HUMAN FLOURISHING IN PROGRESS

AND DE-DEVELOPMENT
STS MODULE 2 CHAPTER 2

ASRAF K. LIDASAN
KIER DELA CRUZ
Human Flourishing – the
ability to live a good life.
Human Flourishing in Progress
“Effort of an individual to achieve
self-actualization and fulfillment
not only for their own but also,
and as a requisite of human
flourishing, that of other
members of the community
where one belongs – with each
one of having the right to pursue
virtues and values in life.”

Tyler VanderVeele
Human Flourishing in Progress
• Consists of broad outcomes
• Magnitude of human flourish drives us human to believe that it is,
in fact, a life journey of human existence.
• Not something that one achieves through some luck or overnight
rise to fame.
• To achieved this, humans must journey through
Positive (hopes, achievement, joy, love, and happiness)
Negative (regrets, losses, illness, suffering, and coping)
Human Flourishing in Progress
• Reaching it demands self-direction and autonomy in which the
person uses their freewill and reason to successfully process and
grow through every up and down of life.
• As the individual journeys in the pursuit of human flourishing,
they, in the process, also move closer and closer to becoming a
human person.
• Commonly used in philosophy to describe the essence of
humankind, or the meaning of being human.
• At the end of life, human person will have satisfied the requisites
of human flourishing.
• First, human person is a physical being.
- reaching a state of overall health in mind, body, and spirit.
• Second, human person is a knower.
- having used their fundamental dispositions and characteristics as human
• Third, human person is a responsible agent.
-living a life of full responsibility for their own actions, thoughts, feelings,
and emotions
• Finally, human person is a person in relation to other persons,
extending the fruits of a good life through
• community participation
• joyful friendship
• happy family life
• fulfilling and close relationships with a significant others to
• society, becoming a productive and participative members of social unit
• World
• Barangay
• God
• To the end or purpose of human life
“we can’t [today] go two steps
without running into science and
technology”

Lawrence Principe
• S&T should not viewed as simply incidental but instead integral to
the pursuit of human flourishing.
• To achieve the requisites effectively, human body is exposed to so
many more 21-st century risk factors.
• Individual must be aware, protect themselves, and even take an
active role in efforts to address health risk factors &
Proper waste segregation
Responsible use of plastic materials
Science-based approaches dealing with emerging pathogens
Human Flourishing in Progress

“but where danger is,

- Friedrich Hölderlin
HUMAN FLOURISHING
IN
DE-DEVELOPMENT
HUMAN FLOURISHING IN
DE- DEVELOPMENT
“Despite efforts to close out the
gap between poor and rich
countries, the growth gap keeps
widening.”

• He claimed that most indicators

“Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time

Jason Hickel
Anthropologist at London School of Economics
Hickel’s “De-developing Rich Countries”:
Poiesis Enframing, and Questions We Must
Ask
• The article of Hickel’s provides a fresh view on the concepts of
growth and development, which have significant implications
for approaches in addressing poverty and sustainability issues
confronting the world today.
• Hickel is probably the first development theorist, who advanced a
radical view of addressing poverty by dismissing “developing poor
countries” approaches, an arguing the case for “de-developing
rich countries” approaches.
• Reading through Hickle’s article, one could not help questioning the
notion of “growth” as the objective of development.
• Despite all human efforts to bridge the gap between rich and poor,
human beings have achieved the poiesis of development.
• Hickel argues the need for “more growth”, as this simply produced
more people living under the poverty threshold, and can be related
to Heideggerian notion of enframing
• Western world to forcibly extract and develop resources towards
growth continued, paradox had been that the disparities between
rich and poor only became wider.
• To resolve the failure of Western world to bridge the economic
gap, poor countries must not anymore “catch up” with the rich
ones, but rich ones must “catch down”.
• Hickel radicalizes the approach to bridging the growth gap by
introducing a largely social one, that is, by “de-developing rich
countries”.
• In advancing this unorthodox approach, Hickel warns that it is not
a suggestion of vertical downward transformation among rich
countries.
• No matter how promising and convincing this sound, the
Heideggerian concept of “questioning is the piety thought” must
be a standard philosophical reference.
• “what is enough?” “what is equitable?” and “what is efficient?”
when it to the development of our resources must always be at
the centerpiece of de-developing rich countries.
• While a shift to quality over quantity is necessary to bridge the
growth gap, we must be always careful and critical in determining
what constitutes good quality and enough quantity.
• While there is a promise in Hickle’s “de-development” framework to
finally solve the growth gap, the Heideggerian notion of questioning
must guide humans through it.
• The critical question must be asked because, if we stop doing so,
Hickle’s proposition shall face similar doom; just as proponents of
“poor countries must catch up” have unequivocally failed by ceasing
to question whether what we needed was “more growth” or a more
socially equitable approach towards growth and development.