Philosophies for Life: developing a new course in ancient wisdomAn AHRC-funded project by Jules Evans, Centre for the History of EmotionsQueen Mary, University of London

Executive summary:

* I designed and trialled an eight-part course in practical philosophy

* The wisdom approach teaches ancient philosophies and explores how they inspired modern psychology. It teaches coping skills, facilitates group discussions of values and life-meanings, and brings people into the great conversation of philosophy.

* The course was trialled at three partner organizations: Saracens rugby club, New College Lanarkshire and HMP Low Moss prison, and Manor Gardens welfare trust.

* The feedback was very positive.

* Saracens coaches told the Telegraph the philosophy club was the most popular thing weve done this season.

* The participants at HMP Low Moss said the course was both more enjoyable and more useful than the CBT courses they are sent on.

* The participants at Manor Gardens said they felt much more socially supported and able to handle adversity, and also much more interested in philosophy. Comments included It was the highlight of my week for two months, and I now have the tools to make major changes in my life.

* I plan to launch the course commercially, providing it to business organizations, entrepreneurs and coaches, while also providing the course and shorter workshops to mental health services, schools and prisons.

* I also plan to develop teaching materials - online videos, activity sheets and handbooks - which people can buy to do their own versions of the course.

* And I plan to make Philosophies for Life available via an online course. I am looking into the possibility of raising capital to fund this.

Introduction

This year Ive developed and trialled an eight-part course in practical philosophy, called Philosophies for Life. The pilot was financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Queen Mary, University of London. I trialled the course with three partner organizations: Saracens rugby club; New College Lanarkshire and HMP Low Moss prison; and Manor Gardens mental health charity.

The results were very positive - the coaches of Saracens said the philosophy club was 'the most popular thing we've done this season'; the participants at Manor Gardens philosophy club reported feeling more socially supported, more capable of coping with adversity, and much more interested in philosophy. And the participants of the prison philosophy club said they found the club more enjoyable and useful than the prison's CBT courses, and became more interested in philosophy as a result.

I now plan to launch commercially, working with businesses, the NHS and other organizations, and also developing an online course for the retail market.

The wisdom approach

I tried to develop a model of well-being education that balances evidence-based techniques with ethical discussion, approaching questions of the meaning of life in a pluralistic and culturally literate way.

At the moment, well-being courses in schools, mental health services, and businesses tend to be purely scientific / psychological. They teach evidence-based techniques for well-being, usually from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This is very useful from a practical perspective. However, a purely scientific approach either leaves out any questions of values or the meaning of life, or it simply assumes one definition of the meaning of life (for example, individual subjective well-being), and then imposes it uncritically and scientistically on participants. A purely scientific approach to well-being education easily becomes ethically illiberal and culturally insensitive.

On the other hand, the critical enquiry method used by most philosophy clubs (and by organizations like SAPERE and the Philosophy Foundation in schools) is very good at facilitating group discussions of values and meanings, engaging people and respecting their perspectives. But it is perhaps too open and undirected - it ignores the fact that ancient wisdom and modern psychology have discovered reliable hypotheses about how the mind and our emotions work, which its helpful to learn from the point of view of wisdom and cultural literacy. It leaves people adrift to rediscover wisdom from scratch, and does not teach any spiritual practices people can use.

And both the scientific and the critical enquiry approach to well-being education fail to teach people about the history and cultural variety of the pursuit of the good life, and how different wisdom traditions from various cultures have come up with differing answers to the question of the meaning of life. The Religious Education curriculum in England and Wales ticks this box, teaching young people about the diversity of religious traditions - but RE tends to be entirely theoretical dogma, and fails to teach spiritual practices people can use in their lives.

