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Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Positive Psychology

By Edward W. Younkins

August 16, 2022

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Interactions and collaborations between philosophy and psychology can lead to a better understanding of personal flourishing.

The premise of this essay is that philosophy and psychology can work together in the study and attainment of individual well-being. Interactions and collaborations between philosophy and psychology can lead to a better understanding of personal flourishing. There is an inextricable connection between philosophy, the study of the nature of existence and life, and psychology, the study of the mind, its functions, and its behavior. More specifically, this essay contends that the thought of Aristotle and Ayn Rand can provide the philosophical foundation for the study and application of positive psychology. Eudaimonist philosophy, as expressed in the writings of Aristotle and Rand, is compatible with the tenets of positive psychology. Through understanding and applying the connections with the ideas of Aristotle and Rand, positive psychologists can operationalize, enhance, and refine the ideas of these philosophers with regard to achieving a person’s flourishing and happiness.

 

Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) is the most significant thinker and the most accomplished individual who has ever lived. Every person currently living in Western civilization owes an enormous debt to Aristotle, who is the fountainhead behind every achievement of science, technology, political theory, and aesthetics in today’s world. Aristotle’s philosophy has underpinned the achievements of the Renaissance, the birth of America itself, and all scientific advances and technology to this very day.

Aristotle influenced so many thinkers, from Aquinas to Locke to the Founding Fathers to Ayn Rand, and beyond. The roots of freedom and individualism can be traced back to Aristotle, who acknowledged their moral significance and the value of each individual’s life and happiness. He taught that a person gains happiness through the exercise of his realized capacities and that the purpose of life is earthly happiness that can be attained via reason and the acquisition of virtue. In his ethics, Aristotle teaches that a human being uses his rational mind and free will to pursue his wellbeing and personal happiness (i.e., eudaimonia). Eudaimonia is a state of individual well-being brought about by rationality and characterized by self-actualization and maturation. He sees happiness as the product of a life well lived and explains that a person’s own behavior is the largest single factor determining his happiness. Aristotle recognizes that moral virtue is inextricably connected to an individual’s capacity for initiative-taking, for choice, and for voluntary conduct. For Aristotle, human nature is teleological and the telos is self-perfection. An Aristotelian ethics of naturalism states that morally good conduct is that which enables an individual agent to make the best possible progress toward achieving his self-perfection and happiness.

The roots of freedom and individualism can be traced back to Aristotle.

Aristotle teaches that man is intended for the final end purpose, or telos, of happiness viewed from an immanent perspective. Happiness is sought for its own sake and is an end rather than a means. All other goods (such as knowledge, virtue, health, wealth, friendship, etc.) pursued, and all actions taken, are for the sake of happiness. Aristotle contends that individuals make choices regarding the objects of their thinking which are only the means of a final end and not ends in themselves. For Aristotle, the choice of a man’s ultimate end or value (i.e., his eudaimonia) is not necessary. It already exists.

Aristotle explains that the purpose of each man’s life is earthly flourishing and happiness that can be attained via reason and the acquisition of virtue. Articulating an explicit and clear understanding of the end toward which a person’s life aims, Aristotle states that each human being should use his abilities to his fullest potential and should obtain happiness and enjoyment through the exercise of his realized capacities. He contends that human achievements are animated by purpose and autonomy and that people should take pride in being excellent at what they do. According to Aristotle, human beings have a natural desire and capacity to know and understand the truth, to pursue moral excellence, and to instantiate their ideals in the world through action.

According to Aristotle, there is an end of all of the actions that we perform which we desire for itself. This end is what is known as eudaimonia, flourishing, or happiness, which is desired for its own sake with all other things being desired on its account. Eudaimonia is a property of one’s life when considered as a whole. Flourishing is the highest good of human endeavors and that toward which all actions aim. It is success as a human being. The best life is one of excellent human activity.

