Educating for Eudaimonia: A radical pedagogy of flourishing

Contents

• What Does it Mean to Flourish?
  • Flourishing is not simply happiness or well-being, it is the practice of living life well, with wisdom.
• Ergon, Aretē, and Phronēsis
  • Aristotle gives us three ideas to consider when thinking about flourishing: Ergon (our distinctive function), Aretē (virtue or excellence, or how well we fulfil our function), and Phronēsis (the practical wisdom we use in living life well).
• Flourishing as Radical Pedagogy
  • Flourishing in education requires us to think philosophically about education, its purposes, and the experiences we share in achieving those aims.
• Beyond Schooling: Redefining education for flourishing
  • Education is an approach to understanding how human beings grow and develop. Schooling, on the other hand, often narrows the aims and means of education to more instrumental concerns. How can we redefine schooling as education?
• Ecological and More-Than-Human Flourishing
  • While Aristotle argued only humans had the distinctive capacity for rational thought, that doesn’t mean the more-than-human world can’t flourish; in fact, it means as we are enmeshed in relationships with the more-than-human world, we have a distinctive capacity to ensure life on Earth flourishes.
• Flourishing as an Aim in Education
  • Through thinking radically and philosophically about flourishing as an aim in education, we can envision new and transformative approaches to teaching and learning.
• A Pause for Reflection
  • Key questions to help energise your thinking.
• References

What Does it Mean to Flourish?

What does it mean to educate for eudaimonia? In a word, eudaimonia signifies human flourishing, or living a life of meaning, purpose, and excellence. This concept originates with Aristotle, who argued that education is not just about imparting skills or knowledge, but about nurturing the whole person towards the ‘good life.’

In this post, I discuss the relationship between education and eudaimonia, situating flourishing as the foundation for a radical pedagogy that challenges the idea that education is merely schooling or job training. Instead, educating for eudaimonia means creating the conditions where students can develop their virtues, find meaning and purpose, and celebrate their connections to each other, the more-than-human world, and Earth itself.

Aristotle defined eudaimonia as the highest human good. Too often this is flattened to ‘happiness’ (hedonia), but its original meaning is ‘to live well’ or ‘to flourish’. This distinction suggests we don’t just want to feel well, but also function well. Eudaimonia is not a fleeting mood but an active state of fulfilment. It is not something we possess; it is something we practice.

So how do we practice it? Aristotle argued that eudaimonia is the telos (the ultimate aim) of human life. We reach it through three, related concepts: ergon (our distinctive function), Aretē (excellence or virtue), and Phronēsis (practical wisdom).

Ergon, Aretē, and Phronēsis

Humans, he argued, are uniquely rational and social. Just as a knife’s ergon is to cut, the human ergon is activity guided by reason in community. In my module Radical Education, I emphasise that we should be reasonable (e.g. supporting claims with justifiable premises), rational (e.g. coherent and logically consistent in our thinking) and sensible (e.g. attentive to perception and feeling). As embodied beings, our senses and intellect are intimately entangled; acknowledging perception as knowing enriches our philosophical thinking.

This leads us to aretē (virtue or excellence). We flourish by exercising reason excellently in life. Eudaimonia, Aristotle writes, is “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.” So, living well means using reason to cultivate virtues like courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom.

The Practice of Living Wisely

Fulfilling ergon and cultivating aretē then leads to phronēsis (e.g. the wisdom to navigate complex life situations). It is practical wisdom. If philosophy is the love of wisdom, then phronēsis is the practice of living wisely.

Flourishing as Radical Pedagogy

In research, methodology is the philosophical justification for the methods we choose to generate and analyse data. In Pedagogies for the Future: a critical re-imagination of education, I argue that pedagogy is the philosophical justification for the methods we choose for teaching and learning. A radical pedagogy seeks to get ‘at the roots’ of a world that ‘rests on very different assumptions and values to those which define the basis and the boundaries of the current system’ (Fielding and Moss, 2010: 40), one that seeks to understand education as more than just schooling or training.

From another perspective, Self-determination theory (SDT) frames eudaimonia as an “intrinsically worthwhile way of living” (Deci & Ryan 2008). It is essentially, a life of growth, authenticity, and contribution. Self-Determination Theory has identified three basic psychological needs that underlie optimal functioning:

• autonomy (a sense of volition and self-direction)
• competence (mastery and effectiveness)
• relatedness (connection and belonging).

When these needs are satisfied, people tend to experience greater vitality, motivation, and well-being. We can see clear echoes of Aristotle here: autonomy aligns with exercising reason and choice, competence with cultivating excellence, and relatedness with our social nature as “political animals.” SDT research (Martela & Ryan 2016a) even suggests a fourth element, beneficence or giving to others, as part of flourishing.

Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, and Beneficence

A radical, eudaimonic pedagogy means educational systems should care whether learners find meaning in their studies, feel a sense of agency, and develop healthy relationships. Research suggests that students who have a strong sense of meaning or purpose tend to do better academically and personally, even more so than those who report only high life satisfaction (Martela & Ryan 2016b).

Beyond Schooling: Redefining Education for Flourishing

An important thread running through these perspectives is a critique of equating education with schooling. If we talk about educating for eudaimonia, we must acknowledge that flourishing often requires stepping outside the conventional school paradigm. Aristotle, for instance, did not limit education to school; it was about life experiences, mentorship, and civic engagement.

In fact, when schooling prioritises competition, standardisation, and economic utility over personal growth, it can thwart eudaimonia. Educating for flourishing means pushing back against purely instrumental views of education and invites educators, researchers, policymakers, and community members to seriously question what is education for?

If the answer is “to enable human flourishing,” then policies and curricula should include a greater emphasis on the arts, ethics, outdoor education, and community service; experiences that enrich students as humans being. It also involves recognising accomplishments outside academics: a student who has developed resilience through overcoming a personal challenge, or one who has shown exceptional kindness, is flourishing in ways that are often unrecognised in school.

Some forward-thinking educational frameworks, such as Bhutan’s Education for Gross National Happiness or the Positive Education movement, explicitly aim to integrate well-being into schooling, but fall short of engaging with eudamonia. However, even those these are positive steps forward, we must be cautious not to take a ‘clinical’ approach that flattens eudaimonia into clinical well-being or a box-checking exercise.

For example, a school might implement a “happiness curriculum” that teaches children to smile or think positive thoughts. While well-intentioned, if such an initiative neglects deeper elements such as, critical thinking about one’s values, empathy, or relationships to others (including the more-than-human), it might give a veneer of well-being without the substance. True flourishing isn’t always accompanied by smiles and laughter in every moment; it can involve effort, struggle, and personal growth. A student engrossed in solving a challenging problem or practicing a difficult piece of music might not look “happy” in the trivial sense, but they could be practicing phronesis and experiencing eudaimonia.

Ecological and More-Than-Human Flourishing

In my module Radical Education, eudaimonia involves both human and more-than-human flourishing. This approach purposefully invites us as humans to consider our place within the natural world. Practices like outdoor education, school gardening, or nature journaling can awaken what some call critical, ‘ecological consciousness.’ The holistic education movement encapsulates this with its emphasis on developing connections to community and Earth as fundamental to the “whole child,” and research supports that nature connectedness is associated with students’ well-being. By including the more-than-human in our concept of flourishing, students are positioned to lead sustainable lives that respect the interdependence of all life. In a time of climate crisis, this aspect of eudaimonic education is increasingly vital; humans are not the ‘crown of creation.’ We are intimately entangled in a complex mesh of life, landscape, and relations.

Flourishing as an Aim in Education

Re-orientating education to eudaimonia might sound idealistic in a world fixated on metrics and economic outcomes. Yet, as we have seen, it is a deeply pragmatic and time-honoured concept. When we educate for eudaimonia, we acknowledge that the ultimate aim of education is the well-lived life: a life of meaning, virtue, and contribution for our students (and indeed for educators themselves). This does not diminish the importance of academic learning; rather, it elevates it. Every educational experience can connect to the question: How does this help us or others flourish?

Educating for eudaimonia challenges us to expand our vision of education. It asks that we attend to the whole learner: their intellect, character, well-being, and connectedness to others and Earth. It reminds us that flourishing and learning are deeply intertwined. By making human flourishing the guiding star of our educational efforts, we honour the fullest meaning of paideia (education): the upbringing of a person to excel in goodness and to contribute to a thriving community. This is education not just for the next exam, but life itself.

A Pause for Reflection

• Theory comes alive through practice. What might an education for eudaimonia look like in concrete terms?
• What must educators, researchers, policymakers, and community members both consider, and act on, in order for students to learn how to live life well?

References

Aristotle. 4th century BCE. The Nicomachean Ethics: Book 1. Translation: D. Ross. London: Oxford University Press.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. 2008. Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: an introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(1), pp.1-11.

Fielding, M. & Moss, P. 2010. Radical Education and the Common School. London: Routledge.

Martela, F. & Ryan, R. M. 2016a. The Benefits of Benevolence: Basic Psychological Needs, Beneficence, and the Enhancement of Well-Being. Journal of Personality 84(6), pp.750-764.

Martela, F., & Ryan, R. M. 2016b. Prosocial behavior increases well-being and vitality even without contact with the beneficiary: Causal and behavioral evidence. Motivation and Emotion, 40, pp.351-357.