Now we get to the nub of this series on human flourishing. What exactly is it? Where did it come from? Why is it so important?
Read on.
Joe
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Human Flourishing
There has been a renaissance on the idea of human flourishing in psychology, social sciences, philosophy, and especially economics thinking over the past 20 years or so. But it has a long history, with scholars citing Greek Philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC as the first to talk about it. In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle used the Greek word eudaimonia as the end goal for what it meant to live a good life (as distinct from merely a “nice life” of prosperity). Long translated as mere “happiness”, more modern translators rightly use the term “flourishing”, as in this passage:
What is the highest good in all matters of action? As to the name, there is almost complete agreement, for uneducated and educated alike call it flourishing, and make flourishing identical with the good life and successful living.[i]
Long before Aristotle, though, a psalmist, probably King David, recognized flourishing as a reward of the righteous in Psalms 92:12-14 (ESV):
The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.
So what is human flourishing? Unfortunately, as the next sentence in the Aristotle passage above notes: “They disagree, however, about the meaning of flourishing.”[ii]
Most who think and write about human flourishing tend not to really define it.
In fact, most who think and write about it tend not to really define it. The field of positive psychology – where the work focuses on helping people live more fulfilling lives, rather than recover from trauma or deal with issues – specifically addresses human flourishing. The Institute for Positive Psychology in fact defines its field as “the scientific study of human flourishing, and an applied approach to optimal functioning. It has also been defined as the study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals, communities and organisations to thrive.”[iii]
Martin Seligman jumpstarted the field in 1998 when he became president of the American Psychological Association. He talked of human flourishing as encompassing the basic psychological needs: “To feel positive emotion, engage in activities that give life meaning and purpose, and have positive relationships with others. Two other needs were subsequently added, including finding meaning and fulfillment in what we do and seeking and savoring achievements and accomplishments.”[iv]
They tend to a list of “features” or “domains”, which aren't exactly definitions
In 2011 Seligman, now the Director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center, published Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, with “happiness and well-being” in the subtitle more or less providing his definition of human flourishing. Originally focused just on happiness, he realized that people needed more than that from positive psychology, and said the field’s goal “is to increase the amount of flourishing in your own life and on the planet.”[v] But in immediately afterward asking “What is flourishing?”, Seligman didn’t provide a definition but instead gave another list of features to be measured, these defined and researched by University of Cambridge professors Felicia Huppert and Timothy So. They assert flourishing happens when someone has three “core features”: “positive emotions”, “engagement, interest”, and “meaning, purpose”, as well as three of these six “additional features”: “self-esteem, optimism, resilience, vitality, self-determination, positive relationships”.[vi]
Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program defines it simply as “a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good.”[vii] It then provides its own measure of five domains: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, also adding a sixth one of financial and material stability because, it seems, it is to a large degree an enabler of the others.[viii] You can see great overlap between these Harvard Program domains and the Penn Center’s features with my four spheres of transformation, with only knowledge & wisdom missing. So I would add that this third sphere operates, at the very least, as an enabler of these measures of flourishing, even if not explicitly included.
Moreover, the Harvard Program’s definition is similarly to Aristotle’s, who wrote “the good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind”.[ix] The philosopher specifically focused on learning as that activity most in accord with virtue, learning that of course leads to knowledge & wisdom.
One writer, Dianela Perdomo, summed up Aristotle’s thinking on eudaimonia as “the way we are supposed to be as human beings”,[x] and that seems like a great definition to me. I would only add that what creates flourishing is as unique as every individual. Therefore, human flourishing is the extent to which each one of us is the way we are meant to be.
I repeat: human flourishing is the extent to which each one of us is the way we are meant to be.
That entails a journey of discovery as much as a journey of transformation, journeys that can last a lifetime, with many, many transformations along the way. Helping aspirants reach ever-higher levels of flourishing is the goal of all transformations: guiding people not only in impacting their lives but in living them more abundantly. In improving not just who they are but the possibilities of who they can become. In not just increasing happiness but nurturing joy. In not just being human but in flourishing as human beings, in thriving as businesses, and in blossoming as communities. In transforming people in some way to be more of what they are meant to be.
Joe Pine
© 2025 B. Joseph Pine II
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Please do fill out this form to provide me with feedback on human flourishing: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe8SGjY4rFh2bN8-8JUMXl4xDbrqE_HBtKjyO9jjHWRfcVK9Q/viewform
[i] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.4 1095a14-20, quoted in David Phelps, Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 284. While in his bibliography Phelps cites Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, edited by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999), second edition, I examined the third edition and it offered a very different translation. Phelps did write on p. 284, “If we adopt that translation of eudaimonia as ‘flourishing’”, which may mean he changed the term from the “happiness” that I saw in Irwin’s translation.
[ii] Quoted in Phelps, ibid.
[iii] “What is Positive Psychology?”, The Institute for Positive Psychology, https://www.positivepsychologyinstitute.com.au/what-is-positive-psychology.
[iv] Jeremy Sutton, Ph.D, “Martin Seligman’s Positive Psychology Theory”, Positive Psychology, https://positivepsychology.com/positive-psychology-theory/. Bullets and capitalization were removed.
[v] Martin Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being (New York: Atria Paperback, 2011), p. 26.
[vi] Ibid, pp. 26-27. The features were pulled out of a table with capitalization eliminated and are from Felica A. Huppert and Timothy T. C. So, “What Percentage of People in Europe Are Flourishing and What Characterizes them?”, Prepared for the OECD/ISQOLS meeting “Measuring subjective well-being: an opportunity for NSOs?” Florence - July 23/24, 2009, https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=1cbb72d9b0da0c61f59035a39737cae02b80827b.
[vii] “Program Overview”, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/about. This definition cites the program’s director, Tyler J. VanderWeele, in “On the promotion of human flourishing”, PNAS, vol 114 no 31, August 1, 2017, https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1702996114.
[viii] “Our Flourishing Measure”, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/measuring-flourishing.
[ix] Aristotle, XXX [FIND EXACT PLACE]. XXX
[x] Dianela Perdomo, “Human flourishing: Could a philosophical concept impact health?”, Biomedical Odyssey, October 28, 2021, https://biomedicalodyssey.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2021/10/human-flourishing-could-a-philosophical-concept-impact-health/.