While philosophers and theologians have reflected on the good life for millennia, empirical scholars have only joined the conversation relatively recently. The nascent discipline — or family of disciplines — devoted to the scientific study of the nature and determinants of human flourishing is still shaped by the particular emphases and interests of its early investigators, by the availability of data, and by sheer happenstance. As John Henry Newman said of the earliest church, it “rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savors of the soil” from which it sprang. To reach its maturity, as Newman emphasized, any tradition or discipline “needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary.”
Anthropologist Sarah Willen, at the University of Connecticut, has helped along this process of sifting and refining empirical research on flourishing, by publishing a broad critique of the literature to-date. Willen argues that the field needs to supplement its focus on the breadth of perspective yielded by quantitative methods with the depth of analysis made possible by qualitative methods (e.g., open-ended interviews). She also calls for greater attention to cross-cultural variation in the conceptualization of flourishing, and to the role of inequities of power and resources in shaping opportunities for flourishing. Since some of Willen’s criticisms specifically concerned our work in the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, we published a response to her critique.
Some of these issues have been addressed in recent empirical work on flourishing, for instance in papers by our team mapping global flourishing inequalities or proposing new approaches for enriching cross-cultural comparisons of quantitative samples. And we hope that the Global Flourishing Study we are helping to lead will broaden the horizons of flourishing research still further. Nonetheless, we agree that all of these approaches and topics are relatively neglected in the field at present and that our collective work would be much enriched by greater attention to them.
While we think each of the points above does indeed need to be better addressed in the flourishing literature, other aspects of her critique are less cogent. For instance, she notes:
Some identify virtue as a core aspect of a flourishing life, then proceed to define virtue in ways that comport with a culturally particular — i.e., Western, generally Christian — conception of moral value. Examples include studies claiming that people who participate in a religious community, or who get, or stay, married, are more likely to flourish than others. From an anthropological standpoint, both the presumptions underlying such claims and the methods used to investigate them demand critical review.
As evidence for these claims, she cites three papers produced by our team at the Human Flourishing Program.
On the contrary, we believe that one of the strengths of the flourishing literature has been its attention to the importance of character in a flourishing life, following the lead of millenia of philosophical and religious wisdom from many traditions. Character and virtue are central to our own flourishing assessment, and we would go so far as to argue that even goods such as happiness or a sense of purpose in life only contribute to your flourishing if you are virtuous. For instance, it is arguably worse for a murderer or mad tyrant to feel very happy or deeply purposeful amid his crimes than if he felt properly ashamed of himself or adrift in life.
Willen complains that a focus on virtue is parochially Western or Christian. It is certainly true that classical Greco-Roman philosophy placed the cultivation of virtue at the heart of a good life, and that many Christians down to the present have embraced this view. But then cross-cultural research suggests that virtually all cultures value some form of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom (the classic “cardinal virtues”), as well as humanity and transcendence. There is certainly variation in how these virtues are understood — we can’t perfectly equate the Chinese ren with compassion or benevolence, nor the Sanskrit ñyāyá with justice. Nonetheless, any society which systematically valorized cowardice, unfairness, indiscipline, and foolishness would likely not survive for more than a few generations.
By contrast, theories of human nature and flourishing which marginalize the role of individual character seem to be distinctively Western and distinctly parochial. Attempts by modern “masters of suspicion” to reduce apparent rational freedom to post-hoc rationalizations for class interests (Marx), reproductive advantage (Darwin and his epigones), the will to power (Nietzshe), or repressed sexual desire (Freud) are all very much products of the modern West. So too is the liberal notion that “private vices” might conduce to “public benefits” (that, in the immortal words of Gordon Gecko, “greed is good”), or the “situationist” conviction that most human behavior is the product of environmental forces which we neither comprehend nor control.
This is not to say that skepticism about the importance of character is entirely mistaken; more of our behavior than we are probably inclined to admit is the product of situational factors or inherited traits over which we exercise little or no control. None of us had any say over our potential intelligence, height, athleticism, or beauty, nor over our place of birth, native language, or many other non-genetic traits which substantially influence our life courses. Nonetheless, as Tennyson put it, “though much is taken, much abides.” Our imperfect self-mastery does not mean that individual character is irrelevant for individuals or for society at large. There are now character interventions that have been evaluated in randomized trials, demonstrating that it is possible to increase compassion, gratitude, patience, forgiveness, and perseverance or grit. Moreover, these interventions also improve psychological well-being, sleep, anxiety, depression, self-rated health, and test scores.
Moreover, there is a risk that exclusively emphasizing our vulnerability to the slings and arrows of fortune particularly hurts the life prospects of the most vulnerable. Financial and social capital provide a safety net for the well-off, which is mostly unavailable to the poor. This piece of common sense was given empirical confirmation in an experimental study, which found that delayed gratification more strongly predicted subsequent flourishing among the poor than among the well-off. We should, of course, seek to improve the material prospects of the poor, and to prevent the wealthy from abusing their power. But we can’t allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good: To ignore the importance of character for the flourishing of the most vulnerable amid the challenges of this deeply imperfect world would be utopian at best, and deeply cynical at worst.
Related to these concerns about character is the broader question of whether we can come to any consensus around the nature of flourishing in a pluralistic society such as the United States, much less on a global scale. To be sure, well-developed understandings of flourishing will vary both within and across philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions. But then again, the same is true of “freedom,” “justice,” or “equality.” To a great extent, social and political life consists precisely in debates over the nature of these “essentially contested concepts.” But these enduring differences do not mean that we cannot make progress on empirical research or on policy approaches — only that we need to be aware of where differences are intractable, and where consensus might be possible.
As with the virtues, there is indeed arguably a great deal of consensus about the nature of a flourishing life. Is there any community which does not prize (something like) happiness, health, meaning, character, and social relationships, along with the financial and material means to sustain these? For most of us, flourishing includes more than just these things — it includes the flourishing of our communities, for instance, as well as some form of transcendence or spiritual well-being, however much these vary by culture and context. But we can make the most progress in promoting flourishing by homing in on those areas of genuinely broad consensus.
In her trenchant critique of contemporary empirical research on flourishing, Willen rightly emphasizes the importance of patient attention to cultural particularity and difference. Large-scale, quantitative research is greatly enriched by linking arms with anthropology, as well as history, philosophy, theology, and other forms of attention to the subjective dimension of life. If we are more sanguine than Willen about the current state of the flourishing literature, it is not because we discount the need for this kind of integrative collaboration, but rather that we are convinced that, ultimately, what unites all of humanity is far greater than what divides us.