Aristotle insists that ethical knowledge is possible and that it is grounded in human nature. Because human beings possess a nature that governs how they act, the perfection or fulfillment of their nature is their end. A human being is ordered to self-perfection and self-perfection is, in essence, human moral development. The goal of a person’s life is to live rationally and to develop both the intellectual and moral virtues. There are attributes central to human nature the development of which leads to human flourishing and a good human life. According to Aristotle, the key characteristics of human nature can be discerned through empirical investigation.

Aristotle teaches that ethical theory is connected to the type of life that is most desirable or most worth living for each and every human being. It follows that human flourishing is always particularized and that there is an inextricable connection between virtue and self-interest. He explains that the virtuous man is constantly using practical wisdom in pursuit of the good life. A man wants and needs to gain knowledge of virtue in order to become virtuous, good, and happy. The distinction of a good person is to take pleasure in the moral action. In other words, human flourishing occurs when a person is concurrently doing what he ought to do and doing what he wants to do. When such ways of being occur through free choice, they are deemed to be choice worthy and the basis for ethics.

One’s own life is the only life that a person has to live. It follows that, for Aristotle, the “good” is what is objectively good for a particular man. Aristotle’s eudaimonia is formally egoistic in that a person’s normative reason for choosing particular actions stems from the idea that he must pursue his own good or flourishing. Because self-interest rightly understood is flourishing, the good in human conduct is connected to the self-interest of the acting person. Good means “good for” the individual moral agent. Egoism is an integral part of Aristotle’s ethics.

Aristotle assumes that there is an objective good for each individual human being. For Aristotle, practical reason embodies the human capacity to discern and pursue a true conception of what is good. He saw reason as the faculty that sets humans apart from all other creatures. To survive and to flourish, a man must cultivate his distinctive capacity of rationality. A man requires rationality to identify, attain, and integrate the various ends that constitute his life. For Aristotle, like the much later Ayn Rand, the subject matter of ethics is the relationship of each person to his own potential as a rational being. The good life involves a hierarchy of actions stemming from a person’s capacities for thought, deliberation, choice, and self-governance.

Eudaimonia provides the purpose of all human actions. Aristotle explains that virtue has a key place in the achievement of flourishing and happiness. The exercise of the virtues is a necessary and principal component of a good and complete human life. A man must live and act in accordance with reason, the unique human capacity, and with the virtues. Both superior thinking and virtuous activity are necessary if one is to flourish. The Aristotelian notion of the virtues assigns emotions a central role in their composition. Aristotle says that virtues develop when reason and the passions are properly consistent with one another. Aristotle was the first philosopher to recognize that evaluative thoughts cause or underpin emotions.

 

Ayn Rand

There are similarities between Aristotelian and Objectivist ethics. Aristotle and, even more so, Rand, identify rationality as man’s distinctive capacity and derive additional virtues from the primary virtue of rationality. As a naturalistic realist, Rand emphasizes the relevance of Aristotle’s teachings to modern life and makes them accessible to nonacademic readers. By doing so, Ayn Rand has contributed to a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy.

In Rand’s biocentric ethics moral behavior is judged in relation to achieving specific ends, with the final end being an individual’s life or flourishing as a rational being. The act of deciding necessitates the investigation of how an action pertains to what is best for one’s own life. This is not done in a duty-based ethic that is limited to precepts and rules that are placed between a person and reality. In a virtue ethics, what is moral is the understood and the chosen rather than the imposed and the obeyed. Principles are valuable ethical concepts that do not require imperatives or obligations as their justification.

Rand states that values reflect facts as evaluated by persons with respect to the goal of living. Whether or not a given object is a genuine value depends upon its relationship to the end of a person’s life. Life’s conditionality is the basis of moral value. She explains that the thing in question must have certain attributes in order to further an individual’s life, and the individual must seek his life in order for that object to be valuable. The objectivity of value derives from the fact that particular kinds of action tend to promote human life. A specific object’s value is a function of the factual relation between the object and a particular person’s life. The valid attribution of value reflects a factual relationship. Rand’s theory of objective value is both functional (i.e., directed toward certain ends) and naturalistic. It is naturalistic because values stem from certain facts about the nature of human life.

