Flourishing, or human flourishing, is the complete goodness or well-being 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 , "to bloom, blossom, flower," from the Latin , "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.Steinmetz, Sol. Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. Edited by Robert K. Barnhart. 1st Edition. Edinburgh: Chambers, 1999, "flourish", p. 393
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 (depressed) or not mentally healthy or flourishing (moderately mentally healthy/languishing).
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.See: "Potenza (e atto)" in Battista Mondin, Dizionario Enciclopedico del Pensiero di San Tommaso D'Aquino (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2000), 533. 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.See M. Noirot, "Bonum Publicum," in Dictionarium Morale et Canonicum, ed. Pietro Palazzini (Rome: Officium Libri Catholici, 1962), 497.
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.Leroi, Armand Marie. The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. Reprint edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2015., 9 and passim
Eudaimonia
Aristotle's term for the optimal state of the human being is eudaimonia (Greek: ). 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."Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Α(I), 6, 1098a16-20; trans. H. Rackham, (Cambridge, Mass. – London: Harvard University Press – William Heinemann LTD, 1968), p. 33. "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."Nicomachean Ethics, Κ(X), 8, 1178b28-32; p. 625 in the above quoted translation. "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 (happiness was assumed to be the best thing, and ends-the best among goods-are in the soul; but things in the soul are states or activities), 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 (in the one case it is total, in the other partial)-and the activity of what is incomplete is itself incomplete, happiness must be activity of a complete life in accordance with complete virtue."Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, B(II), 1, 1219a25-39: trans. M. Woods: Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, Books I, II and VIII, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 13. "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 (since it would be preferable that neither individual nor state should have any need of such things), 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."Aristotle, Politics, Η(VII), 13, 1332a9-18; trans. H.Rackham, (Cambridge, Mass. - London: Harvard University Press – William Heinemann LTD, 1972), p. 597-8.
Sometimes eudaimonia is translated as "happiness"; other times, as "welfare" or "well-being," showing that no translation is fully adequate to capture its meaning in Greek.
Philosopher Joe Sachs emphasizes the importance of the activity of eudaimonia, a "being-at-work" of the human soul.Aristotle. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Joe Sachs. Newbury, Mass: Focus, 2002, p. 1-20. 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.