This book elaborates, illuminates, and illustrates a confident and attractive account of social and political liberalism in light of a rich understanding of flourishing and fulfilment rooted in a version of natural law theory. Examining issues in ethics, law, and politics - including consumer responsibility, the assignment of grades by teachers, deception by lawyers, war and empire, and the use of victim-impact statements in parole decisions - Gary Chartier shows how natural law theory can effectively support pluralism, diversity, social (...) equality, integrity, peace, and freedom. (shrink)

This paper analyses how security affects well-being. Security is understood as someone’s sureness of enjoying some good in the future; well-being is treated as a matter of human flourishing. Security can contribute to our well-being in various ways: if we are in fact bound to enjoy a good, in principle this is positive for our flourishing in the future; if we also believe that we will enjoy this good, we can be more efficient in pursuing our well-being; if (...) we also feel secure, this supports our enjoyment of our physical and mental capacities. For some of these benefits to obtain fully, however, it is important that our beliefs and feelings align with the facts. Furthermore, mirroring security’s upsides, there are also ways in which security can hamper our flourishing: it can obstruct the change, surprise, and pleasurable fear that are sometimes required for a good life too. (shrink)

A selection of key passage from Aristotle's seminal work the Nicomachean Ethics, which sets out what it means to flourish and live life well.

In this article I attempt to untangle the purported connection between moral virtue and flourishing in the context of examining what looks like an unexpected effect of oppression: If moral virtue is necessary for flourishing—as Aristotle assumes that it is when he describes eudaimonia as an “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” — then members of structurally privileged groups can only flourish if they are morally good. However, it is hard to conceive of the privileged as (...) morally good, since their privileges result from unjust social positionings. Thus it appears that they are prevented from leading good lives. This is an odd claim to add to a theory of oppression, which one would expect to explain how the victims of oppression — rather than its beneficiaries — are denied a shot at the good life.While the privileged may enjoy especially ample opportunities to develop certain virtues, I will be thinking here about vices associated with practices of domination, including active or passive acceptance of the benefits that come from occupying positionings that depend upon systems of male dominance, white supremacy, class divisions under capitalism, norms of heterosexuality, and so on. (shrink)

Wild horses are becoming dependent on transitional environments between domesticity and wildness. In Dutch new nature areas they are learning to perform roles as ecological surrogates for their extinct ancestors. In the U.S. wild horses are 'feral' and exist in numbers deemed to be in excess of the carrying capacity of semi-arid public range lands. The federal government is removing and relocating thousands to long-term holding pastures. The capabilities approach of Nussbaum (2006) allows us to evaluate this transitional environment against (...) a threshold of opportunities to exercise capabilities judged to be central to their flourishing as wild horses. (shrink)

Monroe Beardsley wrote that there would be no aesthetics if everyone was silent about works of art.1 Similarly, there would be no philosophical aesthetics of design if no one ever talked critically about, but instead quietly enjoyed or put up with, our built environment and things of everyday use. But whereas Beardsley could draw on an established and distinct body of art, music, and literary criticism to set the aims and scope of aesthetics, a similar metacritical approach to the aesthetics (...) of design has no directly equivalent body of critical work. That's not to say designed things aren't objects of critical appraisal raising judgments of a distinctively aesthetic character. Charles Rennie Mackintosh's... (shrink)

Furman and Tuminello raise a central question about people living with mental illness: What kind of life is possible for them? Can one live a flourishing life even when struggling with a mental disorder? The authors draw on research studies to argue that a technique called Applied Behavioral Analysis can improve the lives of children with autism. One study, from 1987, found that 47% of children exposed to ABA attained normal IQ levels, adaptive skills, and social skills, and (...) other studies replicated these results. This is a promising avenue for those living with autism.Furman and Tuminello focus on autism, but their claims, if true, might be extended to other disorders as well; as they note, people... (shrink)

It would be terrible for us if humanity ceased to exist after we all die. But of course, eventually humanity will go out of existence. Does this result in a vicious regress if our flourishing hangs on what happens after us? Mark Johnston thinks so. In this note, I explain how Johnston's objection can be avoided. Briefly, our activities have a meaning horizon that extends for some generations after us. What matters is that we make a positive difference to (...) the lives of those generations, not that they themselves necessarily flourish. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the use of the concept of human flourishing with regard to children. We will argue that the concept can meaningfully be applied to parts of human lives, specifically one's childhood, and discuss when we can meaningfully speak of a flourishing child. Viewing children's lives in terms of whether they are flourishing may be able to help us understand and articulate in which ways a child's life may go (...) better or worse. This is relevant, firstly, to the overall evaluation of people's lives, and secondly, because a flourishing childhood could be instrumentally necessary for adult flourishing. But, most importantly, childhood is a period of life that is good in itself irrespective of its contribution to adult flourishing, that is, being able to be a child has intrinsic goodness. Children have particular characteristics that can optimally function in childhood. While these contribute to the overall evaluation of a flourishing life, they are not regarded as valuable only because of this contribution. (shrink)

In this paper, I set an aspect of what it is to live a flourishing life against the backdrop of neo liberal trends that continue to influence educational policy across the globe. The view I set out is in sharp contrast to any narrow assumption that education’s main task is the measurement of high performing individuals who will thus contribute to an economically viable society. Instead, I explore and argue for a conception of what constitutes a flourishing life (...) that is embedded in a more pragmatist analysis of what education may be. The argument begins with developing the centrality of embodiment to aesthetic sensibility and goes on to suggest how collective understanding of this within a community could constitute a sense of performance and thus contribute to the educational aim of developing a full and flourishing life. The argument is that this way of seeing life could have implications for educational practice, the role of the teacher and could help to reconfigure how education is experienced by the young. (shrink)

What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent (...) person seeks her own good efficiently; she selects the best available means to her good. If we call the value that a person seeks when she is being prudent “prudential value,” then an alternative rendering of the question to be addressed in this essay is “What is prudential value?” We can also say that an individual flourishes or has a life high in well-being when her life is high in prudential value. Of course, these common-sense appearances that the good for an individual, the good for other persons, and the requirements of morality often are in conflict might be deceiving. For all that I have said here, the correct theory of individual good might yield the result that sacrificing oneself for the sake of other people or for the sake of a morally worthy cause can never occur, because helping others and being moral always maximize one's own good. But this would be the surprising result of a theory, not something we should presuppose at the start of inquiry. When a friend has a baby and I express a conventional wish that the child have a good life, I mean a life that is good for the child, not a life that merely helps others or merely respects the constraints of morality. After all, a life that is altruistic and perfectly moral, we suppose, could be a life that is pure hell for the person who lives it—a succession of horrible headaches marked by no achievements or attainments of anything worthwhile and ending in agonizing death at a young age. So the question remains, what constitutes a life that is good for the person who is living it? (shrink)

By putting existential phenomenology into conversation with virtue ethics, this book offers a new interpretation of human flourishing. It rejects characterizations of flourishing as either a private subjective state or an objective worldly status, arguing that flourishing is rather a successfully negotiated self-world fit – a condition involving both the essential dependence of the self upon the world and others, and the lived normative responsiveness of the agent striving to be in the world well. A central argument (...) of the book is that there is an irreducible normative plurality arising from the different practical perspectives we can adopt – the first, second, and third-person stances – all of which make different kinds of normative claim that we understand ourselves as having reason to meet. Flourishing is human excellence within each of these normative domains achieved in such a way that success in one domain does not compromise success in another. Existential Flourishing provides a correspondingly transformed interpretation of the virtues as solutions to various existential problems we face in responding to these normative domains. The book also addresses traditional problems in virtue ethics and analyzes the structure of four virtues in detail: justice, patience, modesty, and courage. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s conception of the art of acting, and his views on the new actor’s conduct towards their craft, as a pedagogical model for Brechts’ broader view on how we should live our lives. Drawing on his key writings – most importantly, his famous street scene essay – I will show that Brecht’s conception of the theory-practice connection in his approach to actor training/acting bears some deeper insight into Brecht’s conception of the (...) art of living a flourishing life. The new actor is called to develop a conduct of careful observation and imitation of human action, one that is marked by the pleasure and lightness of exploring the contradictory workings of the social world. By placing the actor’s craft at the heart of his educational philosophy, Brecht invites us (the audience) into the theatre as a pedagogical space. Here, not unlike Brecht’s actors, we are summoned to hone our ability to boldly engage with a complex world of human actions and ideas. Brecht maintains that there resides an intellectual as well as sensual delight in being challenged to not simply accept theatre’s presentations as ‘truth’; instead, we are to learn to ‘weigh up’, ‘test’, and ‘improvise’ joyfully with theatre’s proposed ideas and practices—so that we may find out if they serve, or hinder, the creation of a larger flourishing life (beyond the theatre): a life in which we can move together, pleasurably. (shrink)