Rand’s theory of objective value is both functional (i.e., directed toward certain ends) and naturalistic.

The fundamental fact of reality that gives rise to the concept of value is that living things have to attain certain ends in order to sustain their lives. The facts regarding what enhances or hinders life are objective, founded on the facts of reality, and grounded in cognition. This should not be surprising because people do think, argue, and act as if normative issues can be decided by considering the facts of a situation.

A value exists in a chain of values and must have some ending point. There must be some fundamental alternative that marks the cessation of one’s value chain. It is his life, a process of self-sustaining and self-generating action, which is the fundamental alternative at the end of a person’s value chain. One’s life or death is the alternative that underpins all of his evaluative judgments.

Rational moral principles guide us toward values and are essential for achieving moral integrity, character, and happiness. When we habitually act on sound moral principles, we develop virtues and incorporate our moral orientation into our character. Rand connects virtues to the objective requirements of man’s survival and flourishing. Moral principles are needed because the standard of survival and flourishing is too abstract. Acting on principles cultivates corresponding virtues, which, in turn, leads to value attainment, flourishing, and happiness. According to Rand, value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep and virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it.

To be a value means to be good for someone and for something. Life is one’s fundamental value because life is conditional and requires a particular course of action to maintain it. Something can be good or bad only to a living organism, such as a human being, acting to survive. Man’s life is the ultimate value and the standard of value for a human being.

Each derivative value exists in a value chain or network in which every value (except for the ultimate value) leads to other values and thus serves both as an end and as a means to other values. A biological ends-means process leads to the ultimate value of the chain, which, for a living entity, is its life. For a human individual, the end is survival, flourishing, and happiness, and the means are values and virtues that serve that end. Values and virtues are common to, and necessary for, the flourishing of every human person. However, each individual will require them to a different degree. Each man employs his individual judgments to determine the amount of time and effort that should go into the pursuit of various values and virtues. Finding the proper combination and proportion is the task for each person in view of his own talents, potentialities, and circumstances. Values and virtues are necessary for a flourishing life and are objectively discernible, but the exact weighting of them for a specific person is highly individualized.

Rand explains that to live, men must hold three ruling values—reason, purpose, and self-esteem. These values imply all of the virtues required by a man’s life. Rationality, the primary virtue, is the recognition of objective reality, commitment to its perception, and the acceptance of reason as one’s source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values, and one’s only guide to action. Independence, the acceptance of one’s intellectual responsibility for one’s own existence, requires that a man form his own judgments and that he support himself by the work of his own mind. Honesty, the selfish refusal to seek values by faking reality, recognizes that the unreal can have no value. Integrity, the refusal to permit a breach between thought and action, acknowledges the fact that man is an indivisible integrated entity of mind and body. Justice, a form of faithfulness to reality, is the virtue of granting to each man that which he objectively deserves. Justice is the expression of man’s rationality in his dealings with other men and involves seeking and granting the earned. Productiveness, the virtue of creating material values, is the act of translating thoughts and goals into reality. Pride, the total of the preceding virtues, can be thought of as moral ambitiousness.

These constituent virtues must be applied, although differentially, by each person in the task of self-actualization. Not only do particular virtues play larger roles in the lives of some men than others, there is also diversity in the concrete with respect to the objects and purposes of their application, the way in which they are applied, and the manner in which they are integrated with other virtues, values, and goods. Choosing and making the proper response for the unique situation is the concern of moral living—one needs to use his practical reason at the time of action to consider concrete contingent circumstances to determine the correct application and balance of virtues, values, and goods for oneself.

Where do emotions fit in the Objectivist world? According to Rand, an emotion is an “automatic response” to a situation based on a person’s perception, identification, and evaluation of a situation. Emotions are states of consciousness with bodily accompaniments and intellectual causes. Different from sensations, emotions are caused by what a person thinks. Emotions are the result of a man’s conscious and subconscious value premises which stem from thinking about, and in reaction to, situations he has met in life. After a person has made a range of value judgments, he makes them automatic. Because they are always present in one’s subconscious, value judgments affect a man’s evaluative and affective experiences. Emotions are reactions to a person’s perceptions and are the automatic results of a mind’s previous conclusions. “Emotions are not tools of cognition”—they are not a substitute for reason. Truth cannot be attained through one’s feelings. However, emotions do play a key role in one’s life. They do provide the means for enjoying life. A person could not achieve happiness without them.

Rand contends that people are born conceptually and emotionally “tabula rasa.” For her, emotions are dependent phenomena and are the automatic products of one’s value judgments. Rand believes that reason must “program” emotions properly if a person is to achieve happiness. She sees man with no inborn instincts and views reason as a person’s only guide to knowledge. According to Rand, people do not have inborn emotions, temperaments, desires, personality characteristics, or ingrained behavior of any kind. She says that men’s brains are not hardwired, and that all human behavior is learned behavior.

Most contemporary philosophers, biologists, and evolutionary psychologists reject Rand’s tabula rasa view of human emotions, urges, desires, and interests. They believe that many of a person’s predispositions, desires, interests, etc., are natural and stem from biological or genetic characteristics held in common by all people, most people, a segment of the population, or that distinguish one man’s personality. It follows that people have individual propensities and personalities and that they are genetically influenced in what they do. A person has specific predispositions and traits that delimit what he can do and that can offer guidance with respect as to what he should do.

 

Positive Psychology

Psychology is a prudential key to a proper understanding of human well-being. Martin Seligman explicitly recognized this in his 1998 presidential address to the American Psychological Association (APA) in which he shared his vision for a “positive” psychology. Seligman’s proposal had much in common with the views of humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow, who wrote extensively about positive motivation and positive emotions, and who employed the term, positive psychology, in the final chapter of his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality.

The main premise of positive psychology, the importance of individual happiness, is one that Ayn Rand understood and advocated in her fictional and philosophical writings. The heroes in her novels display her recipe for the pursuit of happiness and express her philosophy of life.

Two early proponents of positive psychology, Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, called for a change in psychology from solely a disease-oriented discipline to one that also includes optimal functioning, flourishing, and happiness. They explained that psychology is not just the study of pathology, damage, limitations, and weaknesses, it is also the study of innate potentialities, inclinations, strengths, talents, virtues, and positive individual traits including self-determination, interpersonal skills, perseverance, resilience, authenticity, future-mindedness, optimism, work ethic, capacity for work, wisdom, hope, and so on.

Positive psychology, an umbrella term, embraces human life as a whole from a positive, constructive perspective. It is an inclusive approach to the study of well-being and happiness that aims at helping individuals to live and flourish rather than to simply exist. The goal is to optimize human functioning by acknowledging strengths as well as weaknesses and deficiencies. Positive psychology aims to refocus psychological research and practice on the positive features of human experiences, strengths, and resources.

Originally, positive psychology was merely concerned with optimal individual human functioning and with refocusing psychology away from illness and adversity and toward learning how normal people flourish under healthy conditions. Early proponents of positive psychology understood that flourishing consists of more than the absence of symptoms—the absence of mental illness does not mean the presence of well-being and happiness.

In their work on second-wave positive psychology, Lomas and Ivtzan (2016) have pointed out the fundamentally dialectical nature of well-being. They explain that flourishing involves a complex and dynamic interplay of positive and negative experiences. A flourishing life consists of plural and oftentimes conflicting values. There is a dynamic interplay or tension between interacting elements or forces. They have identified five key dichotomies: optimism vs pessimism, self-esteem vs humility, freedom vs restriction, forgiveness vs anger, and happiness vs sadness. They have identified the following principles: (1 )The principle of appraisal which states that it can be difficult to categorize specific phenomena as either positive or negative; (2) The principle of covalence, which says that many experiences involve a complex intertwined blend of positive and negative elements; and (3) The principle of complementarity, which states that flourishing itself involves an intellectual dialectic, balance, and harmonization between positive and negative aspects of living (i.e., a dynamic harmonization of dichotomous states). Although individuals should strive to maximize the positive in their lives, it is true that we are all faced with certain negative, involuntary aspects of life, and that there is virtue and merit in dealing with, and attempting to overcome, those negative aspects.

Thus, positive psychology now studies and encompasses the vicissitudes of life. It explores topics such as meaning, suffering, adversity, resilience, change, and mortality. By dealing with difficult existential life issues, negative experiences can potentially be transformed into life-affirming ones. Positive psychology holds that the best approach to personal flourishing is to confront and integrate suffering, doubt, stress, adversity, and despair as essential ingredients of one’s journey toward healing and personal development. This path can involve challenging experiences that can lead to growth, insight, healing, and transformation.

The principles of positive psychology have been found to be useful in many areas of psychotherapy. Positive psychology has shown promising results for increasing well-being in healthy people and in reducing depression and increasing well-being in those with depression. Psychotherapists integrate symptoms reduction and well-being enhancement approaches with the goal of enriching client flourishing. They do this by combining strengths with symptoms, resources with risks, values with weaknesses, and hopes with regrets, in their attempts to understand the unavoidable complexities of being an individual human being. Such variables are not invariably positive or negative. Ostensibly positive factors may be detrimental to well-being and seemingly negative factors may promote flourishing.

The Compatibility of Eudaimonist Philosophy and Positive Psychology

To a large degree, positive psychology derives inspiration from Aristotle, and is consistent with the philosophical principles espoused by Aristotle and Rand.

Aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia is close to Ayn Rand’s moral theory of happiness as the “noncontradictory state of joy” of attaining one’s values by following reason, and corresponds to positive psychology’s idea of personal happiness as flourishing and well-being. To a large degree, positive psychology derives inspiration from Aristotle, and is consistent with the philosophical principles espoused by Aristotle and Rand. There is potential for increasing our understanding of what constitutes flourishing and happiness through the integration and synthesis of the work done by Aristotle, Rand, and contemporary positive psychologists. The writings of Aristotle and Rand can provide the philosophical foundation that positive psychology needs. Philosophy and psychology can work together as a joint venture. A synergistic, transdisciplinary approach can be instrumental in developing a science of optimal individual functioning, flourishing, well-being, and happiness. There is a need to integrate the moral perspectives of Aristotle and Rand with the tools and insights provided by positive psychology.

There are many positive psychology concepts, tools, and applications that are associated with life-satisfaction and eudaimonistic well-being. A few well-known examples of these are the goal-setting theory of motivation, flow theory, and the enhancement of self-esteem.

Human beings are goal-directed. Goals are specific forms of values. Values provide a strategic underpinning for a person’s goal-setting activities. They supply meaning and purpose to a person’s goals. We could say that goals depict values as related to particular states of affairs. Because not all goals are equally valid, a person needs to examine the values underlying his goals. It is important to realize that goals are not isolated from one another. A person should strive to create a rational system of goals aimed at his flourishing and happiness (Locke 2002).

Locke (2002, 300-304) differentiates among needs, values, and goals. Whereas needs are inborn, values are acquired. Values prioritize needs. He explains that people require a value hierarchy in order to be able to make choices. Individuals are unique regarding their values and motivations. Values operate to prioritize needs and to attain what is required to meet needs. Locke notes that values and goals are similar concepts, but that they can be distinguished from one another with respect to their level of generality. Goals are values applied to particular circumstances—they are specific forms of values. Goals achieve values and values fulfill needs. A person’s goals and values should be consistent with his needs. Values are translated into reality through the means of goals. Value attainment requires setting and pursuing goals. Needs lead to values, values lead to goals, and goals lead to action. The ideas of need and value are more basic concepts than the notion of goal.

