Is it possible for humans to flourish if they don't live good lives?

 

I asked myself whether it is possible for humans to flourish if they don't live good lives after reading an article by Markus Knee and Damiel Haybron entitled "The Folk Concept of the Good Life: Neither Happiness nor Well-Being” (SSRN Electronic Journal, Jan. 2024).

I am not sure whether my attention was drawn to the article serendipitously or because of some kind of algorithmic conspiracy. An email from ResearchGate alerting me to the article arrived in my inbox on the same day that I had participated in a roundtable discussion on human flourishing with Ed Younkins, Roger Bissell, and Vinay Kolhatkar. We each presented views based on our three books:

Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society, by Edward W Younkins;

Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, by Roger E Bissell and Vinay Kolhatkar; and

Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, by Winton Russell Bates.

The roundtable discussion can be viewed on The Savvy Street Show. (The transcript of the discussion is available here.)

The article by Knee and Haybron

Knee and Haybron tested whether the folk view that a person “leads a good life” differs from the folk view that a person “is happy” and “is doing well” by asking survey participants to respond to vignettes involving socially sanctioned wrongdoing toward outgroup members. Their findings indicated that, for a large majority, judgments of bad character strongly reduce ascriptions of the good life, while having no impact at all on ascriptions of happiness or well-being.  They conclude that the lay concept of a good life is clearly distinct from those of happiness and well-being, likely encompassing both morality and well-being, and perhaps other values as well. Importantly, morality appears not to play a fundamental role among the folk in their views of either happiness or well-being.

So, who are the folk? There were 283 participants in this study (recruited on Prolific). It seems likely that the views of participants are representative of Americans. The sample has a bias towards females (64% female), but there is no obvious bias in the age of participants (average age 36, age range 19 to 78). I expect that folk in other countries with similar cultural heritage would have similar views, but that has not been tested   

Why should philosophers be interested in what folk think about the meaning of concepts? Socrates wandered around Athens asking people what they thought about the meaning of concepts, but I think modern philosophers have different motives. Socrates asked questions that were designed to encourage people to think more deeply rather than conducting surveys to assess their current views about the meaning of concepts.

I think the main reason why philosophers should be interested in what folk think about the meaning of concepts is because communication is easier if definitions accord with common usage of terms.

Differences between the views of the folk and the philosophers

Knee and Haybron claim that most philosophers assume that a good life is equivalent to well-being. I am not sure that “assume” is the correct word to use. Philosophers are usually careful to define the terms they use, so perhaps the authors mean that philosophers’ definitions of a good life and of well-being are at variance with the meaning that most folk give to those concepts.

One of the philosophers who has influenced my understanding of the meaning of human flourishing has adopted a definition of well-being that seems to me to make it equivalent to a good life. As I explain in the Introduction to Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, Neera Badhwar uses well-being in her definition of the highest prudential good (HPG):

“Well-being as the HPG consists of happiness in an objectively worthwhile life.”

I prefer to use the term flourishing, rather than well-being because flourishing better captures the dynamic nature of individual human development.

My understanding of human flourishing has also been strongly influenced by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, who argue that human flourishing can be best understood as “the exercise of one’s own practical wisdom”.

I combined the Dougs’ perspective with Badhwar’s to define human flourishing as:

“the exercise of one’s own practical wisdom, with integrity, in the pursuit and achievement of happiness in an objectively worthwhile life”.

Objective worth entails moral virtues and choice-worthiness. In my book, I endorse the idea that the basic goods of a flourishing human constitute “living well” and “are the actual elements of a good life”. Perhaps the folk might not agree that the same elements are involved in the same proportions in “living well” as in “a good life”.  However, I hope most folk would agree with me that “living well” requires more virtue than “doing well”.

In any case, I claim that my view of human flourishing is close to the folk view of leading a good life.

I am not aware of any tests having been made of the folk view of human flourishing. Casual observation suggests to me that the concept of human flourishing is not used widely enough for there to be a general “folk view” of what it means. When I tell folk I have written a book about human flourishing I am often asked what flourishing means and how it differs from related concepts such as happiness and thriving.

How do Knee and Haybron view human flourishing?

Knee and Haybron seem to view human flourishing as involving no more virtue than lay perceptions of happiness and well-being. They claim that their results suggest that “philosophers following Plato in claiming that serious immorality precludes flourishing are defending a less-than-intuitive position”. Neo-Aristotelians who claim that lack of integrity impairs flourishing would presumably be viewed in the same light.