This essay describes a new ethical theory that has begun to coalesce from the works of several scholars in the international computer ethics community. I call the new theory ‚Flourishing Ethics’ because of its Aristotelian roots, though it also includes ideas suggestive of Taoism and Buddhism. In spite of its roots in ancient ethical theories, Flourishing Ethics is informed and grounded by recent scientific insights into the nature of living things, human nature and the fundamental nature of the (...) universe – ideas from today’s information theory, astrophysics and genetics. Flourishing Ethics can be divided conveniently into two parts. The first part, which I call ‚Human-Centered FE,’ is focused exclusively upon human beings – their actions, values and characters. The second part, which I call ‚General FE,’ applies to every physical entity in the universe, including humans. Rather than replacing traditional ‚great ethical theories,’ Flourishing Ethics is likely to deepen and broaden our understanding of them. (shrink)

The present paper uses a Flourishing Ethics analysis to address the question of which ethical values and principles should be “instilled” into artificially intelligent agents. This is an urgent question that is still being asked seven decades after philosopher/scientist Norbert Wiener first asked it. An answer is developed by assuming that human flourishing is the central ethical value, which other ethical values, and related principles, can be used to defend and advance. The upshot is that Flourishing Ethics (...) can provide a common underlying ethical foundation for a wide diversity of cultures and communities around the globe; and the members of each specific culture or community can add their own specific cultural values—ones which they treasure, and which help them to make sense of their moral lives. (shrink)

Various authors see human flourishing as the overarching aim to which education should contribute. We ask whether fostering _wonder_ can help education attain this aim. We discuss two possibilities: firstly, it may be that having a sense of wonder as adults (possibly fostered by and/or refined due to education) contributes to flourishing itself. Secondly, it may be that fostering wonder in education increases the likelihood that education promotes flourishing, which it might do simply by increasing children’s intrinsic (...) interest in what they learn. We argue that there are many plausible connections between wonder and human flourishing (relating to its epistemic and aesthetic dimensions, among others), and that we have reason to believe that early experiences can influence adults’ capacity for wonder. Furthermore, wonder increases the likelihood that education ‘succeeds’; and it supports people’s ability to live well by heightening their appreciation for the world, helping to uncover baseless beliefs, and increasing their awareness of possible goods. In sum, while having a sense of wonder may not be a constitutive element of human flourishing, it is hard to imagine education for human flourishing that is not also wonder-full education. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to investigate what enables human flourishing from a Thomistic perspective by considering Aquinas’ natural inclinations. I will argue that human beings flourish in different ways, depending on their practices. However, not every practice contributes to human flourishing, but only those that are consistent with human nature, which agents grasp through their natural inclinations. To support this argument, I will critically analyze MacIntyre’s account, referring mainly to his latest work (2016). MacIntyre has the (...) merit of highlighting the role of practices in human flourishing by considering the narrative dimension in the agents’ lives, but he fails to recognize the properly metaphysical framework of human nature, that would be provided by the proper consideration of natural inclinations. (shrink)

International uproar followed the recent announcement of the birth of twin girls whose genomes had been edited with a breakthrough DNA editing-technology. This technology, called clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeats or CRISPR-Cas9, can alter any DNA, including DNA in embryos, meaning that changes can be passed to the offspring of the person that embryo becomes. Should we use gene editing technologies to change ourselves, our children, and future generations to come? The potential uses of CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene editing (...) technologies are unprecedented in human history. By using these technologies, we eradicate certain dreadful diseases. Altering human DNA, however, raises enormously difficult questions. Some of these questions are about safety: Can these technologies be deployed without posing an unreasonable risk of physical harm to current and future generations? Can all physical risks be adequately assessed, and responsibly managed? But gene editing technologies also raise other moral questions, which touch on deeply held, personal, cultural, and societal values: Might such technologies redefine what it means to be healthy, or normal, or cherished? Might they undermine relationships between parents and children, or exacerbate the gap between the haves and have-nots? The broadest form of this second kind of question is the focus of this book: What might gene editing--and related technologies--mean for human flourishing? In the new essays collected here, an interdisciplinary group of scholars asks age--old questions about the nature and well-being of humans in the context of a revolutionary new biotechnology--one that has the potential to change the genetic make-up of both existing people and future generations. Welcoming readers who study related issues and those not yet familiar with the formal study of bioethics, the authors of these essays open up a conversation about the ethics of gene editing. It is through this conversation that citizens can influence laws and the distribution of funding for science and medicine, that professional leaders can shape understanding and use of gene editing and related technologies by scientists, patients, and practitioners, and that individuals can make decisions about their own lives and the lives of their families. (shrink)