Philosophies for Life tries to combine the best of all these approaches. It teaches people evidence-based coping skills from modern psychology, and explores their roots in ancient wisdom traditions (Stoicism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism, humanism etc). Rather than just teaching instrumental thinking skills emptied of ethical content, as CBT does, it gives people space to consider and

discuss the original philosophical context for these skills, and the higher ethical goals they were designed to reach, such as inner peace, happiness, justice or oneness with the Tao / Logos / God.

Each session focused on a different ancient philosopher (Socrates, Epictetus, Epicurus, Plato, Aristotle, the Buddha, Lao Tzu and others), exploring one or two key ideas of theirs that we can use in modern life, and whether evidence from modern psychology supports or undermines this idea. The session on the Buddha, for example, explores the importance of habits and training to the good life, and how CBT supports the Buddhas claims about human nature and how to change it.

Then the second half of each session is a group discussion, both of the practical usefulness of the techniques we discussed, and of the philosophers broader ethical philosophy and the moral goal they were trying to reach (happiness, Nirvana, justice etc). The group discussion enables participants to accept or reject aspects of each philosophy, and to share their own stories and wisdom strategies. And it enables the course to cover various ethical life-goals and meanings without imposing any particular meaning onto participants.

I call my method the wisdom approach and use the wisdom tree as a symbol, because the course explores various wisdom traditions and how they share certain trunk ideas about human nature, while then branching out into various different life-meanings (happiness, social justice, Nirvana etc).

The Wisdom Tree

Psychology now has good evidence for some of these trunk ideas about human nature (like the belief we can use our reason to know ourselves and change our habits). However, when it comes to higher life-meanings, science cant prove them or disprove them. It cant prove that happiness is the proper goal of life, for example. Thats why we need philosophy to help us reflect, discuss and choose our own life-philosophy.

Here are the results of the trial:

Manor Gardens philosophy club

Manor Gardens Welfare Trust is a charity that works for the well-being of people in Islington. Our club met every Tuesday evening throughout March and April, initially attracting 15 people, which dropped to 12. Three quarters of the group were women, from their 30s to 50s, and were mainly

Anglo-African and Anglo-Caribbean. The participants were mainly mental health champions for the charity, some of whom (like me) had been through mental health issues earlier in their life.

The Manor Gardens philosophy club

I gave the participants a well-being questionnaire before and after the course, which asked them the extent they agreed to various questions, scoring their answer on a seven-point scale (with one being strongly disagree and seven being strongly agree). This allowed me to get some sense of the impact of the course, however imprecise. It found the following

I lead a purposeful and meaningful life +12%

My social relationships are supportive and rewarding + 21%

I am engaged and interested in my daily activities + 6%

I actively contribute to the happiness and well-being of others 0%

I have control over my life and can move towards my goals +6%

I am optimistic about my future + 28%

When bad things happen to me, I can take steps to deal with them +27%

The most significant impacts seemed to be in participants sense of social support, in their optimism, and their belief in their ability to cope with adversity.

I also asked participants for their own comments about what they liked and disliked about the course. Their comments can be grouped under four headings. Firstly, community: comments included Tuesdays have been the highlight of my week for two months, a great sense of community, sharing, friendship, and great subjects taught and discussed in a very conversational manner that encouraged everyone to get involved.

Secondly, the participants said they enjoyed learning about practical wisdom which they could use in their life. Their comments included: I will take time to think about the bigger picture, relating theory to practice is what makes this course powerful, and the tools I have learned in this course and my belief in God will enable me to make major changes in my life.

Thirdly, participants enjoyed the pluralism of the course - they felt they could learn about differing philosophies of life, without feeling their own faith or philosophy was threatened or undermined. This was a key aim of the course - to give participants a respect for various wisdom traditions, whether they are theistic, atheistic or agnostic. Participants comments included Variety works well. It was interesting to hear how different people use different ideologies to guide their lives and how these ideologies can work well for different problems.

Finally, all the participants said the course made them much more interested in philosophy - most of them having never read any before the course. Comments included: I found the entire course inspiring; this motived me to include more philosophy books in my reading list.

