Human Flourishing Across Cultures and Disciplines
Paradigms of Well-Being and Development
- Open Access
Human Flourishing Across Cultures and Disciplines
Paradigms of Well-Being and Development
- Open Access
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Description
What does it mean to flourish? This open access book serves as a call to action to reimagine and work towards a world where flourishing is a reality for all.
An international team of scholars, practitioners, wisdom keepers, and policymakers come together to construct alternative visions of what a flourishing life could encompass. Their inclusive approach integrates indigenous wisdom, happiness, care, and storytelling and broadens our ideas of what it means to flourish.
Where Western perspectives often emphasize individuality and wealth, here contributors look beyond individual achievement and material success as benchmarks of a successful life. Instead they foreground the intrinsic value of interpersonal relationships, community bonds, and spiritual fulfilment. Interweaving the threads of philosophical, scientific, indigenous, and political thought, they build a holistic understanding of human well-being and flourishing.
We see how spiritual and metaphysical beliefs can coexist with scientific validity and contribute meaningfully to our understanding of human aspiration. A foreword from former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon lays the groundwork for new attainable utopias that will help shape future Sustainable Development Goals.
By encouraging us to rethink policies and our collective futures, this one-of-a-kind collection introduces us to a truly flourishing society where all dimensions of life are equally valued.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The New Institute.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Human Flourishing in the Contemporary International Landscape, Andrej Zwitter (Professor of Governance and Politics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
Part I: Meta-Scientific Approaches to Understanding Flourishing
2. The spectrum of human understanding: the conceptual basis of human flourishing, George Ellis (Professor Emeritus and Research Fellow, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
3. The Indispensability Thesis and the Expanded Notion of Nature, Markus Gabriel (Chair in Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy, University of Bonn, Germany)
4. Ontological Security and New Scientific Worldviews for Human Flourishing, Dean Rickles (Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, University of Sydney, Australia)
Part II: Non-Material Conceptions of Flourishing
5. Human Flourishing and Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman or Theo Bouman – TBC
6. Neo-Platonic Roots of Eudaimonic Societies, Andrej Zwitter (Professor of Governance and Politics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
7. Learning to Flourish with Spinoza, Harald Atmanspacher (Chair of Philosophy, ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
8. The Arc of Hope, Richard Hecht (Professor Emeritus in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Part III: Context and Culture – Flourishing as Being
9. Folktales, Stories, and Traditions - Inter-Indigenous Narratives of Origins of Human Flourishing, Wakanyi Hoffman (Research Fellow, The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany)
10. A Confucian perspective on human flourishing, Victoria Sukhomlinova (Research Fellow, The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany)
11. Towards a Critical, Transdisciplinary, Feminist, Ethno-mimetic Approach to Human Flourishing, Maggie O'Neill (Professor in Sociology and Criminology at University College Cork, Ireland)
12. Lu Xun and the Negative Flourishing of Modern Chinese Subjectivity, Xudong Zhang (Professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Studies, New York University, USA)
13. Planetary Health Commons – The Human as Planetary Symbiont, Frederic Hanush or Valentina Gallo – TBC
Part IV: New Imaginaries of Flourishing
14. A Conceptual Overview of Gross National Happiness, Karma Ura (President of CBS & GNH
Studies in Thimphu, Bhutan)
15. Homo Curans – Affirming Care for Sustainability and Human Flourishing, Ariel Hernandez (Senior Researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability, Germany)
16. Reimagining a World Fit for our Humanity, Ian Hughes (Senior Research Fellow, MaREI Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Ireland)
17. Flourishing in the International Sphere: From Sovereignty to Solidarity, Hans-Joachim Heintze
18. Towards a Post-2030 Development Agenda, Andrej Zwitter, George Ellis, Ariel Hernandez, Wakanyi Hoffman, Karma Ura, Richard Hecht
19. Conclusion, Andrej Zwitter (Professor of Governance and Politics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
20. Epilogue: Transformation to Sustainability - the Role of the Sacred in Human Flourishing, Mary McAleese (Former Irish President)
Index
Product details
| Published | Apr 02 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 368 |
| ISBN | 9781350547810 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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