Human Flourishing, Joy, and the Prospect of Radical Life Extension

2018 ◽  
Vol 129 (12) ◽  
pp. 554-561
Author(s):  
Victoria Lorrimar
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Life Extension ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Academic Teaching ◽  
Secular Humanist ◽  
Radical Life Extension

The prospect of human enhancement through the use of genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology is generating increasing interest in academic and commercial circles. Responses to human enhancement technology are derived from, and therefore may illuminate, underlying notions of what human flourishing ought to look like. Miroslav Volf’s anatomy of joy is used to compare representative understandings of the good life from transhumanist and secular humanist perspectives as they correspond to attitudes concerning human enhancement, particularly the question of radical life extension. The argument is advanced that a joyful Christian vision of the good life, which answers both the secular humanist respect for creaturely finitude and the transhumanist hope for glorious transformation, possesses strong normative potential for academic teaching and discourse as we contemplate the future of human being.

scholarly journals Creatures Bound for Glory: Biotechnological Enhancement and Visions of Human Flourishing

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Burdett ◽  
Victoria Lorrimar
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The One ◽  
Secular Humanist ◽  
Grand Vision

The human enhancement debate is fundamentally based on divergent ideals of human flourishing. Using the complementary, though often contrasting, foci of creaturehood and deification as fundamental to the good life, we examine these visions of human flourishing inherent in transhumanist, secular humanist and critical posthumanist positions on human enhancement. We argue that the theological anthropologies that respond to human enhancement and these other ideologies tend to emphasise either creaturehood or deification to the neglect or detriment of the other. We propose in response that understanding humans as creatures bound for glory integrates both dimensions of the human being into the one grand vision of flourishing God has for humanity.

The Transformative Self

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Literature History

Everyone wants a good life. Some try to create a good life by cultivating personal growth. They have a transformative self. This book explains how people form a transformative self, primarily in their evolving life stories, to help cultivate growth toward a life of happiness, love, and wisdom for the self and others. It introduces an innovative framework of values and personhood to strengthen and integrate three main areas of study: narrative identity, the good life, and personal growth. The result is a unique model of humane growth and human flourishing. Each chapter builds on that framework to explore topics central to the transformative self, such as how cultural beliefs of a good life shape our narrative identity; how narrative thinking shapes cultural and personal beliefs of a good life; how cultural master narratives shape our ideals for personal growth; how growth differs from gain, recovery, and other positive changes in the life story; how happiness, love, wisdom, and growth serve as superordinate goods in life; how the hard and soft margins of society thwart and facilitate personal growth; the dark side of growth; and the lengthy development of authenticity and self-actualizing. This book synthesizes scholarship from scientific research across several subfields of psychology to philosophy, literature, history, and cultural studies. It offers a creative and scientifically grounded framework for exploring three of life’s perennial questions: How do we make sense of our lives? What is a good life? and How do we create one?

Humility’s Destiny

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-116
Author(s):  
Kent Dunnington
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Regulative Ideal

If Christian humility sets as a regulative ideal complete unconcern for one’s own distinctive importance, the challenge is to say why anyone would consider Christian humility a disposition of human flourishing. The experience of one’s distinctive importance is often felt to be an important, if not essential, aspect of the good life. This chapter shows how Christian humility requires for its intelligibility a different account of what an excellent self is like, and a different account of what human flourishing is like. The Christian themes of crucifixion, Trinity, and beatitude are shown seriously to revise customary assumptions about human selfhood and human flourishing. The chapter shows how a distinctively Christian eschatology and anthropology grounds a distinctively Christian view of humility.

4. Scepticism as a way of life

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-96
Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Intellectual Virtues

‘Scepticism as a way of life’ considers the case for a moderate scepticism, by looking at the work of the philosopher Aristotle (384–322 bce). This idea concerns the role of the virtues, and the intellectual virtues in particular, in the ‘good life’ of human flourishing; what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia. Understanding the role that the intellectual virtues play in the good life enables us to see how embracing a moderate scepticism could be necessary for living such a life. It also helps us to resolve a possible tension between adopting a healthy moderately sceptical attitude while at the same time living a life of genuine conviction.

