Flourishing
Flourishing, or human flourishing, is the complete goodness of humans in a developmental life-span, that includes positive psychological functioning and positive social functioning, along with other basic goods.
The term is rooted in ancient philosophical and theological usages. Aristotle's term eudaimonia is one source for understanding human flourishing. The Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament, also speak of flourishing, as they compare the just person to a growing tree. Christian Scriptures, or the New Testament, build upon Jewish usage and speak of flourishing as it can exist in heaven. The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas drew from Aristotle as well as the Bible, and utilized the notion of flourishing in his philosophical theology.
More recently, the positive psychology of Martin Seligman, Corey Keyes, Barbara Fredrickson, and others, have expanded and developed the notion of human flourishing. Empirical studies, such as those of the Harvard Human Flourishing Program, and practical applications, indicate the importance of the concept and the increasingly widespread use of the term in business, economics, and politics. In positive psychology, flourishing is "when people experience positive emotions, positive psychological functioning and positive social functioning, most of the time," living "within an optimal range of human functioning." It is a descriptor and measure of positive mental health and overall life well-being, and includes multiple components and concepts, such as cultivating strengths, subjective well-being, "goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience." In this view, flourishing is the opposite of both pathology and languishing, which are described as living a life that feels hollow and empty.
Etymology and definition
Although "flourishing" could refer to the general healthy state of a plant as it grows, properly speaking it is the stage in a vascular plant's morphogenesis, specifically the stage of growth when it develops flowers.Etymology
The English term "flourish" comes from the Latin florere, "to bloom, blossom, flower," from the Latin flos, "a flower." To contrast the term with a plant's lack of full development, "flourish" came to indicate growth or development with vigor. Around 1597, the term came to include the notion of prosperity, insofar as a to bear flowers is an indication of the fullness of life and productivity.Definitions
As an obvious consequence of the widespread use of the term "flourishing" in different fields and by different authors, there is not a general consensus about a definition of flourishing.For instance, there is also a lot of debate about the mutual relations between flourishing and some related concepts, as the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia, and the concepts of happiness and well-being. According to a Neo-Aristotelian view, the concept of human flourishing offers an explanation of the human good that is objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, self-directed and social. It views human flourishing objectively because it is desirable and appealing. Flourishing is a state of being rather than a feeling or experience. It comes from engaging in activities that both express and produce the actualization of one's potential.
According to some voices in Positive Psychology, flourishing is a "descriptor of positive mental health." According to Fredrickson and Losada, flourishing is living
According to the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, flourishing
According to Keyes, mental health does not imply an absence of mental illness. Rather, mental health is a "separate dimension of positive feelings and functioning." Individuals described as flourishing have a combination of high levels of emotional well-being, psychological well-being, and social well-being. Flourishing people are happy and satisfied; they tend to see their lives as having a purpose; they feel some degree of mastery and accept all parts of themselves; they have a sense of personal growth in the sense that they are always growing, evolving, and changing; finally, they have a sense of autonomy and an internal locus of control, they chose their fate in life instead of being victims of fate.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, one of the founding fathers of happiness research, wrote in his book, Flourish, a new model for happiness and well-being based on positive psychology. This book expounds on simple exercises that anyone can do to create a happier life and to flourish. Flourish, is a tool to understand happiness by emphasizing how the five pillars of Positive Psychology, also known as PERMA, increase the quality of life for people who apply it to their lives.
According to Fredrickson and Losada, flourishing is characterized by four main components: goodness, generative, growth, and resilience.
According to Keyes, only 18.1% of Americans are actually flourishing. The majority of Americans can be classified as mentally unhealthy or not mentally healthy or flourishing.
Tyler J. VanderWeele, a prominent epidemiologist and expert in biostatistics who has extensively studied human flourishing, has proposed the following, quite different, definition:
Summary
To summarize the definitions above: Human flourishing is the ongoing fulfillment of human capacities within given contexts by advancing one's own good and the common good.In order to better understand this synthesis, one has to keep in mind that, in the view of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a capacity of a being is a potential stemming from its nature to perform certain kinds of activities, or to undergo certain kinds of changes in accordance with its inner dynamism. For instance, the capacity to bear fruit or the capacity to grow are within a tree's natural potential. On the other hand, the common good is some good—whether material or non-material—that has four characteristics: it is specific, in the sense that it is not general good-in-itself; it is objective, that is, it exists outside of the individual and is independent from the existence of any particular person; it is collective, for it exists only within some community; it is shareable, that is, many people can participate, enjoy, or use it simultaneously.
