What Is “Human Flourishing?”

“Human flourishing” is often cited as society’s top goal, the objective governments and international organizations should promote. My field of international human rights uses the term extensively, especially to defend “economic and social human rights.” Human rights documents and discussions are also full of talk about “dignity,” an ideal associated with human flourishing. The “dignitarian tradition” in human rights, associated with the Catholic and Social Democratic-inspired constitutions of Latin America and continental European states, was a powerful—perhaps dominant—influence on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Sculptures in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Wwwuppertal/Flickr.

Embedded in the idea of dignity imported into the UDHR was an image of man as “vulnerable,” and thus in need of (and entitled by) human rights to “conditions and opportunities that will allow us to freely and fully develop as person.” We have not only the right to freedom from coercion; we have also rights to things we need. The UDHR embraced the Roosevelt Administration’s classification of welfare entitlements as universal human rights, which should be the basis of international legal obligations. Just as America’s vulnerable needed protection, so did the world’s vulnerable, who needed the protection of internationally defined, monitored, and regulated economic and social rights. Dignity could thus be achieved via the provision of material entitlements—essentially social policy—based on international human rights standards and law.

But like so many other terms casually thrown around in political discourse, human dignity and human flourishing, like the “common good,” are rarely defined. They are illusory as bases for agreement and don’t consider divisive problems; they are platforms for a fragile unity. No reasonable, civilized person is against human flourishing, human dignity, or the common good. 

Human flourishing seems to refer to mankind’s physical requirements. We need to protect ourselves from disease, receive proper nutrition and fresh air, and avoid contamination in order to grow strong and fulfill our biological potential. E.U. experts hoping to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies are thus regulating the size of condoms. “If it's not long enough, you can endanger the health of the consumer,” claims Suzanne Larque of the European Committee for Standardization.

Sculptures in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Wwwuppertal/Flickr.

Human flourishing means children being protected and nurtured. According to Hillary Clinton’s book, this “takes a village.” I haven’t read it, but according to Wikipedia, one of my primary sources of general knowledge, “The book emphasizes the shared responsibility that society has for successfully raising children…Clinton describes herself in the book as a moderate, which is evidenced by a combination of advocating for government-driven social reforms while also espousing conservative values.” In fact, raising a child takes a family. But at least since Sparta, totalitarian ideologies have demanded that children be raised communally; the family is an obstacle to state power. As G.K. Chesterton observed, the family is a zone of freedom. Today it is not unreasonable to fear either that “they are coming for our children,” or that a different “they” are coming for anyone doing something that could be construed as being against human flourishing—like not wanting, or being able to have children. 

Human flourishing tends to imply some form of communitarianism or collectivism—big, even global government. Don’t we need to define and regulate—even universally—the standards and practices that make human flourishing possible? Human flourishing, after all, refers to universal requirements. In the U.N. treaty body (soft law) commentaries concerning the “right to food,” utopian regulators insist on the state guaranteeing the availability of a variety of “good tasting food.” As a kid, I could thus have brought a case against my rural, upstate New York public school; the cafeteria lunches made with government surplus food tasted awful. 

Many who promote what they consider human flourishing hold religious beliefs, and reject “secular humanism” (itself a quasi-religious belief system). But human flourishing has been an ideal of the progressive tradition, the tradition based on the idea of human perfectibility via the state. I have found myself troubled by the political/philosophical implications of human flourishing as an ideal because it can be a justification for increasing regulation, global homogenization, and restricting individual responsibility and choice—tendencies at odds with individual flourishing. Natural reason, if cultivated in families and schools, can teach individuals to flourish without encroaching on, and indeed contributing to, the flourishing of others. When the state imposes definitions of human flourishing on citizens, it weakens civil society’s moral foundations.

Sculptures in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Wwwuppertal/Flickr.

As generally conceived in the U.N. human rights context, human flourishing and dignity’s realization depend on the standards and actions of states and the international community. But in fact, it is the other way around: individuals’ virtue and righteous acts, inspired by reason, belief, and the institutions that cultivate them, are what give societies and states dignity, and promote human flourishing in general. By the same token, the “international order” does not make nations just and virtuous, but just and virtuous nations can, together, support realms of freedom and security around the world—realms we are obligated to protect, and help enlarge.

Aaron Rhodes is a senior fellow at the Common Sense Society, and president of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe.