|
Toward an Integrated Framework for Flourishing and Happiness |
|
In this short essay an argument is made that reality
exists independently of our consciousness and that we must apprehend it
correctly if we are to flourish as human beings. It follows that
reference to human nature is critical for an understanding of what
constitutes a moral life. The distinctive human attributes of
rationality, free will, and individuality are necessary to engage in
ethical evaluation. An individual’s primary moral obligation and
fundamental interest is to attain his mature state as a flourishing
human person. Morality is a functional activity that exists for the sake
of the purpose of living a flourishing life. Although there are
necessary generic or basic conditions of human flourishing, there are
many different ways for individuals to flourish. The possibility of
self-directedness is required for any and all of these diverse
agent-relative forms of flourishing.
The right to autonomy (i.e., self-directedness) applies to every person
equally because of the universal human attributes of rationality and
free will. This liberal conception of individual rights offers each
person the opportunity to attempt to realize a distinctive form of
flourishing. The law is properly concerned with rights as values that
are universal and necessary. The law has the function of maintaining a
political and legal order that simply protects the possibility of
self-directedness. It should not be biased toward any particular form of
personal flourishing. Rights are political principles that individuals
ought to accept no matter what their views of the good might be. The
possession of autonomy in no way guarantees that a person will live a
good life and flourish. The right to liberty guarantees politically only
the possibility of self-directedness which, in turn, maintains the
possibility of personal flourishing.
 Rights, as metanorms, are not part of personal morality and flourishing.
Rights apply the ethical basis to law and guide the creators of a
constitution. Ethics are not all at the same level. At the political
level, rights regulate the conditions under which personal moral conduct
and flourishing may occur. The aim of politics is peace and order. At
the level of the individual human person, human flourishing is the
telos of human conduct.
There are a variety of ways for humans to flourish. Flourishing requires
the right use of reason with respect to the evaluative ranking,
interpretation, and application of basic goods and virtues that are
needed by every person, to some extent, to flourish. There is no
universal formula for ascertaining the proper amount and application of
each good and virtue in each person’s life. It is the task of each
individual to develop practical wisdom and to use it to make proper
choices for himself. The generic goods and virtues that make up and lead
to human flourishing become real only when they are given specific form
by the choices of each unique individual. Each person needs to attain
and sustain goods and virtues in an appropriate manner over the course
of his life in order to flourish and to be happy.
An individual acts when he is motivated to do so. For a human being,
thinking and free will are involved in every stage of the action
process. Human needs are the starting point of the motivation sequence,
and they have, to a great extent, a biological foundation. These needs
give rise to the necessity for a man to choose and to pursue values that
are not separate from facts regarding human beings. Because values are
objective, contextual, and relational with respect to a given person, we
can discuss what would be actually good for an individual if he were to
know about, choose, and attain that good. Each person must use his
rationality to recognize, identify, and seek things that exist in
reality that are potentially beneficial to him. There are things that
exist, independently of anyone’s thinking, in a positive relationship to
each person’s life and these things are capable of being known by human
beings. It is imperative to apprehend such objective values correctly—a
flourishing life depends upon the valid evaluation of, and attainment
of, objective values. Value arises out of a relationship between human
beings and what they require for their survival and well-being.
An individual’s needs, values, and knowledge contribute to his choice of
goals to pursue. In particular, values provide a strategic underpinning
for goal-setting. A man acts in order to achieve goals that result in
his obtaining values. A man’s life is his ultimate value. Goals realize
values and values satisfy needs. Values give purpose and meaning to a
person’s goals. We could say that values are distinctive goals about
what types of goals to pursue. Goals can be viewed as values implemented
in particular contexts and circumstances. Both values and goals exist in
hierarchical arrangements. Every individual value or goal can be thought
of as an instantiation of a higher-order personal project. One’s life as
a whole is the base for all other values and goals of an individual. A
person needs to discover values which actually are of critical
importance to his life. Various things are objectively good for an
individual to attain even if he does not realize it or desire them.
To a certain extent, emotions are the automatic results or reflections
of a person’s value judgments. Such emotions are rational and justified
if they are based on objective values. Emotions are thus at times
appropriate and, at other times, inappropriate. Strong emotions increase
the chances of something coming to one’s consciousness. Of course, it is
up to each individual to use his volitional consciousness to select his
value and goal hierarchies. While conceptually distinct, values, goals,
and emotions are practically integrated in each human being.
|
|
“By properly integrating
insights gleaned throughout history, we have the potential
to reframe the argument for a free society and elucidate a
theory of the best political regime on the basis of man,
human action, and society.” |
|
Emotions can be positive or negative incentives for action. In addition,
emotions are related positively to the extent of goal achievement and
inversely to negative outcomes. It is important for positive emotions to
accompany objectively valuable activities and for negative emotions to
occur conjointly with objectively nonvaluable actions. In this way,
emotions can play a role in a person’s conscious assessment of his
well-being.