Participants said they would have liked more of a range of philosophers, including black philosophers and female philosophers. They also said they would have liked the course to be longer, and to have a way to stay in touch with the other participants. Finally, they would have liked more materials to take away with them.

HMP Low Moss philosophy club

I taught the course over four Fridays in March to a group of 11 inmates in HMP Low Moss prison outside Glasgow. They were all male, mainly in their 30s and 40s, mainly white Scottish, and mainly long-term prisoners. The participants were already in a philosophy club run by Nikki Cameron of New College Lanarkshire, and my course benefitted from the thinking culture Nikki has created over the last year and a half. Nikkis philosophy club explores questions through philosophical enquiry. I tried more of a wisdom approach, teaching practical ideas for life, and exploring their connection to modern psychology, particularly CBT.

CBT courses are already widely available in Scottish prisons and in other prisons around the world. However, these courses are usually compulsory, and either leave ethics out or include them in a quite dogmatic and non-criticizable form. I was interested in whether the participants would respond better to similar ideas presented in the context of philosophy, in which participants are not treated as malfunctioning brains to be fixed (low status), but as autonomous free-thinking philosophers (high status), who were not there just to take onboard ancient wisdom, but also to share their own wisdom. My sense was this made it more likely participants would engage with the course.

Some of the members of HMP Low Moss philosophy club, with Nikki Cameron on the right

Feedback from HMP Low Moss philosophy club

I gave participants a questionnaire after the course, which gathered quantitative and qualitative feedback. It found that 66% of the participants said they found the course more useful and more enjoyable than the prison CBT courses (some of the group hadnt done the CBT courses). When asked what they liked about the course, participants emphasized knowledge, wisdom and community. They liked learning about ancient philosophers and their relevance to modern life. They liked learning coping skills to help them with the stress of being inside (Stoic philosophy was particularly popular). And they enjoyed the community of meeting up each week with the same people to hear each others views.

While I was doing the course, Kristine Szfiris, a University of Cambridge criminologist who is doing a PhD on philosophy in prisons, interviewed some of the participants. Here are a couple of quotes from them. The first shows one of the coping skills participants learned from Epictetus:

Jules Evans was in doing something about philosophy and he was talking about how we can jump to conclusions, and I do that when I play chess. I just look at the board and Ill jump to conclusions and then I make a move and its been the wrong move kinda thing. I think it gave me a better

understanding. I think its just about focusing on things I can control and not focusing on things I cant control. I find philosophy really interesting and worthwhile being taught in prison.

And the second shows the benefit of a pluralist approach which doesnt impose any particular ethical philosophy onto participants:

With Jules coming in, his views and opinions are set one way but he talks about all the different philosophers which we can disagree with or we can agree with if some of their points are valid. It allows you to take snippets from each one and take something away from it. Its impossible to take it all in, not in such a short space of time but if you can take a little bit of it away and practice it for yourself, it benefits you greatly.

Participants said theyd like more materials to take away and study in their own time, as well as suggestions for further reading that is available in the prison library. Its also interesting to think about how ideas from prison philosophy clubs can be extended out into the rest of the prison, and also beyond the prison walls once prisoners are released (via probation organizations and community groups). Sometimes the group discussions were fractious, and discussion topics could sometimes have been better picked and facilitated by me.

Saracens philosophy club

Saracens FC are one of the worlds best rugby clubs. This season, they broke the record for most points scored in the Premiership, but sadly lost the Heineken European Cup final and the Premiership final in back-to-back weekends.

I ran the Saracens philosophy club as part of Saracens personal development programme. Saracens is unusual among professional sports teams in having an explicitly ethical mission, of focusing not merely on external results, but also on the internal goods of the well-being and character of players and staff. Saracens also have a willingness to try the new and unusual, hence the remarkable feat of getting 12 players and staff to attend and enjoy monthly philosophy sessions.