Aristotle and Flourishing
Aristotle and biology
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, contributed greatly to a deeper understanding of flourishing as a model for human life. While better-known for his work in metaphysics and logic, he also made significant contributions as a biologist. His understanding of the development of flora and fauna, seen especially in his work Generation of Animals, provided a scientific background for recognizing a similar development in the human being.Eudaimonia
Aristotle's term for the optimal state of the human being is eudaimonia. He gives various definitions and descriptions of eudaimonia, in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and in his Politics, among which:- "The active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them. Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy."
- "Happiness therefore is co-extensive in its range with contemplation: the more a class of beings possesses the faculty of contemplation, the more it enjoys happiness, not as an accidental concomitant of contemplation but as inherent in it, since contemplation is valuable in itself. It follows that happiness is some form of contemplation."
- "So, as the function of the soul and of its excellence must be one and the same, the function of its excellence is a good life. This, then, is the final good, that we agreed to be happiness. It is evident from our assumptions, since the activity is better than the disposition, and the best activity is of the best state, and virtue is the best state, that the activity of the virtue of the soul must be the best thing. But happiness too was said to be the best thing: so happiness is the activity of a good soul. Now as happiness was agreed to be something complete, and life may be complete or incomplete-and this holds with excellence also -and the activity of what is incomplete is itself incomplete, happiness must be activity of a complete life in accordance with complete virtue."
- "Happiness is the complete activity and employment of virtue, and this not conditionally but absolutely. When I say 'conditionally' I refer to things necessary, by 'absolutely' I mean nobly: for instance, to take the case of just actions, just acts of vengeance and of punishment spring it is true from virtue, but are necessary, and have the quality of nobility only in a limited manner, whereas actions aiming at honours and resources are the noblest actions absolutely; for the former class of acts consist in the removal of something evil, but actions of the latter kind are the opposite – they are the foundation and the generation of things good."
Philosopher Joe Sachs emphasizes the importance of the activity of eudaimonia, a "being-at-work" of the human soul. This indicates that "flourishing" can adequately translate eudaimonia, insofar as the term signifies the dynamism of the principle of life and growth within a human.
Biblical theology
Old Testament
The Hebrew Bible, known by Christians as the Old Testament, contains many references to human flourishing that have influenced Western philosophy, indicating a cohesive theology whereby God in creative fruitfulness calls human beings to imitate the divine plenitude and life-giving creativity.The Book of Genesis, particularly in its first chapter, presents God as creating the world and calling for the interior principle for bearing life from plants: "And God said, 'Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.'" The vegetation then responds to this divine initiative, which is recognized by God as good. A parallel act occurs with respect to animals, which are called to bear forth life "according to their kind." Finally, God creates the human being, and gives them the command: "Be fruitful and multiply," with a greater specification: "fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." This indicates that human beings, from the beginning, were called to flourish so as to bear fruit, which is not only biological offspring, but also a relation to the rest of creation.
Flourishing of the "just man". The imagery that compares the just or righteous person to a flourishing tree can be found in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures: Psalm 1:3, "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither." Psalm 92:12-14, "The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon." Jeremiah 17:8, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." See also, Isaiah 44:4.
Flourishing of the collective/people/city. At times, Israel is compared to a "vine" that has been planted by the hand of God. Ezekiel 19:10.
Hebrew Scripture also expounds on what could be called "anti-flourishing," that is, the counterpart to flourishing on account of righteousness and Torah meditation: "The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away." Also: Ps 35:5, Job 21:18. Here, too, a prophetic vision is combined with the image of the wicked who commit idolatry do not live and flourish, but instead are like dead bits of straw. This imagery is also utilized by John the Baptist to describe the eschatological work of the Messiah, who will judge the wicked and consign them to everlasting burning: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."