I read here that Martin Seligman had been disturbed by my report of Richard Schoch's lecture, that discussed the achievements of positive psychology, arguing that scientists today have forgotten the key lessons of ancient religious and philosophical wisdom. In response, he listed a bunch of facts that positive psychology has discovered that weren't known even a few years ago, let alone to ancient philosophers.

It seemed to me that this was a fascinating way of responding to the lecture. Partly because positive psychology frequently makes much of its reinvention of ancient wisdom for today - CBT being claimed as tantamount to Stoicism, Buddhism and Aristotelianism rolled into one, for example. But you can't have it both says, that positive psychology is new and old, as it were - though that is perhaps a petty logical point to make.

Partly because it is very interesting to see what the man himself offers as to what the science has achieved. And partly because, to my mind, it shows that actually the ancients did know about these things - notwithstanding the fact that they did not talk in terms of percentages and so on.

Let's not take it too seriously; light not heat makes for happiness. But here is Seligman's list of discoveries and a comment about the ancient 'equivalent'. At least it might suggest there is much more dialogue to be usefully had - not just to confirm findings but to critique them. (In a more serious way, I hope that Wellbeing can address that a little.)

1. Optimistic people are much less likely to die of heart attacks than pessimists, controlling for all known physical risk factors.

In fact, it was widely commented on in the ancient world that philosophers appeared to live long lives. The longest lived was probably Democritus, more than 100 years, who as well as being the propounder of atomism, was also known as the laughing philosopher because of the value he ascribed to cheerfulness.

2. Women who display genuine (Duchenne) smiles to the photographer at age eighteen go on to have fewer divorces and more marital satisfaction than those who display fake smiles.

Plutarch argued that the more honest a married couple could be, the better their marriage; or conversely, cultivating secrecy was particularly damaging.

3. Externalities (e.g., weather, money, health, marriage, religion) totaled together account for no more than 15% of the variance in life satisfaction.?

There was a huge debate in the ancient world about the role of luck ??" the impact of externalities ??" upon the good life. The debate was precisely around the extent that luck played a role, and I think it would be fair to say that Aristotle would have been happy with about 15%, at least for the freemen he taught.

4. Several specific exercises produce increases in happiness and decreases in depression six months later while other plausible exercises are mere placebos.?

The ancients knew that some exercises worked, whereas others were mere poses and so didn’t last. The key test for them was to do with authenticity: an exercise that stripped away what wasn’t really you led to happiness; an exercise that attempted to add bits to you that aren’t really you won’t last ??" though it can be hard to tell the difference.

5. The pursuit of meaning and engagement are much more predictive of life satisfaction than the pursuit of pleasure.?

For Aristotle there were three levels of the good life: the pleasurable life (which speaks for itself), the civic life (which might be said to be an engaged life), and the contemplative life (which is a life spent in the company of that which is most meaningful) ??" ascending in that order. He advocated contemplation if you really want to live well.

6. Economically flourishing corporate teams have a ratio of at least 2.9 to1 of positive statements to negative statements in business meetings, whereas stagnating teams have a much lower ratio; flourishing marriages, however, require a ratio of at least 5:1.?

Plutarch makes an arguably comparable comment: because marriages can conceal so much, even to the partners concerned, the early warning signs of minor disagreements are particularly important to attend to. Business arrangements tend to be more transparent ??" positively or negatively.

7. Self-discipline is twice as good a predictor of high school grades as IQ.?

The ancients didn’t have IQ or grades, of course (many today think we should lessen their grip on us too). They did major on self-discipline. In fact, it could be thought of as the determining factor in the education of their youth.

8. Learning optimism at ages 10-12 halves the rate of depression as these schoolchildren go through puberty.?

The ancients also realized that early puberty was the key age for education to the good life. It was the period of the most intense discussion about education in ancient Athens ??" featuring in many of Plato’s dialogues, for example.

9. Happy teenagers go on to earn very substantially more income fifteen years later than less happy teenagers, equating for income, grades, and other obvious factors.?

Socrates programme of educating the young of Athens was aimed at securing their wellbeing, based upon becoming wise. He did, though, stress that seeking wisdom solely to earn more cash was a recipe for ruining a life.

10. How you respond to good events that happen to your spouse is a better predictor of future love and commitment than how you respond to bad events.?

Gore Vidal famously said ‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’ ??" picking up on the discussion of friendship that flourished in ancient times ??" and implying that if you can rejoice when a friend/spouse succeeds, then you live a little more.

11. People experience more “flow” at work than at home.

If Aristotle’s contemplation can be compared with the idea of flow, which it probably can to a degree, then he certainly found more flow in his study than in the kitchen.

One final thought. No doubt, some will respond to these comparisons by saying that the important thing about the science is that it quantifies these effects. Of that, the ancients could have only the vaguest notion. Admittedly, there is a certain advantage in being able to quantify things, when say you are developing public policy. However, quantification comes at a price. It subjects the good life to a cost-benefit analysis, the tyranny of methodological 'measurism' you might say. The great risk here is that it undermines things being valued for what they are in themselves, instead being valued for what they deliver. Or to put it another way, the value of purposive meaning replaces the value of intrinsic meaning - the good, as the ancients put it - and it is the latter that counts. For without it, as the ancients all recognised, there is simply no such thing as the good life.

PS In Seligman's response he wishes Richard Schoch and myself had 'bothered to crack' his book Authentic Happiness. I've studied it quite a lot, as it happens, and I suppose another way of putting the complaint is that though he does argue that happiness is not just positive emotion but meaning and engagement, the need to try to measure meaning and engagement let positive emotion in again through the back door. That's because meaning and engagement aren't very amenable to measurement apart from a consideration of the emotional impact they have on an individual, though it is a poor way to think about them, I'd say.

A key word in Authentic Happiness is 'gratifications', the word Seligman uses to to denote something other than pleasures. He explains: ‘The pleasures are about the sense and the emotions. The gratifications, in contrast, are about enacting personal strengths and virtues.’ He clearly wants to push the discussion of happiness out towards broader concerns like meaning and engagement, and even the transcendent. And yet does not the noun gratification, in common parlance, mean the act of giving someone pleasure, or something that gives pleasure? This is not just a semantic point. Happiness-as-pleasure persists and keeps falling back on the assessment of positive emotion.