Are you up for a philosophical challenge? Great — let’s go!
Excellencifying isn’t about superhuman feats of excellence; it’s about cultivating daily habits of acting and thinking that lead to excellence. I’m introducing a monthly challenge to cultivate everyday excellence. Our first series of challenges are about excellences of mind.
Let’s start by defining excellences of mind, a term I’m borrowing from Aristotle. They result from excellencifying skills having to do with thought and deliberation — what some people call “the intellectual virtues.” These excellences don’t have anything to do with being an “intellectual”; rather, they are all about how you use your intellect.
Aristotle argues that we can cultivate habits that are conducive to excellence in thinking and deliberating, and these habits play an important role for rational animals like us. We cultivate basic, practical habits of excellence — like courage and moderation — for the straightforward decisions we make in life. In many situations, the path toward excellence is pretty clear, and those basic habits of acting in the world get us through these everyday challenges. But what about the big challenges?
That’s where our rational side comes in. To deal with big, thorny challenges, we deliberate. But we don’t wake up one day and decide to be wise and rational. We have to prepare ourselves for big challenges by cultivating habits of mind conducive to the excellence in deliberation. Deliberation is a skill, just like playing the bassoon: You can decide to play the bassoon, but you don’t go from zero to making music in one step. Preparation and practice (and experience!) is key.
So, how do we prepare ourselves for deliberation? We learn and practice the skills involved in reasoning by paying attention to our own decision-making. I mean, instead of “just deciding,” we become more intentional about how we decide. We focus on the skills and knowledge we need in our deliberations, so we can improve — just like making progress playing bassoon.
Through intentional, mindful practice, excellences of mind become habits. So, even when we’re facing big challenges, challenges where our basic habits of action fail to guide us, we have habits of deliberation to get us through.
Depending on whom you ask, you might get different lists of these excellences of mind. But another approach is to ask yourself: What makes for excellence in deliberation?
People who are good at deliberating don’t generally go into a situation already knowing what their decision will be. In fact, having your mind irrevocably made up is the opposite of deliberation, isn’t it? So, you start by being open to possibilities — including the possibility that what you already think might not be the whole picture, or might be mistaken. Good deliberators do their own thinking, too. They don’t outsource their decision-making to other people, or marketing, or social media noise. Nevertheless, good deliberators do seek information and help when they need it — not to outsource the work of deciding, but to prepare themselves for the work of deciding. Good deliberators tend to “own” their decisions, while accepting that they may not have the Last Word. After all, there’s always more to be learned, and there’s always the maturity of judgment that comes with more experience. This is why good deliberators are willing to review and revise. But that means that good deliberators have to be courageous and overcome anxiety in productive ways. “What if I’m wrong?” can paralyze us into not deciding, but it can also make us swing wildly to dogmatic claims so we can hide our concerns behind a facade of certainty.
If you distill these characteristics and group them, we can talk about four basic excellences: deliberative humility, empathy, courage, and responsibility. Superficially, deliberative humility is the excellence of taking deliberation seriously and being open to the possibility that you don’t already have all the answers. Deliberative empathy is opening yourself to other perspectives and worldviews — not like a laundry list of beliefs, but a genuine attempt to see the world from a different viewpoint. Deliberative courage means finding the strength to overcome our fear of being wrong or making a mistake, so that we can be more genuine in our deliberation and judgment. And deliberative responsibility is all about owning our deliberations, which involves autonomy as well as accountability.
These excellences are our challenges for the next four months. Once we establish habits in these excellences, we’re ready for more advanced excellences of mind — just think bassoon!
Stay tuned! February is deliberative humility month.