Virtue and the “Good Life” in the Book of Job

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Vesely
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
External Goods

Abstract In this article, I argue that Job 29 provides an eudaimonic depiction of human happiness whereby virtue, combined with a number of “external goods” is held up as the best possible life for human beings. I compare Job’s vision of the “good life” with an Aristotelian conception of εὐδαιμονία and conclude that there are numerous parallels between Job and Aristotle with respect to their understanding of the “good life.” While the intimate presence of God distinguishes Job’s expectation of happiness with that of Aristotle, Job is unique among other eudaimonic texts in the Hebrew Bible in that expectations of living well are expressed in terms of virtue, rather than Torah piety. In the second portion of the article, I assess Job’s conception of human flourishing from the perspective of the divine speeches, which enlarge Job’s vision of the “good life” by bringing Job face-to-face with the “wild inhabitants” of the cosmos.

scholarly journals Health, Wealth or Wisdom? Religion and the Paradox of Prosperity

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Elaine Graham
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The West ◽  
Contributory Factors ◽  
Vexed Question

AbstractThe so-called 'happiness hypothesis', associated with the work of the economist Richard Layard, has attracted much public debate over recent years. Its main contention is that despite rising levels of material prosperity in the west, incidence of recorded happiness and greater quality of life has not increased accordingly. In considering the major contributory factors to happiness and well-being, however, Layard is not alone in identifying the significance of religious values and participation in religion for positive and enduring levels of happiness. In response, this article critiques some of the evidence correlating religion and well-being, as well as considering the broader and much more vexed question of how far public policy is capable of incorporating questions of belief and value into its indicators of happiness and the good life. Drawing on traditions of virtue ethics as the cultivation of 'the life well-lived', I ask whether specifically Christian accounts of human flourishing and the good life still have any bearing in the wider public domain, and what 'rules of engagement' might need to be articulated in any dialogue between Christian values and the discourse of theology and a pluralist society.

The Relevance of Value Theory for the Ethical Discussion of Human Enhancement

2014 ◽  
pp. 11-26
Author(s):  
Tobias Hainz
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Life Extension ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
A Value ◽  
Ethical Discussion ◽  
Radical Life Extension ◽  
Theoretical Issues

The aim of this chapter is to provide a practical introduction to the central issues of value theory in order to demonstrate their relevance for the ethical discussion of human enhancement technologies. Among the value-theoretical issues discussed are value lexicality, the monism-pluralism dichotomy, and incommensurability. A particular enhancement technology analyzed from a value-theoretical perspective is radical life extension, the direct and intentional extension of the maximum human life span. Several examples are given to show how value-theoretical concepts are implicitly reflected in arguments for and against human enhancement. At the end of the chapter, it should be clear that value theory can and should make stronger contributions to the ethical discussion of human enhancement and that, in this discussion, an increased awareness of value-theoretical issues is desirable.

Virtue Epistemology and the Democratic Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Farrelly
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Social Existence ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Life

Integrating insights from the Ancient Greeks (e.g. concerning virtue, eudaimonia, and the original meaning of “democracy”), John Dewey, and recent work in virtue epistemology, this chapter develops a virtue-based defense of democracy, one that conceives of democracy as an inquiry-based mode of social existence. This account of democracy is developed by responding to three common concerns raised against democracy, which the author calls the Irrationality Problem, the Problem of Autonomy, and the Epistocracy Objection. Virtue epistemology can help elucidate the link between democracy and human flourishing by drawing attention to democracy’s potential for cultivating and refining the “intellectual virtues” (e.g. intellectual humility, fairness in evaluating the arguments of others, the social virtue of being communicative, etc.) constitutive of the good life.

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