a
Meeting of the Triglav Circle
Harvard Yenching Institute,
2 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: Harvard-Yenching 617-495-3369
16-17 December 2005
Topic for discussion: Human Flourishing and Social Justice
AGENDA AND PROGRAMME OF WORK
1. As indicated in the letter of invitation sent by Email in October, the subject for discussion at this meeting is Human Flourishing and Social Justice.Human flourishing is a concept that has often been mentioned in debates of the Circle, notably in the context of the present relevance of Confucianism, but never fully examined. Social justice, on the other hand, has been at the centre of Triglav work during these past few months. The joint consideration of these two notions is a logical step in the search for an intellectual and spiritual enrichment of the public discourse that is the main raison-d’etre of the Triglav Circle.
2. This subject is to be explored through reflection on the meaning of human flourishing followed by an examination of the relations of this concept with the notion of social justice.
Theme 1: The meaning of human flourishing
3. The expression is seemingly of rather recent use and limited to academic work on moral and political philosophy. It has not found its way into the public political discourse, neither into the official texts of the United Nations nor into the parlance of national governments. It is generally understood as being more comprehensive, more dynamic and less subjective than human happiness. Whereas happiness evokes a state of mind, a feeling of satisfaction with oneself and one’s environment, human flourishing conveys the idea of a process, of both a personal project and a goal for humanity. It is a demanding quest, rather than a comfortable station in life. Human flourishing is said to be the best translation for the Greek word Eudaimonia, which, for both Plato and Aristotle, means not only good fortune and material prosperity but a situation achieved through virtue, knowledge and excellence. In Tu Wei Ming’s work (for instance his chapter on Confucianism in the book Our Religionspublished in 1993) human flourishing, or learning to be human, is central to Confucian humanism and its “creative transformation” of the self through “an ever-expanding network of relationships encompassing the family, community, nation, world and beyond.” It is thus inseparable from self-awareness and self-cultivation, and this “self,” “far from being an isolated individual, is experientially and practically a center of relationships.”
4. So conceived, human flourishing is indeed very different from happiness as commonly perceived, with its individualistic and selfish connotations. And it is very different from “development” identified with economic growth and military power. But the related confusions between self-cultivation and mediocre hedonism and between civilization and economic and financial prosperity, are, it could be argued, relatively recent phenomena in the dominant Western culture. It is fair to assume that the “pursuit of happiness” was for Jefferson and his colleagues an individual and collective endeavor linked to the pursuit of virtue and truth. Then, the felt need for another expression would be the result of an impoverishment and misuse of a once noble concept. And, rather than replacing it with another concept also likely to become rapidly mutilated, it might be more advisable to work on restoring the fullness of the idea as well as the sentiment of happiness. The Circle is invited to discuss this question of language, but, at any rate, human flourishing, or for that matter human happiness understood from a moral and spiritual perspective, requires a number of clarifications:
- What are the constitutive elements of human flourishing?
5. The affirmation that human flourishing implies development of the individual in his intellectual, affective, moral and spiritual dimensions obviously needs elaboration. Plato, in the Republic, contends that the soul, or mind, has three motivating parts: rational, spirited (oremotional) and appetitive. Each of these have their own desired ends, and Eudomenia, or human flourishing requires an ordering of this tripartite structure of the soul: the rational and the spirited parts must cooperative to rein in the appetitive parts. Virtue ensues. In the same vein, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, states that Eudaimoniais constituted not by honor, or wealth or power, but by rational activity in accordance with excellence in the virtues of character (including courage, honesty, pride, friendliness and wittiness), the intellectual virtues (notably rationality and judgment), as well as mutually beneficial friendships and scientific knowledge, particularly of things that are fundamental and unchanging.
- How can, such elements, and their hierarchical ordering, be a source of inspiration today?
- Under which philosophical assumptions can human flourishing be both a normative and a pluralistic notion?
6. The above elements are unambiguous. Honesty, for example, is universally understood. So are the two golden rules of the Analects: “Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you” and “in order to establish myself, I must help others to establish themselves; in order to enlarge myself, I have to help others to enlarge themselves.”(Analects 12:2 and 6:28, quoted by Tu Weiming in Global community as lived reality: exploring spiritual resources for social development, Social Policy and Social Progress, United Nations, March 1996.)
7. Human flourishing starts with the individual and implies human freedom understood in a profounder sense than mere license. In an ideal world community, at least as conceived in a Triglavian perspective, flourishing implies respect for different, traditions, languages, cultures and ways of understanding the meaning of a good life and a good society. In this case pluralism is unavoidable and indeed desirable. But there is a point at which pluralism is a negation of the norms defining the concept. For many individuals, to flourish is literally, as in the first entry of the Webster dictionary, to “thrive,” to “prosper,” and the object of this drive is wealth and power. For many countries – almost all at this historical juncture? – development and respectability are also about wealth and power.
8. Then, if human flourishing is not going to be diluted into moral relativism and political expediency, certain moral and philosophical signposts are necessary. Human flourishing has to be rooted in a strong humanism. Human nature has to be conceived as including both universal invariants and elements consistent with epochs and cultures. The individual has to be seen both as a unique person and a social being. This individual has to be perceived as capable of creativity and spiritual emancipation. And the dichotomy or dualism between the private and the public spheres has to be replaced by a continuum through which the cultivation of the self leads to and is nourished by the collective harmony.
