To Flourish or Destruct
Christian Smith · 2015
Where to buy
Amazon’s price changes daily, so the most accurate place to see it is there, at the moment you buy.
View on AmazonThis is an affiliate link: if you buy through it, the site earns a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps us bring quality content and maintain the site. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
About the book
In his 2010 book What is a Person?, Christian Smith argued that sociology had for too long neglected this fundamental question. Prevailing social theories, he wrote, do not adequately "capture our deep subjective experience as persons, curcial dimensions of the richness of our own lived lives, what thinkers in previous ages might have called our 'souls' or 'heart.'" Building on Smith's previous work, To Flourish or Destruct examines the motivations intrinsic to this subjective experience: Why do people do what they do? How can we explain the activity that gives rise to all human social life and social structures? Smith argues that our actions stem from a motivation to realize what he calls natural human goods: ends that are, by nature, constitutionally good for all human beings. He goes on to explore the ways we can and do fail to realize these ends - a failure that can result in varying gradations of evil. Rooted in critical realism and informed by work in philosophy, psychology, and other fields, Smith's ambitious book situates the idea of personhood at the center of our attempt to understand how we might shape good human lives and societies. -- from dust jacket.
Book details
- Year
- 2015
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Editions
- 5
- Pages
- 384
- ISBN
- 9780226231952
Data source: Wikidata
More by Christian Smith
