Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

13 A Bubble for the Spirit Level: Metricophilia, Rhetoric and Philosophy 193
associated historically with the seventeenth century ascetics who were the regicides
of the English Civil War as well as closers of theatres and general kill-joys, dislikes
happiness because it sounds too, well, happy. The interesting point is that by criticising
‘flourishing’ Layard manages to add plausibility to the assumption that there
really is a single principle, one aim that we all pursue, only just not this one. The
third oddity lies in the final two sentences of the second paragraph above. To start
with, it would not be difficult to give many examples of people in ‘great literature’
talking and reflecting on how their lives are going in terms other than those of happiness.
It is in fact one of the distinctive merits of the arts, particularly literature
and film, that they offer a richer and more fine-grained treatment of human wellbeing
and suffering than such thin terms as ‘flourishing’ and ‘happiness’ contain.
Anna Karenina, for instance, may start with a famous and striking declaration about
happiness and unhappiness, but much of the novel turns on the particular kinds of
contentment, complacency or self-deception in which the principal characters find
what we might call, unsatisfactorily, their happiness.
Two examples from Tolstoy’s novel demonstrate this in an illuminating way. The
first is from Part I, Chapter 10. Oblonsky is having dinner with Levin, who comes
from the countryside and is ill at ease in the luxurious city restaurant. Levin says,
...there is something monstrous about what we are doing now. In the country we try to get
our meals over as quickly as possible, so as to get on with our work, but you and I are doing
our best to make our dinner last as long as we can; we therefore have oysters ...
Why, of course, objected Oblonsky. But the whole aim of civilisation is to make everything
a source of enjoyment.
Well, if that is so, I’d rather be a savage.
The second example is from Part III, Chapter 13 Karenin has been considering how
to respond to his wife’s unfaithfulness.
Though Alexey Alexandrovitch [i.e. Karenin] was perfectly aware that he could not exert
any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt at reformation could lead to nothing
but falsity; though in passing through these difficult moments he had not once thought of
seeking guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it seemed
to him, with the requirements of religion, this religious sanction to his decision gave him
complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his peace of mind. He was pleased to
think that, even in such an important crisis in life, no one would be able to say that he had
not acted in accordance with the principles of that religion whose banner he had always
held aloft amid the general coolness and indifference. As he pondered over subsequent
developments, Alexey Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his wife
should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt, she could never regain his
esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any sort of reason that his existence
should be troubled, and that he should suffer because she was a bad and faithless wife. ‘Yes,
time will pass; time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be reestablished’,
Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; ‘so far reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible
of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame,
and so I cannot be unhappy’.
Karenin cannot see, or does not want to see, that a life based on seeking ‘peace of
mind’ and in which the comfortable ways of his existence are not troubled is a life
of complacency rather than anything worth the name of happiness; and the casuistry