Education (παιδεία/paideia): The goals of philosophical education are tranquility, social mastery, and connoisseurship. Transforming “slavish” characters into free ones involves cultivating self-mastery (see: temperance), the capacity to speak with sophistication (see: sociability), and proper philosophical understanding. Education thereby removes impediments to the purest and most immediate reception of pleasurable experiences (see: presentism), including anxiety, regret, and unjustified (merely conventional) compunctions. Training also includes cultivation of appetite and the refinement of its satisfaction, increasing capacity for appreciation (see: sensitivity).
Presentism (monokhronos hēdonē): The pleasures we actively experience in the present moment are the true sensations of value. We telescope our concerns to the present moment as a spiritual exercise, prudential rule of thumb, and emotional attitude — not as an ontological straight-jacket. We thereby diminish discomfort and become more receptive to present pleasures. Due to the greater ability to affect the present moment, we put less faith in painstaking long-term planning than in our ability to adapt to circumstances. We must still plan and reflect, but we do so mindfully, always with an eye upon current conditions.
Adaptability: Ability to harmonize with place, time, and role, and perform harmoniously in any circumstance. Confidence means feeling comfortable rather than anxious or fearful in unknown or threatening situations. Paradoxically, it is only a person of firm character and profound insight who can be so malleable, adapting comfortably to every situation. This requires gaining a range of basic competencies so that we can respond well in any situations, making us self-sufficient.
Temperance (σωφροσύνη/sōphrosūnē): Temperance involves keeping in mind what really matters and what does not. What really matters is simply to avoid pain and distress, and to experience some modicum of pleasure. We achieve the former by disdaining excess, which does not entail embracing austerity. Excess is relative to what is actually good — pleasure. This does not exclude luxury, but we avoid becoming attached to specific sources of pleasure and reduce our desires accordingly. Simple pleasure is enjoyable and sufficient, we ought never covet more than we currently possesses, nor be overcome by sensual enjoyment and lose our contentment.
Sociability (φιλία/philia): Capable of getting along with any sort of person whatsoever, and to do so without anxiety. This social confidence is based on the understanding both cognitively and emotionally that; 1. all one needs is to avoid pain and discover some modicum of pleasure, therefore, one feels more relaxed around other people. He or she does not need to impress anyone, since we are not after anything another can provide which we could not procure ourselves. 2. Just about every situation presents opportunities for enjoyment, which encourages simple accommodation of oneself to one’s company at any given moment. Training responsiveness, versatility, and adroitness. The wise man is comfortable in any situation, and adroit enough to turn it to his advantage. He speaks well, with knowledge and sophistication, possessing charm, humor, and quick-wittedness.
Sensitivity: Explore diverse and evocative sources of pleasure which require increased capacities for appreciation, such as aesthetic discernment, cultural enrichment, physical ability, dexterous skills, and intellectual stimulation. Training sensitivity to aesthetic delights, judged based on the virtuous merits regarding their degree, type, and unique sensory impressions with which they affect the individual’s “imaginative reason”. We refine all instruments of inward and outward intuition and impression, developing our capacities, in order to best receive and interact with the “beatific vision” of our experience in the world. This training involves, not the conveyance of doctrine or principles, but rather, the teaching of an art. Education increases one’s capacity for enjoyment.
Sympathy: We have an empathetic distaste for causing or witnessing pain and discomfort due to our immediate grasp of the inherently evil nature of pain and suffering. We appeal to the aesthetic revulsion caused by the ugliness of suffering, prompting an amelioration of its causes if reasonable, and an avoidance of behavior which would bring it about. “How tenderly—more tenderly than many stricter souls—we might yield to kindly instinct, what fineness of charity in passing judgment on others, what an exquisite conscience of other men’s susceptibilities. We go beyond most people in our care for all weakly creatures.”
Earthen Character: Development generally of the more human and earthly elements of character. Virile consciousness of the realities of life, poetic apprehension, united with something of personal ambition and self-assertion. The earthly end comes like a final revelation of nothing less than the soul’s extinction. To the sentiment of the body, and the affections it defines — the flesh — one must cling; a materialist with the temper of a devotee. Amid abstract metaphysical doubts, as to what might lie one step only beyond that experience, we reinforce the deep original materialism or eathliness of human nature itself, bound so intimately to the sensuous world — let us at least make the most of what is “here and now”.
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