9. These assertions raise a number of difficult questions:
- What are the paths leading to this renewed humanism?
- What type of relations with the transcendent, and the religious, would this humanism involve?
- On which sources of knowledge –and with what type of hierarchical order between them – should this humanism be nourished?
- Are there, in current modes of thinking, traces of positivism – for instance the evolutionary or “stages” theories of the evolution of societies — which need to be subjected to critical scrutiny?
Theme 2:The relations between human flourishing and social justice
10. Social justice can be seen in the light of its three dimensions of equality of rights, equality of opportunities, and equity in the distribution of the fruits of human activity. Equality of rights, a concept inherited from the American and French revolutions of the late 18thcentury, is central to the doctrine of liberalism. Equality of opportunities, addressing positive rights – notably economic rights, or the right to education, or the right to health – and also, for some, collective rights such as the right to development or the right to a clean environment — aims to remove possible sources of discrimination and, again for some, inequality in the enjoyment of these rights by individuals, social groups, or countries. Equity in the distribution of the fruits of human activity is, in its current understanding, a notion born with the advent of modern capitalism and its Marxist critique of accumulation and exploitation of human labor treated as a commodity. It is a notion, often identified with social justice as a whole, which underlies distributive and redistributive policies implemented in the world, notably by Western social and liberal democracies, during the course of the 20thcentury.
11. At present in the dominant political culture, the following broad generalizations are supported by considerable evidence: equality of rights remains central, but the notion of ‘right” is under attack, especially from the far-right of the political spectrum; equality of opportunities is limited to efforts to eliminate practices of discrimination, notably on the grounds of race, colour and sex; and equity in the distribution of the fruits of human activity is taken to mean to each according to his position on the economic and social ladder.
Social justice is an expression that has practically disappeared from the political language, including in official texts of the United Nations, to be replaced by the elimination or reduction of poverty. Solidarity with the under-developed or the developing countries is also a disappearing notion. It is replaced by integration in the world economy and sharing by all of the opportunities and benefits brought by the process of globalization.
12. In this ideological and political context, human flourishing tends to be identified with various forms of social Darwinism and with the omnipresent value of competition. The individuals — or social groups, or nations — who “flourish” are those that have the will, talent, or simply good fortune to compete successfully. Flourishing tends to be identified with material success accompanied by social recognition and power. Social justice is reduced to charity – dispensed by those who succeed – and to humanitarian action and intervention. Justice, without qualifier, is, apart from its judicial dimensions, seen as the removal of social, cultural and political obstacles to the individual and collective drives for self-realization, or rather self-assertion of one’s “rights.”
13. Assuming that the Triglav Circle embraces a more holistic, more humanistic and more spiritual understanding of the notion of human flourishing, such features of the prevalent political culture raise a number of questions:
- To what extent does human flourishing require social justice understood in its three dimensions of equality of rights, equality of opportunities and equity in the distribution of the fruits of human activity?
- Put differently, which injustices and which inequalities are genuine obstacles to human flourishing?
- Or, what are convincing responses to the view that the flourishing of individuals –and nations – stems from inequalities and requires various forms of elitism and social hierarchy?
- The human flourishing of half of humankind has been traditionally, at least in most societies, limited to the private and domestic spheres of life. Do the present feminist movements offer good prospects for the flourishing of humanity?
- Would more diversified and more complex types of economic arrangements, as compared to the dominant neo-liberal global capitalist model, be more conducive to human flourishing?
- If so, which lines of reflection and research, aiming in particular at a richer understanding of economic rationality, should be pursued with the most urgency?
14. To start addressing these types of questions, and even to discuss their correct and useful formulation, it might be helpful to consider again the insights of those who have devoted considerable efforts to the study of the relations between liberty and justice and who have not shied away from old issues of defining wisdom and virtue, and the nature of truth. To mention only one such public intellectual, John Rawls in A Theory of Justice states that “a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice (…) If men’s inclination to self-interest makes their vigilance against one another necessary, their public sense of justice makes their secure association together possible (…) One may think of a public conception of justice as constituting the fundamental charter of a well-ordered human association (…) For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation. By major institutions I understand the political constitution and the principal economic and social arrangements.” (A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition, Harvard University Press, 1999, p 4-6.)
PROGRAMME OF WORK
Friday 16 December
9.30: Breakfast
10.00: Opening of the meeting
Introductions
Discussion of Theme 1: What is human flourishing?
11.30: Coffee Break
11.45: Continuation of debate on Theme 1
1.00: Lunch
2.30: Conclusion of debate on Theme1
4.00: Coffee Break
4.15: Discussion of Theme 2: Relations of human flourishing with social justice
6.00/6.30: Reception followed by a dinner
Saturday 17 December
8.30: Meeting of the Board
10.00: Continuation of debate on Theme 2
11.30: Coffee Break
11.45: Conclusion of debate on Theme 2
1.00: Lunch
2.30: Overall discussion on the topic and general conclusion
4.00/4.30: Closing of the meeting
6.00: Dinner