'Life is not worth living unless one can be indiscreet to intimate friends,' wrote Isaiah Berlin to a correspondent. Flourishing inaugurates a keenly awaited edition of Berlin's letters that might well adopt this remark as an epigraph. Berlin's life was enormously worth living, both for himself and for us; and fortunately he said a great deal to his friends on paper as well as in person. The indiscretions- only part of the story, of course- are not those of Everyman. (...) Berlin is one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century, the most famous English thinker of the post- war era, and the focus of growing interest and discussion. Above all, he is one of the best modern exponents of the disappearing art of letter- writing. When this volume opens Berlin is eighteen, a pupil at St Paul's School, London. He becomes an undergraduate at Oxford, then a Fellow of All Souls, where he writes his famous biography of Karl Marx. He then moves to New College to teach philosophy, and after the outbreak of the World War 2 sails to America in somewhat mysterious circumstances with Guy Burgess. He stays in the USA, working for the British Government, until July 1946, when he returns to Oxford. Berlin's letters are marvellously accessible, and as entertaining as a novel. During the two decades covered here we see his personality and career growing and blooming. In America he writes a regular telegram to his anxious parents, often saying just 'Flourishing'; the word is entirely apt, not only for his wartime experience, but for the whole of his early life, vividly displayed in this book in all its multi-faceted delightfulness. (shrink)

Political philosophers are divided on the question of whether society should guide individuals in their projects and goals in light of the competing, yet overlapping, values of moral independence and human well-being. The lively neutralism-perfectionism debate appears to be significantly muted, however, when it comes to children who, all parties assume, should be guided by adults in their plans of life. Thus, in their stimulating new book, Family Values: the Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships, liberals Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift affirm (...) the role of the family in directing and enabling children’s flourishing. My paper challenges this distinction between parents and children in the liberal position to argue that the idea that it is appropriate to direct children to enable them to flourish, entails in fact, a commitment to policies that promote and enable the flourishing of all. (shrink)

Flourishing is the highest good of all persons, but hard to achieve in complex societal systems. This challenge is borne out through the lens of the global nursing shortages with its focus on the supply of nurses to meet health system demands. However, nurses and midwives spend a significant part of their lives at work and so the need to pay attention to the conditions that facilitate flourishing at work is important. Drawing on ancient and contemporary philosophies, (...) as well as critical, creative and embodied ways of knowing, enabling a flourishing practice ecosystem will be explored in this paper. (shrink)

Hojjat Soofi develops a modified version of Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach, which he offers as a conception of dignity for people living with dementia.1 He argues that this modified version can address what he identifies as four main criticisms of the concept of dignity. The first and most substantial criticism was developed by Macklin: that appeals to ‘dignity’ add little to moral debates or to the rich field of existing moral values.1 Soofi’s account of dignity does not evade this criticism: (...) to the contrary, it represents another clear example of what Macklin complained about, namely, a moral proposal in which the concept of ‘dignity’ plays no substantive role. We have much to learn from Soofi’s rich account of how to ensure the flourishing or well-being of people living with dementia, but it has little to do with dignity as such. According to Soofi, Macklin’s argument is that ‘dignity’ is just another word for respect for persons or their autonomy. This is a rather truncated representation of Macklin’s argument, which is in fact broader. Her argument is that the concept of ‘dignity’ adds nothing to the vast array of rich moral values that already populate the field of ethics, mainly because it is a less precise restatement of these existing values.2 She explicitly …. (shrink)

Human obsolescence is imminent. We are living through an era in which our activity is becoming less and less relevant to our well-being and to the fate of our planet. This trend toward increased obsolescence is likely to continue in the future, and we must do our best to prepare ourselves and our societies for this reality. Far from being a cause for despair, this is in fact an opportunity for optimism. Harnessed in the right way, the technology that hastens (...) our obsolescence can open us up to new utopian possibilities and enable heightened forms of human flourishing. (shrink)