The concept of “flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 1997; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2003, 83-104) may be viewed as a connecting link between the ideas of human flourishing and happiness. Flow is the psychological state that accompanies highly engaging activities. To flourish and to be happy a person needs to live a life that successfully strives for meaningful involvement, engagement, and absorption in various life dimensions such as work, interpersonal relations, leisure, and so on. Happiness with major domains of life adds to happiness with one’s life as a whole. Happiness with the aspects one’s life tends to contribute to one’s happiness with respect to his life as a whole, and happiness regarding one’s life as a whole tends to foster happiness derived from his various life aspects. Meaningful activity, vital engagement, and intense participation with the projects one undertakes are required for the state of flow.

A true sense of flow is more than a subjective state of mind. It involves the use of one’s reason to actively set meaningful goals and to invest his attention properly and selectively. It involves people developing what is best within themselves. Flow can involve conquering challenges and resolving difficulties. It is inextricably related to the engagement of one’s interests and the exercise of one’s capacities. Flow is connected to the work of being virtuous (i.e., to rising to one’s moral potential). There needs to be a coincidence of talent, enjoyment, and meaning (i.e., relevant skills, positive emotions, and objective evaluation). Flow involves a state of immersion in a challenging pursuit that matches one’s abilities and passions. When a person has experienced flow with respect to a given activity, he tends to persist at it and return to it. This promotes the growth of his skills over time.

Self-esteem (including self-efficacy and self-respect) is an agent’s apprehension and appreciation of his adequacy and competence to deal with his environment. Self-esteem refers to a person’s legitimate attitude of self-affirmation. Self-esteem is connected to a sense of agency and control of one’s environment. A person with self-esteem tends to be competent, optimistic, and virtuous. A person who does not practice the virtues (such as rationality, honesty, justice, and so on) is not likely to possess self-esteem. Virtuous action leads to self-esteem (Branden [1969] 2001).

Self-esteem and happiness are inextricably linked. Self-esteem is related to one’s sense of agency, motivation, optimism, hopefulness, mastery, competence, and control of one’s environment. It is a person’s general cognitive assessment and feeling of his self-worth, self-respect, self-accomplishment, and adequacy as a human being. A competent agent who has succeeded in past endeavors is likely to set and attain higher future goals and standards and to adopt more effective task strategies (Lyubomirsky, Tkach, and Dimatteo 2006).

Since Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden, there have been a number of individuals who have commented on the relationship between Objectivism and psychology.

Since Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden, there have been a number of individuals who have commented on the relationship between Objectivism and psychology including: Harry Binswanger, Edwin A. Locke, Ellen Kenner, Edith Packer, Robert L. Campbell, Marsha Familaro Enright, Roger Bissell, Vinay Kolhatkar, and Jerry Kirkpatrick. Then there is Gena Gorlin, a recent contemporary exemplar of the approach advocated in this essay. Holding a B.S. in philosophy and psychology, she has been involved with the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) for several years. A graduate of the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC), ARI’s premier intellectual training program, she has been a speaker at ARI events for the last few years. She is an assistant professor of clinical psychology, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a practicing private psychotherapist and achievement coach. Professor Gorlin has authored numerous scholarly publications, a blog for Psychology Today, a newsletter called Building the Builders, and has many videos on YouTube.

Gorlin integrates tools from cognitive behavioral theory with Ayn Rand’s value theory. Her research and clinical experience are underpinned by Rand’s insights. She specializes in cognitive behavioral theory and related approaches to anxiety, depression, and concerns related to motivation, goal pursuit, self-change, and a person’s capacity to engage in active, reality-based cognition (i.e., cognitive integrity).

Gorlin integrates tools from cognitive behavioral theory with Ayn Rand’s value theory.

