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Is It Possible for Humans to Flourish If They Don’t Live Good Lives?

By Winton Bates

August 30, 2024

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Is it possible for humans to flourish if they don’t live good lives? I asked myself this question 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 because it includes morality, 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.

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.

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. Rather than conducting surveys to assess people’s current views about the meaning of concepts, Socrates asked questions that were designed to encourage them to think more deeply.

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 Folk and Philosophers about the Meaning of Well-being

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 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.” (Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life, 23)

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

 

Roundtable Participants’ Views of Flourishing

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”. (The Perfectionist Turn, 33)

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”. (Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, 5)

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.”

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

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

In presenting his view of human flourishing, Ed Younkins endorses the importance of the seven virtues of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist ethics: rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, productiveness and pride. He writes: “The virtues are both instrumental to, and a constitutive part of, an agent’s flourishing. They are valuable, not merely as a means to flourishing, but also as partial realizations of it.” (Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society, 161)

In Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, Roger Bissell and Vinay Kolhatkar question the widespread belief among lay people that ruthless people tend to get ahead in life, love, and especially business. They suggest that humaneness is constitutive of a psychic state we desire. They also explore a causal case against inhumane actions:

“Notwithstanding the severe limitations posed by self-assessment of certain personality traits, the empirical results are not in favor of becoming inhumane to get ahead. In “Why the Dark Triad Has Little to Do With Being Successful,” Michels reports1 that “dark personalities are not capable leaders,” “their work performance is not better,” “they have fewer close friends, and they are less satisfied with life overall,” while admitting that “nevertheless, there is some evidence that they earn more money,” and “are successful in mating, though this tends to be limited to hook-ups rather than actual relationships.” Lastly, “even in the domain of manipulation, dark personalities show no relation to the ability to lie successfully.”

Stay the course. If you jettison your soul, a terribly difficult retrieval awaits you.” (Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, 75–76)

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 people 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 say 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 that has no reference to goodness is not currently widely accepted in the literature on 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 for 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.

The views of Younkins, Kolhatkar, Bissell, and Bates (participants in the recent roundtable discussion of human flourishing) are consistent with the folk view of living a good life. Their neo-Aristotelian perspectives place heavy emphasis on the importance of integrity and humaneness.

However, Knee and Haybron seem to have a view of human flourishing that has no reference to ethical conduct.

However, Knee and Haybron seem to have a view of human flourishing that has no reference to ethical conduct. Their view 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 well-being. Those who wish to avoid that outcome should take advantage of every available opportunity to assert that human flourishing means living a good life.

Note

  1. 1. Michels, Moritz. 2022. “Why the Dark Triad Has little to do with being successful: The bland mediocrity of dark personalities. Summarized (Mar. 3) on Psychology Today. Online at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/sinister-psychology/202203/why-the-dark-triad-has-little-do-being-successful
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