An inclusive vision of mathematics-- its beauty, its humanity, and its power to build virtues that help us all flourish. For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a diverse audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves personal reflections, puzzles, and stories to (...) show how mathematics meets basic human desires and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. Readers will explore mathematical concepts-- and see how mathematical thinking can even fulfill such longings as for love, play, freedom, justice, and community. Some lessons come from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher Jackson's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can-- and must-- be open to all. (shrink)

Aristotle’s ethical system was guided by his vision of human flourishing (also, but potentially misleadingly, translated as happiness). For Aristotle, human flourishing was a rich holistic concept about a life lived well until its ending. Both living a long life and dying well were integral to the Aristotelian ideal of human flourishing. Using Aristotle’s concept of human flourishing to inform the goals of medicine has the potential to provide guidance to clinical decision-makers regarding the provision of (...) burdensome treatments, such as intensive care treatment, where pursuing a chance of survival must be balanced against the risk of exposing patients to a negative dying experience. By conceptually uniting potentially competing goals of medicine, such as prolonging life and the promotion of peaceful deaths, Aristotle’s understanding of human flourishing creates an argument for the integration of palliative care considerations into intensive care decision-making and for advanced care planning with healthy patients. (shrink)

Given the potentially powerful effects of gene editing for human lives, it seems reasonable to reflect on the issue from a variety of scientific, moral, cultural, and religious perspectives to help us deploy this technology with a clear eye to all its possible implications. Given the global impact genetic modification will likely have, an inquiry seriously engaging with the values and ideals of non-Western cultures and societies will be helpful to achieve the sort of balanced understanding that will enable (...) a proper evaluation. This chapter examines the account of well-being found in the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi, and highlights some insights that can be fruitfully explored in the context of the ethics of gene editing. The thesis is that, from the perspective of Zhuangzi’s conception of human flourishing, there are reasons for rejecting the use of genetic modification technology. (shrink)

The trials of life can wear us down. Unexpected events force us to face a new reality and unanswered prayers lead us to a growing frustration about why God doesn't intervene. We wonder if anything good can come out of this painful, dark, winter season. Grace Wabuke Klein knows that there is purpose in our darkest days and seasons of waiting. In Flourish, Grace meets the reader in their heartache, disappointment, and pain and gives encouragement and a fresh perspective on (...) the winter seasons we all go through, as well as practical steps to not just survive but to find purpose in the unknown and unexpected. Drawing insight from her own winter seasons, Grace reveals the divine purpose in each season of our lives. She explains how: -Fall is a time of release-a necessary season of letting go of offenses, unhealthy relationships, hurts, bad habits, toxic friendships, pride, unforgiveness and other heart issues before we can ever move on to the next season -Winter is a time of unexpected challenges and unknown futures-yet lessons learned in life's storms are deep and full of growth to shape us and makes us stronger. -Spring is a time of new things that require us to be open to new experiences, people, ideas, and perspective-stepping out into the unknown and uncomfortable. -Summer is a time when everything is flourishing-we clearly see how each season cultivated a deeper level of faith and spiritual muscles, developing our character and perseverance. Grace discovered there is value and unseen gifts in each season, but only in the hard seasons and storms of life are vital spiritual disciplines developed. Flourish connects with the reader in the tension and storms of life to bring a word of hope. (shrink)

Early in Peter Abelard's Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, the philosopher and the Christian easily come to agreement about what the point of ethics is: “[T]he culmination of true ethics … is gathered together in this: that it reveal where the ultimate good is and by what road we are to arrive there.” They also agree that, since the enjoyment of this ultimate good “comprises true blessedness,” ethics “far surpasses other teachings in both usefulness and worthiness.” (...) As Abelard understood them, both fundamental elements of his twelfth-century ethical culture — Greek philosophy and Christian religion — held a common view of the nature of ethical inquiry, one that was so obvious to them that his characters do not even state it in a fully explicit way. They take for granted, as we take the ground we stand on, the premise that the most important function of ethical theory is to tell you what sort of life is most desirable, or most worth living. That is, the point of ethics is that it is good for you, that it serves your self-interest. (shrink)