An individualistic, agent-centered, perfectionist view of natural law
ethics provides general principles in the form of generic goods and
virtues that require practical wisdom for achieving one’s
self-perfection. Human flourishing requires a person to combine a number
of particular objectively identifiable generic goods and virtues. Of
course, it is up to each person to use his practical wisdom to create
the appropriate application of these given his specific circumstances
and contexts. This requires the development of a person’s capacities for
practical reason including the ability to reflect critically upon one’s
good before he decides how to act. Thinking is initiated and maintained
by choice. Correct actions lead to one’s flourishing and happiness. Each
person must be mindful of the fact that he only has a given amount of
time to allocate to his various pursuits.
Virtues are dispositions to act for right reasons that are developed by
making choices. People value being virtuous because the virtues are
necessary for, and partly constitutive of, one’s flourishing. The
virtues are principles of action that enable individuals to attain
values. Virtues may be viewed as proper perspectives toward generic
goods such as knowledge, health, friendship, and so on. Proper actions
are value-oriented and virtue-oriented. Virtuous activity is in harmony
with a person’s thoughts, feelings, and objective values. This involves
doing the right thing without having material contrary internal
inclinations.
Virtuous activities can lead to one’s flourishing which, in turn, can
lead to his happiness. Oftentimes, becoming deeply involved in one’s
meaningful actions can be accompanied by a state of flow. This is a
condition of focused and engaged involvement or absorption. The state of
flow is positively related to a person’s existential condition of
flourishing, to his experience of happiness, and to his positive
emotions.
Wisdom involves the convergence of means and ends toward the achievement
of one’s personal flourishing. Personal flourishing involves living in a
manner that brings one happiness (i.e., flourishing leads to happiness).
Happiness is the positive conscious and emotional experience that goes
along with or results from one’s flourishing. A person can be
authentically happy only if he lives in certain ways—his life must
contain certain particular elements. True happiness depends upon
objective facts about human nature and the specific circumstances of
one’s life. Success in living makes people happy and this happiness
motivates and prepares people for additional future accomplishments and
happiness. Happy people are more likely to actively work toward
achieving new goals. Success produces happiness and happiness leads to
further success. Human persons enjoy the successful use of their
realized capacities and their enjoyment increases the greater the extent
to which their potentialities are actualized.
To aid the reader, the following diagram depicts the interrelationship
among the various components of the motivation-happiness process.
The Motivation-Happiness Process
The aim of this summary essay has been to explain that happiness is not
something subjective and that there are inextricable connections between
human nature, human flourishing, and happiness. We have seen that
happiness is an achievement on the part of the individual human person.
Not only is happiness an achievement, we have also seen that a person’s
achievements can lead to his happiness. The philosophical perspective
taken in this article argues that there is an essential connection
between objective ideas. It follows that systems-building is an
important philosophical endeavor.
Philosophy provides the conceptual framework necessary to understand
man’s behavior. To survive, a person must perceive the world, comprehend
it, and act upon it. To survive and flourish, a man must recognize that
nature has its own imperatives. He needs to have viable, sound, and
proper conceptions of man’s nature, knowledge, values, and action. He
must recognize that there is a natural law that derives from the nature
of man and the world and that is discoverable through the use of reason.
A sound paradigm requires internal consistency among its components. By
properly integrating insights gleaned throughout history, we have the
potential to reframe the argument for a free society and elucidate a
theory of the best political regime on the basis of man, human action,
and society. This natural-law-based paradigm would uphold each man’s
sovereignty, moral space, and natural rights and accord each person a
moral space and natural rights. It would hold that men require a social
and political structure that recognizes natural rights and accords each
person a moral space over which he has freedom to act and to purse his
personal flourishing. Specifically, it would consist of (1) an
objective, realistic, natural-law-oriented metaphysics; (2) a natural
rights theory based on the nature of man and the world; (3) an objective
epistemology which describes essences or concepts as epistemologically
contextual and relational rather than as metaphysical; (4) a biocentric
theory of value; (5) praxeology as a tool for understanding how people
act, cooperate, and compete and for deducing universal principles of
economics; and (6) an ethic of human flourishing based on reason, free
will, and individuality.
|
|
|
From the same author |
|
▪
Marx's Dictatorship of the Proletarian Majority
(no
331 – April 15, 2015)
▪
Exploring Capitalist Fiction - Allen
Mendenhall Interviews Edward W. Younkins
(no
319 – February 15, 2014)
▪
The Best Novels and Plays about Business: Results of
a Survey
(no
311 – May 15, 2013)
▪
Reflections on Victor Hugo's Les Misérables
(no
309 – March 15, 2013)
▪
Business Through Literature and Film
(no
308 – February 15, 2013)
▪
More...
|
 |
|
First written appearance of the
word 'liberty,' circa 2300 B.C. |
|
Le Québécois Libre
Promoting individual liberty, free markets and voluntary
cooperation since 1998.
|
|