In his book, The Pursuit of Unhappiness (published in 2008) Dan Haybron discussed the question of whether Genghis Khan - who claimed to obtain happiness by conquering his enemies, taking their property, and outraging their wives and daughters – could be considered to have been a flourishing human (pp 159-60). In that context, he claims that it is “neither here nor there” to assert that Genghis Khan didn’t have a good life – a life that is desirable or choice-worthy. He is asserting that consideration of goodness is irrelevant to the question of whether a person is flourishing.

A Google search for “human flourishing” suggests to me that a view of human flourishing which has no reference to goodness is not currently widely accepted in the literature discussing human flourishing. Most of the items I found near the top of the list linked human flourishing to living a good life, being holistically good, engaging in meaningful activities, having regard to traditional virtues etc.

Does it matter if different people define human flourishing in different ways? Perhaps it adds only minor confusion to intellectual discourse. However, the way terms are used in intellectual discourse is likely to influence the folk view (common usage) over the longer term.  I think it would be unfortunate if we end up with a folk view of human flourishing that is indistinguishable from current folk views of happiness.

Conclusion

An empirical study by Marcus Knee and Daniel Haybron has found that the folk view that a person leads a good life differs from the folk view that a person is happy or doing well. Judgements of bad character strongly reduce ascriptions of the good life but have no impact on ascriptions of happiness or well-being.

I claim that the view of human flourishing that I have adopted is close to the folk view of living a good life.

However, Knee and Haybron seem to have a view of human flourishing that has no reference to goodness. Their view of human flourishing seems to be at variance with widely accepted views in relevant literature.

I doubt whether there is a folk view of human flourishing at present but one seems likely to develop with increasing use of the term. In my view, it would be unfortunate if we end up with a folk view of human flourishing that is indistinguishable from folk views of happiness and doing well. Those who wish to avoid that outcome should take advantage of every available opportunity to assert that human flourishing means living a good life.

Addendum

1. The Aristotle “quote” at the top of this essay is my interpretation of part of Nichomachean Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 7. In the 5^th paragraph, Aristotle considers the function (ergon) of a human (the capacities and activities that make a being human). That is the context in which he is considering what activities or actions eudaimonia, or human flourishing, requires. (Eudaimonia is often translated as happiness but it involves more than the modern, emotional state, concept of happiness). Aristotle asserts that human flourishing (the chief good) is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. What he means by “activity of the soul” is closely related to exercise of practical wisdom.

2. A revised version of this essay has been published on "The Savvy Street". The revised version incorporates quotes about flourishing from the books by Ed Younkins and Roger Bissell and Vinay Kolhatkar.

Why has "Norms of Liberty" made a lasting impression on me?

 

Norms of Liberty is a work of political philosophy written by Douglas B Rasmussen and Douglas J Den Uyl, and published in 2005.

The blurb on Amazon provides a good description of what the book is about:

“How can we establish a political/legal order that in principle does not require the human flourishing of any person or group to be given structured preference over that of any other? Addressing this question as the central problem of political philosophy, Norms of Liberty offers a new conceptual foundation for political liberalism that takes protecting liberty, understood in terms of individual negative rights, as the primary aim of the political/legal order.” 

Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue for construing individual rights as metanormative principles. These principles establish the political/ legal conditions under which full moral conduct can take place.

The authors distinguish metanormative principles from normative principles that provide guidance for moral conduct within the ambit of normative ethics. This crucial distinction allows them to develop liberalism as a metanormative theory rather than as a guide for moral conduct.

The authors show that the moral universe can support liberalism without either being minimized or requiring morality to be grounded in sentiment or contracts. Rather, liberalism can be supported, and many of its internal tensions avoided, with an ethical framework of Aristotelian inspiration―one that understands human flourishing to be an objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, social, and self-directed activity.

Readers who are looking for a more expansive synopsis should read Ed Younkins’s essay, ‘Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s Trilogy of Freedom and Flourishing’, published on The Savvy Street.

Some explanation of the authors’ use of the term ‘liberalism’ might be helpful at this point. As well as defending classical liberalism and libertarianism, the authors seek to defend other types of political liberalism (as the term is used in the United States) which still subscribe to some of the tenets of classical liberalism e.g. that people should be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good life.   

My purpose here is not to review the book but to explain why the book has made a lasting impression on me. First, I will explain why I thought the book made an important contribution when I first read it in 2007. Then, I will explain why I still think the book provides the most appropriate framework in which to consider the rights of individuals.

My initial impression

Rasmussen and Den Uyl advanced their argument for construing individual rights as metanormative principles in large part as a response to communitarian and conservative critics who claimed that liberalism had undermined its own principles.