City Living is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. More people live in cities than ever before: more than 50% of the earth's people are urban dwellers. As downtown cores gentrify and globalize, they are becoming more diverse than ever, along lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and age. Meanwhile, we are in the early stages of what seems sure to be a period of intense civil unrest. During (...) such periods, cities generally become the primary sites where tensions and resistance are concentrated, negotiated, and performed. For all of these reasons, understanding cities and contemporary city living is pressing and exciting from almost any disciplinary and political perspective. Quill R Kukla offers the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. The book draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of urban life. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order, but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, Kukla makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book concludes with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants. (shrink)

Is economic liberty necessary for individuals to lead truly flourishing lives? Whether your immediate answer is yes or no, this question is deceptively simple. What do we mean by liberty? What constitutes the flourishing life? How are these related? How is economic liberty related to other goods that affect human flourishing? To answer these questions—and more—this volume brings to bear some of history’s greatest thinkers, interpreted by some of today’s leading scholars of their thought.

These questions-in essence 'What are flourishing lives and how can we lead them?'-are long central to philosophy. Now, however, can be addressed in light of new insights in positive psychology, psychiatry, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and behavioral economics as well new research in philosophy itself, including feminist theory, critical race studies, philosophical psychology, neuro-ethics, and more. The thirteen contributors chart new directions for understanding and securing human flourishing. Reflecting the fact that lives and cultures differ, the (...) perspectives are pluralistic. Part One considers the meaning of human flourishing through analyses of: the nature of purposeful, mattering lives; biological, psychological, and social levels of homeostasis; the nature of human agency and the role of narrative in it; the nature of the self and self-fulfillment; the centrality of subjective values and non-subjective conditions that make possible these values; and the need to encompass the wide diversity of human lives. Part Two considers conditions on which flourishing depends. These include: habits flexible enough to confront ever-changing realities; conditions of social justice rather than supposed self-help; epistemic responsibility and sensitivity to social relations; civility and values literacy; educational reconstruction, particularly in the humanities; a cultural focus on eudaimonic values rather than mere technical efficiency and marketplace consumerism; and the role of creative arts in transforming our abilities, promoting genuine self-government, and providing consolation in the face of loss. (shrink)

This collection explores the link between theater and human flourishing. It interrogates both the social good of theater and the personally restorative work of a range of live embodied performances. It brings together the disciplines of theater (and performance studies) and psychology, especially positive psychology, to explore the social benefits of theater. These benefits include the formation and participation in community, opportunities to engage in political speech and thought, and the experience of being entertained (or offended) by both the (...) creative work of artists and the individual responses of fellow audience members. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of ‘flourishing’ that is relevant to health care provision, both in terms of the flourishing of the individual patient and carer, and in terms of the flourishing of the caring institution. It is argued that, unlike related concepts such as ‘happiness’, ‘well-being’ or ‘quality of life’, ‘flourishing’ uniquely has the power to capture the importance of the vulnerability of human being. Drawing on the likes of Heidegger (...) and Nussbaum, it is argued that humans are at once beings who are autonomous and thereby capable of making sense of their lives, but also subject to the contingencies of their bodies and environments. To flourish requires that one engages, imaginatively and creatively, with those contingencies. The experience of illness, highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, thereby becomes an important experience, stimulating reflection in order to make sense of one’s life as a narrative. To flourish, it is argued, is to tell a story of one’s life, realistically engaging with vulnerability and suffering, and thus creating a framework through which one can meaningful and constructively go on with one’s life. (shrink)

