The Intellectual Character Initiative

Virtues of the Lion Mind

Intellectual virtues are the personal qualities or character strengths required for the pursuit, refinement, and transmission of “epistemic goods” like knowledge, truth, and understanding. As the personal basis of good judgment, they are also essential to ethically and civically responsible action. While intellectual virtues are several and diverse, our initiative gives special attention to the following five “Virtues of the Lion Mind”:

1. Curiosity: a disposition to wonder, ponder, and ask why. A thirst for understanding and a desire to explore.
2. Intellectual humility: a willingness to “own” one’s intellectual limitations and mistakes. Unconcerned with intellectual status or prestige. 
3. Open-mindedness: an ability to “think outside the box.” Gives a fair and honest hearing to competing perspectives. 
4. Intellectual courage: a readiness to persist in thinking or communicating in the face of fear, including fear of embarrassment or failure. 
5. Intellectual perseverance: a willingness to embrace intellectual challenge and struggle. Hangs in there and doesn’t give up. 

These virtues complement and constrain each other in important ways. Curiosity plays the role of a master motivational virtue. As such, it is critical to productive learning and intellectual growth. But intellectual growth doesn’t end with curiosity. It requires openness and malleability as well as fortitude and inner strength. Corresponding to these requirements, intellectual humility and open-mindedness keep us mindful of our cognitive fallibility and open to learning from others. And intellectual courage and perseverance, which help us own and exercise our intellectual strengths, provide an appropriate confidence and motivation to persist in our beliefs and other intellectual endeavors.

Learn more about how we’re conceiving of intellectual virtues.