In fact, ancient philosophy seemed to me very applicable to professional sports - if you search philosophy or Stoicism in Google News, most of the results will be from sports. While many people in education are wary of talking about values, coaches are more prepared to do it. However, there can be a culture clash between an internal focus on character and virtue, and an external focus on winning at all costs. One even felt this clash at Saracens, despite their unusually ethical culture.

The timing of the sessions and the participants in the sessions were all somewhat fluid, due to the teams schedule and fixtures. The philosophy club regularly attracted 12 or so participants, including first-team players and coaching staff.

Feedback from Saracens philosophy club

Feedback was quite haphazard from Saracens, as the players were very focused on two cup-finals at the end of the season (both of which they sadly lost), and then immediately went on holiday. However, the coaches, when interviewed in the Telegraph before the Premiership final, were kind enough to speak at length about the philosophy club. Alex Sanderson, the forwards coach, said it has been the most popular thing weve done this season.

Paul Gustard, the defence coach, said: We spoke about the art of friendship, a higher calling that could be faith or family and it was nice to hear people speak openly about how they have changed along the journey that we are all on and where they sat on the Golden Mean. It was pretty cool.

Kevin Sorrell, the backs coach, said: It was an open forum for players to bounce ideas around. It was pretty enlightening to hear about how players felt individually about certain incidents over the last 12 months. Everyone left the room with a better understanding of what made that person tick and how they react to certain situations.

And Neil de Kock, Saracens scrum half, said: I took an enormous amount of value out of Philosophy Club by having open and having frank discussions with colleagues on various topics very applicable to our game.

As an organizational method, the philosophy club improved communication within the team, and also improved communication between the players and the coaches, helping them to see each others perspectives.

Again, the course would benefit from having more developed teaching materials, such as a handbook which participants could take away with them. Within an organization that has a very strong team-culture, like Saracens, its interesting to think of finding ways not just to reinforce that culture, but also to let people challenge it - otherwise group discussions just become group-think, rather than enabling people to think and speak for themselves.

Practical philosophy Seminar at Queen Mary, University of London, May 2014

After the courses finished, I arranged an evening seminar on practical philosophy at Queen Mary, inviting many of the participants who had attended the first seminar I arranged in 2012, as part of the Philosophical Communities project, as well as some new people, from such organizations as the Philosophy Foundation, the Stuart Low philosophy group, and Philosophy in Pubs.

The group raised and discussed important questions for practical philosophy, such as: what should be the goal of practical philosophy sessions? Is it appropriate to choose goals like wisdom or flourishing, or should the process itself be the goal? How can you measure results or tell if youre helping people? If participants are vulnerable, how do you protect them and make sure discussions are not harmful? What is the appropriate funding model for philosophers, and what are the pressures and compromises that come with various different funding sources?

I was surprised to learn that there are no other conferences or seminars that bring together people practicing philosophy outside of academia. Considering how vibrant this scene is in the UK - this country is arguably a leader in practical philosophy - it seems a pity there are not more events or networks.

We discussed philosophy in schools, in prisons, in the health and charity sectors, in sports and business organizations, and in informal learning. Most of the participants practice the critical enquiry method, and some were wary of a wisdom approach which had a more explicitly ethical focus. Some participants did not like the idea of philosophy courses trying to teach character or wisdom or even ethics.

For my part, I think critical enquiry within group discussions is a powerful and important part of community philosophy. However, I dont think it is enough on its own - if your method relies solely on critical enquiry, youre leaving people to discover wisdom for themselves rather than learning anything useful from the great minds of the last three millennia. I am interested in finding more of a balance between wisdom and critical enquiry, by teaching the wisdom of ancient philosophers, while also putting their ideas up for discussion and criticism.

I think humanities teachers and academics are over-wary of teaching values, particularly in the state sector. That diffidence creates an ethical vacuum that is filled by the scientism of psychology or the dogmatism of faith. The question is not whether to teach values, but how to teach them critically and pluralistically.