Recent models of wisdom in philosophy and psychology have converged on conceptualizing this intellectual virtue as involving metacognitive processes that enable us to know how to live well and act morally. However, these models have been critiqued by both philosophers and psychologists on the grounds that their conceptions of wisdom are redundant with other constructs, and so the concept of wisdom should be eliminated. In reply, I defend an account of wisdom that similarly conceptualizes wisdom as involving metacognitive processes, but (...) without being subject to the critique that wisdom is redundant. To isolate what’s unique about wisdom, I examine the self-regulatory processes that are relevant for being effective in striving to achieve our goals and draw further insights from the research on skill acquisition and expertise. This framework reveals that the unique contribution that wisdom can make beyond these other processes is in setting and revising our conceptions of living well and the constitutive virtues, and so the concept of wisdom is not redundant. In addition, this account can help to resolve two other areas of contention in wisdom research, which is accounting for the connection between wisdom and moral motivation, as well as the role of emotion in wisdom. A goal-oriented approach provides insight into factors influencing moral motivation due to distinctions in the ways goals are formulated, and for a better understanding of the connection between emotion and wisdom I endorse enactivist accounts that maintain that emotions are embodied appraisals connected to our deeply held cares and values. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of ‘flourishing’ that is relevant to health care provision, both in terms of the flourishing of the individual patient and carer, and in terms of the flourishing of the caring institution. It is argued that, unlike related concepts such as ‘happiness’, ‘well-being’ or ‘quality of life’, ‘flourishing’ uniquely has the power to capture the importance of the vulnerability of human being. Drawing on the likes of Heidegger (...) and Nussbaum, it is argued that humans are at once beings who are autonomous and thereby capable of making sense of their lives, but also subject to the contingencies of their bodies and environments. To flourish requires that one engages, imaginatively and creatively, with those contingencies. The experience of illness, highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, thereby becomes an important experience, stimulating reflection in order to make sense of one’s life as a narrative. To flourish, it is argued, is to tell a story of one’s life, realistically engaging with vulnerability and suffering, and thus creating a framework through which one can meaningful and constructively go on with one’s life. (shrink)

Faith-based organizations are a key player in major sectors of activity for maintaining the welfare state, including health, education, and social services. This paper uses a multivariate regression model in an attempt to identify the factors that affect the relationship between work engagement and flourishing. The paper also discusses the empirical research gap that has been identified in the literature about the moderated effect of human values on this relationship. This study is based on a sample of 142 nuns (...) of a congregation belonging to a religious organization with an international scope and a Catholic inspiration. The case of religious women who have chosen to live a life consistent with the charism of the congregation constitutes a paradigmatic and unique environment to investigate the potential alignment of personal values with professional activity. Two important conclusions are derived from this work. First, the more engaged nuns are in their work (social action to serve the poorest and most disadvantaged people), the more they flourish in their working environment and in their personal lives. Second, certain personal values reinforce the relationship between the professional role (work engagement) and the personal role (flourishing). (shrink)

Packed with practical strategies and inspiring research about how learning changes the brain this book will empower you with ideas you can apply right away that can positively change children’s lives forever.

Early in Peter Abelard's Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, the philosopher and the Christian easily come to agreement about what the point of ethics is: “[T]he culmination of true ethics … is gathered together in this: that it reveal where the ultimate good is and by what road we are to arrive there.” They also agree that, since the enjoyment of this ultimate good “comprises true blessedness,” ethics “far surpasses other teachings in both usefulness and worthiness.” (...) As Abelard understood them, both fundamental elements of his twelfth-century ethical culture — Greek philosophy and Christian religion — held a common view of the nature of ethical inquiry, one that was so obvious to them that his characters do not even state it in a fully explicit way. They take for granted, as we take the ground we stand on, the premise that the most important function of ethical theory is to tell you what sort of life is most desirable, or most worth living. That is, the point of ethics is that it is good for you, that it serves your self-interest. (shrink)

Bioart is a form of hybrid artistico-scientific practices in contemporary art that involve the use of bio-materials (such as living cells, tissues, organisms) and scientific techniques, protocols, and tools. Bioart-works embody vulnerability (intrinsic to all beings) and depend on (bio)technologies that allow these creations to come into being, endure and flourish but also discipline them. This article focuses on ‘semi-living’ sculptures by The Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A). TC&A’s artworks consist of bioengineered mammal tissues grown over biopolymer scaffoldings of (...) different shapes and require sterile conditions of a bioreactor and constant care in order to survive. The article explores how bioart-works are always already intertwined with multiple (bio)technologies and techniques of care and labour, forming specific feminist technoecologies that challenge conventional bioscientific and cultural imaginaries of embodiment and the relation between physis and techné. TC&A’s sculptures expose life as the non/living: the processual enmeshment of the organic and inorganic, living and non-living, and growth and decay. The article argues that thinking with and through the feminist technoecologies of bioart mobilises philosophical inventiveness: not only does it problematise the entwinement of technology and biomatter and of culture and nature, but it also prompts us to rethink the ontology of life. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. No one has played a greater role in this development than Viviana Zelizer, one of the world's leading sociologists. Economic Lives synthesizes and extends her most important work to date, demonstrating the full breadth and range of her field-defining contributions in a single volume (...) for the first time. Economic Lives shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. Distilling three decades of research, the book offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. Economic Lives ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex. These examples demonstrate an alternative approach to explaining how we manage economic activity--as well as a different way of understanding why conventional economic theory has proved incapable of predicting or responding to recent economic crises. Providing an important perspective on the recent past and possible futures of a growing field, Economic Lives promises to be widely read and discussed. (shrink)

