Arguably, one can trace contemporary conversations about thriving and well-being to two main sources: Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s development of the “capabilities approach” and to research on the “social determinants of health” (SDOH). The most direct route to thriving is found in the capabilities approach—capabilities referring to what a person is able to do or to be. As Nussbaum explains their methodology, they do not read “the facts of ‘human nature’ from biological observation,” and, though their conception of wellbeing is informed by various philosophical accounts, it is not, epistemologically speaking, ahistorical or essentialist. Instead, the approach is empirical, drawing support from a “cross-cultural inquiry.” Nussbaum, for instance, identifies ten central capabilities and argues that a society’s wellbeing can be measured by people’s ability to fully develop and exercise these capabilities. The capabilities approach, Sen explains, differs from others that emphasize “personal utility” or, for purposes of national comparison, “relative opulence,” i.e. a measure such as GDP. The problem with the latter is that it does not indicate how wealth is distributed; it is possible for a country to have a high GDP while harboring extreme inequality. Moreover, even if a less reductive measure were deployed, such as average personal income, many societies erect structural obstacles that prevent certain classes of persons from doing and being what they desire. The capabilities approach has been tremendously influential and undergirds, among other key global indices, the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI).
Another key source is research on the social determinants of health (SDOH). This field of research established the fact that a society’s health is largely determined by factors exogenous to the healthcare delivery system. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, has identified a number of SDOH—including such positive and negative influences as income, education, unemployment, food insecurity, social inclusion, and structural conflict—that “account for between 30-55% of health outcomes,” meaning that the “contribution of sectors outside” of healthcare often exceed the contributions from healthcare delivery systems themselves (WHO). Though health is only one indicator of human flourishing, it is certainly one of the most important; nevertheless, as the SDOH literature demonstrates, the physical health of a given population is inextricably tied to the relative health of a number of other social domains. In short, the SDOH inquiry led to an expanding circle of values and concepts—to “healthy communities” and, eventually, to a broader notion of social thriving and well-being.
The root system of thriving, however, extends deep into our past — far beyond our contemporary horizon — though still providing significant inspiration and intellectual support for it. In tracing the ancient roots of the concept of thriving, the work of Aristotle is foundational. While it may not be surprising that Martha Nussbaum — a philosopher of wide-ranging interests but who has given significant attention to Greek and Roman thought during her academic career — would leverage Aristotle for her capabilities theory, his influence is not limited to figures who specialize in ancient philosophy. The economist Jeffrey Sachs, for example, Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, attempts to combine Aristotelian ethics, neuroscience, behavioral economics and positive psychology in order to chart pathways to personal and social well-being. In the next few paragraphs, we provide a brief explication of Aristotle’s theory of thriving, not only to gain a better understanding the concept but also to highlight key Aristotelean premises that inform our own approach to community development.
According to Aristotle, everyone — from the less educated to the most highly cultivated—agree that the primary aim or telos of human life is happiness (eudaimonia) or “living well or doing well.” Although much contemporary research on happiness and thriving is grounded in empirical studies, Aristotle’s ethical theory is explicitly normative. It investigates not only what is the case (pace his taxonomy of Greek city-state constitutions) but, importantly, what should be the case, based on his understanding of humans’ unique abilities. After all, as Aristotle notes, before people can design a political structure, such as a constitution (or, we might add, a social program or a long-range community plan), they must begin with the end in mind, must have some (at least implicit) conception of the human good as their guide. This normative orientation aligns with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s project of articulating a “critical humanism” in a post-enlightenment age.
If eudaimonia (or happiness or thriving) is the main goal, how, exactly, does Aristotle define it? He notes that, whatever thriving is, it must be something integral to our most unique “function” or faculty, namely, reason. Nevertheless, happiness is not attained by our use of reason simpliciter, but rather arises from the excellent performance of this function; in other words, happiness is intimately related to virtue—specifically, the moral and intellectual virtues. Whereas cultivating a virtuous life requires significant personal effort—and this quest for virtue and can yield a modicum of happiness–people neither acquire virtue nor perform virtuous actions in a vacuum. To the contrary, the moral and intellectual virtues, which are inextricably linked to thriving, presuppose a supportive communal setting. As Aristotle says, “it seems clear that happiness needs the addition of external goods, for it is difficult if not impossible to do fine deeds without any resources. Many can only be done with the help of friends, or wealth, or political influence.” Some of these inputs, of course, are contingent, are tied to good fortune, such as one’s appearance, and cannot, Aristotle concedes, be altered by personal effort or communal intervention. But many “external goods” are indeed supplied by one’s community, if it is well-ordered: thriving individuals, Aristotle avers, depend on thriving communities. In the vocabulary of the TCL, these external goods are referred to as “civic endowments.” These endowments — the True, Good, Beautiful, Sustainable, Prosperous, and the Just and Well-ordered– both define the necessary social conditions for thriving and help to orient collective action.
Ultimately, the social unit that gathers, encloses and then nurtures these external goods — and thus incubates the moral and intellectual virtues—is what Aristotle calls the polis or city-state. One does not have to fully accept Aristotle’s account of institutional development (from household, to village, to city) as normative or historically accurate in all respects, nor diminish the importance of families and other social groups to human development, in order to appreciate his focus on the city, for his fundamental claim about the city—“that it provides all men’s needs (material, social, religious, etc.) and offers them the fulfillment not only of living but of living ‘well,’ in accordance with those virtues that are peculiarly human” — is just as true today, at least in most respects, as it was when he wrote those words in the Fourth century BCE. In the main, we raise and educate children, launch and operate businesses, join clubs and recreate, attend worship services and volunteer in towns and cities. Thus, the quality of life offered by cities largely dictates whether we simply live or, as Aristotle articulates the goal, live well. Many of the organizations that track and promote thriving, referenced above, attend to national trends and conditions, and that research is certainly important. Nonetheless, the focus of TCL is, unapologetically, on the city.