Conclusions and next steps

The pilot was more successful than I expected. I initially wondered how philosophy would go down in these various communities (particularly the rugby club), and also how I would go down, as a plummy-voiced southerner. I think I went down OK, because I was open about my own vulnerabilities and flaws and didnt claim to have all the answers. And the wisdom of ancient philosophies turned out to be very accessible to people from varying educational backgrounds, for many of whom this was their first exposure to philosophy.

The group discussions in the second half of each session worked well - people dont want just to listen, they want to share their own ideas and experience. However, people also enjoyed the wisdom teaching first half of each session - they dont just want to listen to each others philosophizing, they also enjoyed learning about the ideas of Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Epictetus and others, and feeling part of that great conversation.

The course worked particularly well with a demographic that is traditionally wary of group therapy - young men. Opening up about your inner life does not come particularly naturally either to rugby players or long-term prison inmates. However, both Saracens and Low Moss philosophy clubs were

places where men could talk about what really mattered to them, and share life-strategies for coping with stress and adversity, without feeling ashamed or broken.

I now plan to launch the course commercially, by selling it to companies, to individuals, and to charities. It could either be sold as a full eight-part course, or as a one-day workshop, or as a two-hour session focusing on, say, Stoic wisdom.

There are two questions I need to answer: where would the course make the most money, and where would it do the most good?

Clearly, the most profitable way forward is to sell the course to businesses, business-people and entrepreneurs. Since the courses finished, I ran a workshop at a conference of business coaches in Spain, and the very positive feedback from that strengthened my sense of the commercial potential of running workshops on practical philosophy, resilience and flourishing for organizations. Ive also joined the faculty of a school for entrepreneurs in London, called Escape the City School.

However, it would be an ethical mistake if the course was only taught to affluent businesspeople. I also think it has great potential to help people in schools, in prisons, in mental health services, and in the general population. I can afford to work with these groups if I subsidize it by working with business-people, and if I use technology to increase my impact.

The next steps, then, are firstly, building a strategy for the commercial launch of the course. I plan to work with a mentor and business coach to develop this in the next two months. Secondly, design and create teaching materials, such as online videos, handouts and activity sheets, and a website. I also plan to do this by September. Thirdly, expand my roster of clients and improving the course as I go on.

The best way to reach the biggest number of people is via the development of an online course. It will be important to find a technological infrastructure that can support this and take payments from participants. I may need to raise capital to design an online course and will discuss this with technology partners and possible funders in the coming weeks.

Next steps for the practical philosophy community

Ive also asked participants at the seminar on practical philosophy for feedback about possible next steps for the community.

Several participants said they would like a longer event to discuss various models of practical philosophy. It might also be useful to create an online network for practical philosophers (although www.thephilosophyhub.com already has a blog).

It might also make sense to establish working groups to build links and share strategies in particular areas, such as philosophy in criminal justice, philosophy in schools, and philosophy in mental health services. The AHRC might be interested in supporting some of these working groups.

At the moment, I would suggest all these areas could be developed further - philosophy is on the verge of disappearing as an A-Level subject, although several primary and secondary schools have philosophy clubs run by SAPERE or the Philosophy Foundation. Philosophy also barely exists within prisons or mental health services, in businesses or in faith communities. The only place it

could really claim to be flourishing is in informal learning. So although the scene is vibrant and involves some passionate and creative participants, its still the case that philosophy needs to grow a great deal if it can be said to have any genuine impact on our culture.

Thanks for their help with this project to: the AHRC; Dr Thomas Dixon at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London; Nikki Cameron, Ruth Facchini and Kirsten Sams of New College Lanarkshire; David Jones and David Priestly at Saracens rugby club; Nita Uphadhyay at Manor Gardens welfare trust; the participants at the practical philosophy seminar; and everyone who took part in the clubs.