Current philosophies of art remain sadly dominated by visions of its end and lamentations of decline. Defining the very notions of art and the aesthetic as special products of Western modernity, they suggest that postmodern challenges to traditional high culture pose a devastating danger to Art's future. Richard Shusterman's new book cuts through the seductive confusions of these views by tracing the earthy roots of aesthetic experience and showing how the recent flourishing of aesthetic forms outside modernity's sacralized realm (...) of fine art evince the persistent presence of an artistic impulse far deeper and more durable than the modernist moment. Performing Live defends the abiding power of aesthetic experience by exploring its diverse roles, methods, and meanings, especially in fields marginal to traditional aesthetics but now most vibrantly alive in today's culture and new media. Ranging from rap, techno, and country music to cinema, cyberspace and urban design, Shusterman develops his radical theory of "somaesthetics," charting the complex network of bodily arts so prominent in contemporary life and self-styling. By blending concrete aesthetic analysis with insightful social critique, Shusterman, a well-known pragmatist philosopher, provides a rich menu and critical guide for today's pursuit of the art of living. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our (...) moral development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development. (shrink)

Offers a response to one of the oldest questions known to humankind namely, what is happiness and how can we ensure that communities are flourishing, happy places for people to live and work?

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance (...) of a “living ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

Because people with disabilities live in a world not built for them, they are often the first to experiment with new technologies and are often expert in making choices about when to use them. People with disabilities face the question that all human beings increasingly face: to what extent will a given technology promote or thwart my flourishing? More generally, and at least as importantly, what does “flourishing” mean, and how can people use technologies to promote it? To (...) address those questions, we will build six public conversations around an activity that can be essential for flourishing: communicating, navigating, belonging, expressing, curing, and procreating. Each event will feature three persons who live with a disability or are the parents of someone who does. (shrink)

Can humans flourish without destroying the earth? In this book, experts on many of the world's major and minor religious traditions address the question of human and earth flourishing. Each chapter considers specific religious ideas and specific environmental harms. Chapters are paired and the authors work in dialogue with one another. Taken together, the chapters reveal that the question of flourishing is deceptively simple. Most would agree that humans should flourish without destroying the earth. But not all humans (...) have equal opportunities to flourish. Additionally, on a basic physical level any human flourishing must, of necessity, cause some harm. These considerations of the price and distribution of flourishing raise unique questions about the status of humans and nature. This book represents a step toward reconciliation: that people and their ecosystems may live in peace, that people from different religious worldviews may engage in productive dialogue; in short, that all may flourish. (shrink)

Human ability to freely choose requires knowledge of human nature and the final end of man. For Aristotle, this end is happiness or full flourishing, whichinvolves various virtues. Modern scholarship has led to debate over which virtues are absolutely necessary. Taking into account the hierarchical nature of the soul and the fact that relationships with the divine and with others are necessary for human flourishing, it can be seen that human flourishing requires contemplation, phronesis and all the (...) moral virtues, as perfections of the various parts of the soul. The truly happy person has actualized all of his faculties and potential relationships. Rather than taking one of the standard exclusivist or inclusivist viewpoints on this ‘problem of the two lives,’ this paper argues that a holistic reading of Aristotle’s ethical works requires a hierarchical and relational view of the virtues, with all of them necessary for human flourishing. (shrink)

Human ability to freely choose requires knowledge of human nature and the final end of man. For Aristotle, this end is happiness or full flourishing, whichinvolves various virtues. Modern scholarship has led to debate over which virtues are absolutely necessary. Taking into account the hierarchical nature of the soul and the fact that relationships with the divine and with others are necessary for human flourishing, it can be seen that human flourishing requires contemplation, phronesis and all the (...) moral virtues, as perfections of the various parts of the soul. The truly happy person has actualized all of his faculties and potential relationships. Rather than taking one of the standard exclusivist or inclusivist viewpoints on this ‘problem of the two lives,’ this paper argues that a holistic reading of Aristotle’s ethical works requires a hierarchical and relational view of the virtues, with all of them necessary for human flourishing. (shrink)