Human Flourishing
Living Life at its Best
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
Virtually all of politics comes back to human flourishing. Every policy and every law at its most basic level is instituted because of how the drafters envisioned what the ancient Western Philosophers called “the good life.” Aristotle presciently observed that “Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good.”1
The problem in a pluralistic society is that we often have competing visions of the good life due to different religious, cultural, social, and/or economic backgrounds. We bring different sets of values to the national conversation about the most important issues. How, then, does a pluralistic society develop and deploy policies and laws that allow the maximum opportunity for everyone to achieve their full potential?
Before we can get there, we have to determine whether it is even possible to develop a shared vision of human good. In his 2019 book Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker provides a helpful starting point about how to understand human flourishing when he writes,
Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Wealth is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony.
Now, it would be hard to dispute things like sustenance and wealth as being goods that help people develop or flourish into their full potential. But what is quite debatable are the habits and practices—not to mention the values that underlie them—that lead to and multiply those kinds of goods in a person’s life. It is also unclear whether a hierarchy of goods can be reasonably developed to bring about maximum human flourishing. Finally, as a start to thinking about this topic, where is the locus of responsibility for obtaining these goods? The individual or the community?
In the next few articles, I will attempt to take each of these topics in turn, and draw out the questions and concerns involved in understanding their complexity. Think of this as my thinking out loud, not to declare the answers, but to understand the issues.
Aristotle, Politics.