In her essays, blog, and videos, she explains that individuals become more informed and autonomous agents by becoming more honest with themselves. She emphasizes that a critical factor in assessing a person’s motivation is the degree to which it is self-determined (i.e., freely choosing an action in service of one’s own needs, goals, and values). An individual needs self-determined reasons for engaging in activities.

Gorlin teaches that increasing and exercising agency over one’s life is primarily achieved by gaining and internalizing knowledge regarding the possible futures that lie within one’s reach. Learning about the diverse ways that a person’s life can go provides the practical wisdom for an individual to better build his own life.

She emphasizes that a person needs to fight against entropy and inertia because, by choosing to do nothing, the result will be movement toward disorder, randomness, dysfunction, ineptitude, and chaos. The power to build is the ability of directing one’s own intelligence toward the work of understanding the world and adapting it to one’s own needs. People can impose a purposeful order on nature’s chaos—to stagnate is natural, to build is human. Achievements are the distinctively human mode of overriding nature’s defaults.

The iterative effort of thinking, working, and creating involves honest and active engagement with reality. This entails recursive application of the builder’s mindset. Gorlin emphasizes that, whether or not an individual takes up the work, there is always a choice and that inaction and the refusal to build guarantees stagnation and failure. This bias toward action exists because the riskiest route is frequently to do nothing at all—to languish in one’s current situation.

Because psychology arises out of philosophy, there is a need to identify philosophical foundations for the study and practice of psychology. Philosophy has more intellectual purposes and psychology focuses on therapy and interventions. Aristotelian philosophy and Objectivism can provide this foundation. There are a number of contemporary neo-Aristotelian and Rand-influenced philosophers. For example, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl explain in their books and articles that human flourishing stems from the fundamental existential condition that one needs to make a life for oneself in the context of one’s own particular circumstances, nature, and dispositions. This requires the freedom to exercise self-direction and the use of one’s own practical reason. The ideas of Aristotle and Rand can be effectively combined with positive psychology in understanding and promoting the well-being and happiness of individual human beings as self-organizing, self-directed, adaptive entities. Of course, to do so, certain obstacles will need to be recognized and dealt with. The fulfillment of a person’s daimon (or true self) is not static or fixed—it is a function of his endowments, circumstances, interests, talents, and history of choices, actions, and accomplishments. Possessing free will, a person can work on his life in accordance with the objective standard of his flourishing as a singular human being.

 
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References

Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terrence Irwin, 2nd. ed. Indianapolis, IN.; Hackett.

Branden, Nathaniel, [1969] 2001. The Psychology of Self-Esteem: A New Concept of Man’s Psychological Nature. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York:Harper and Row.

_____. 1997. Finding Flow. New York: Basic Books.

Gorlin, Gena. www.genagorlin.com

Locke, Edwin A. 2002. “Setting Goals for Life and Happiness” In C. R. Snyder and Shane L. Lopez (eds.) Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. 299-312.

Lomas, Tim and Itai Ivtzan. 2016. “Second Wave Positive Psychology: Exploring the Positive-Negative Dialectics of Wellbeing” Journal of Happiness Studies. 17: 1753-68.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja, Chris Tkach, and M. Robin Dimatteo. 2006. “What are the Differences between Happiness and Self-Esteem?” Social Indicators Research. 78: 363-404.

Maslow, Abraham H. 1954. Motivation and Personality. Harper.

Nakamura, Jeanne and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 2003. “The Concept of Flow” In Corey L.M. Keyes and Jonathan Haidt (eds.) Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the life Well-Lived. American Psychological Association: 83-104.

Rand, Ayn. 1964. “The Objectivist Ethics” The Virtue of Selfishness: a New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet: 13-35.

Seligman, Martin E. P. 2011. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. New York: The Free Press.

Seligman, Martin: E.P. and Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi. 2000. “Positive Psychology: An Introduction” American Psychologist 55: 5-14.

 

 

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