I had read some communitarian literature prior to reading Norms of Liberty but I was more concerned about the threat to individual rights posed by people who wanted to make happiness a goal of national economic policy. The people concerned wanted to use survey data on average life satisfaction to monitor achievement of that goal. I was concerned that responses to life satisfaction surveys don’t give appropriate weight to everything that is important to people and that using such surveys to pursue a national happiness goal would interfere with individual choice. (I wrote an article about such matters in 2004. It can be found here.)

I read Norms of Liberty at a time when I was ready to move beyond utilitarianism. The welfare economics that I had been imbued with decades earlier seemed to imply that it would be good for governments to adopt aggregate welfare as an over-arching policy goal if only it was possible to measure individual utility in a manner suitable to be aggregated (or averaged) in some way. However, after some economists began to claim that life satisfaction surveys provided a way to do that, the potential conflict with individual liberty could not be ignored. It seemed wrong for liberty to be viewed as just an element in an individual’s utility function. But how could one avoid viewing liberty in that way if the sole goal of individuals is to maximize utility functions?

The answer that Norms of Liberty provided to me was that I needed to step aside from a framework in which all goals of individuals could be summarised neatly in terms of maximizing a nebulous concept referred to as “utility”. I needed to think more broadly in terms of individual flourishing as a multidimensional process. Liberty is integral to individual flourishing because individual flourishing is an inherently self-directed process.

I began blogging soon after reading Norms of Liberty. Some of my initial posts reflect the favourable impression the book had on me soon after I had read it. For example:  What does flourishing mean? , and Is Freedom and necessary condition for human flourishing?

 Later views

Over the years, I have discussed many different things on this blog.  Blogging has been a learning process. I cannot claim that the views I have expressed have always been philosophically coherent.  

Nevertheless, I claim a degree of consistency in advocating for a political/legal order which protects the possibility of individual self-direction, and ensures that the flourishing of any person or group is not given structural preference over any other. I also claim consistent optimism about the potential for the vast majority of individuals to flourish – with help from family and friends – if governments protect their natural rights and refrain from interfering with the manner of their flourishing. (I don’t deny that government assistance has helped some people to flourish but I observe that government assistance is often offered in a manner that encourages people to languish.)

Those ideas are also themes of my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, as well as being reflected in many of the essays on this blog.

While re-reading Norms of Liberty a few days ago, I was struck by its relevance to recent political developments in many of the countries often referred to as western liberal democracies. When I first read the book, I had the impression that groups who sought to have their modes of flourishing given structural preference over others lacked the political power to implement their policies. At that time, the main threat to individual self-direction seemed to come from well-meaning paternalists who wanted to use the coercive powers of the state to make people happy.

More recently, it seems to me that some groups are increasingly seeking to use the coercive powers of the state to have their modes of flourishing given structural preference over others. I don’t see this tendency as being confined to any one religious or political group, although some are more prone than others to advocate restrictions on liberty.

One development that seems to me to be of particular concern is the increasing prevalence of the idea that freedom of speech should be restricted to protect people from being offended by what others may say about their ethnicity, religious views etc. If the legal system gives people greater incentives to take offence at what others say, it is reasonable to predict an increase in the extent to which people take offence, leading to demands for further restriction of freedom of speech. Threats of violence should be prohibited because they are incompatible with peaceful coexistence. Beyond that, however, restriction of freedom of speech is a slippery slope that is likely to increase, rather than lessen, conflict between different community groups.

Conclusion

My purpose in writing this essay has been to explain why Norms of Liberty, by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, has made a lasting impression on me.

At the time I first read Norms of Liberty, in 2007, I was particularly concerned about threats to liberty posed by the proposals of some utilitarians who want to make happiness a goal of national economic policy and to use survey measures of average life satisfaction to monitor achievement of that goal. I was concerned that average life satisfaction doesn’t adequately account for liberty. That provided the context in which I was ready to step aside from the idea that all the goals of individuals could be summarized in terms of utility maximization. It made more sense to think of individual flourishing as a multidimensional process which is largely self-directed and to think of liberty as the metanormative principle that protects the possibility of individual self-direction.

I still think the best defence of liberty is to view it as the means of protecting the possibility of individual self-direction, and ensuring that the flourishing of any person or group is not given structural preference over any other. While re-reading Norms of Liberty it struck me that since the book was written, groups seeking to have their modes of flourishing given structural preference over others have come to pose an increasing threat to liberty in the western liberal democracies. Peaceful coexistence among different groups is likely to break down if norms of liberty are not adequately defended.