Chapter 14: MI and the Existential Intelligence

Gardener has some what proposed a ninth intelligence that meets the majority of his criteria: Existentialism. This intelligence hasn’t been fully supported by enough evidence to become an official intelligence, but it is worth knowing about and understanding. It focuses on the ability of an individual to see their place in the “big picture” of their life, their world, and their universe. It also includes an understanding of life, death, fate, and an ability to fully experience love or total immersion in art. While this sounds like a “spiritual” or “religious” intelligence, it is not: it simply means an individual strives to answer and understand the big issues and questions that many religions also try to answer, because it is human nature to want to understand. It can be difficult to integrate into a classroom setting, and will often not be included in lesson plans to teach to this intelligence, but it can be done by asking students to think deeper about the subjects they are studying. To me, the existential intelligence is really just trying to answer deeper and more broad “essential questions” and should be used to further probe students’ understanding of material and big questions.