re So Paranoid,
You Probably Think This Introduction Is About You,” in Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in
Fiction, ed. Eve K. Sedgwick (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 1–37; Pawel-
ski and Moores, The Eudaimonic Turn; Felski, Uses of Literature; and Rita Felski, The Limits
of Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

36 Barry Schwartz, “Security: Tradeoffs between Efficiency and Friction, Freedom and

Constraint,” Journal of Positive Psychology 17 (2) (2022).

37 Barbara Fredrickson, “What Good Are Positive Emotions?” Review of General Psychology 2

(3) (1998): 307.

38 For more information on the rationale for and purpose of the Humanities Indicators,
see the report that launched them: Robert M. Solow, Phyllis Franklin, Calvin C. Jones,
et al., Making the Humanities Count: The Importance of Data (Cambridge, Mass.: American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002).

39 McCarthy et al., Gifts of the Muse, 44–52. See also Shim et al., “The Arts and Humanities:
An Integrative Conceptual Framework for Psychological Research,” 166–167. In its lat-
est report, the Humanities Indicators included an item on life satisfaction, which I be-
lieve is a step in the right direction. See American Academy of Arts and Sciences, State
of the Humanities 2021, 7.

40 Ed Diener, “Assessing Subjective Well-Being: Progress and Opportunities,” Social Indica-

tors Research 31 (2) (1994): 103–157.

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41 Carol D. Ryff and Corey Lee M. Keyes, “The Structure of Psychological Well-Being Revis-

ited,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69 (4) (1995): 719–727.

42 Rong Su, Louis Tay, and Ed Diener, “The Development and Validation of the Compre-
hensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT),” Ap-
plied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 6 (3) (2014): 251–279, https://doi.org/10.1111/
aphw.12027; Julie Butler and Margaret L. Kern, “The PERMA-Profiler: A Brief Multidi-
mensional Measure of Flourishing,” International Journal of Wellbeing 6 (3) (2016): 1–48,
https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526; and Shigehiro Oishi, Hyewon Choi, Nicholas
Buttrick, et al., “The Psychologically Rich Life Questionnaire,” Journal of Research in Per-
sonality 81 (2019): 269, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.06.010.

43 Christie Napa Scollon, Chu Kim-Prieto, and Ed Diener, “Experience Sampling: Promises
and Pitfalls, Strengths and Weaknesses,” Journal of Happiness Studies 4 (2003): 5–34; and
Sang Eun Woo, Louis Tay, and Robert W. Proctor, eds., Big Data in Psychological Research
(Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2020).

44 Tyler J. VanderWeele, “On the Promotion of Human Flourishing,” Proceedings of the Na-

tional Academy of Sciences 114 (31) (2017): 8153–8154.

45 The Human Flourishing Program, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard Uni-
versity, “Global Flourishing Study,” https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/global-flourishing-study
?admin_panel=1 (accessed December 12, 2021).

46 See, for example, Daisy Fancourt and Saoirse Finn, What Is the Evidence on the Role of the
Arts in Improving Health and Well-Being? A Scoping Review, Health Evidence Network Syn-
thesis Report 67 (Copenhagen: World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe,
2019); and NeuroArts Blueprint: Advancing the Science of Arts, Health, and Well-
Being, The Aspen Institute, https://neuroartsblueprint.org (accessed December 11, 2021).

47 Pawelski, “What is the Eudaimonic Turn?” 17.
48 Louis Menand, “The Marketplace of Ideas,” American Council of Learned Societies
Occasional Paper No. 49 (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2001),
http://archives.acls.org/op/49_Marketplace_of_Ideas.htm.

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151 (3) Summer 2022James O. Pawelski
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