Introduction: Personal flourishing between philosophy and psychology

Abstract

In recent decades, flourishing has been developing as a synonym of consistent personal growth both in the philosophical arena-from the Aristotelian perspective fostered by Anscombe-and in business ethics scholarship. The analogies between the terms maturity, growth, and flourishing-which have always been used to refer to positive human development-are coming to a point where they deserve systematic and scientific treatment. Important projects in psychology have implemented proposals to establish the kinds of contexts that allow human beings to develop in such a way. This also implies important distinctions between the subjects studied, i.e. some subjects more fully reflect this growth than others. Besides the question of measuring the added value of good personal and collective attitudes and practices, it is very relevant that psychology of organizations is rediscovering the importance of the meaning of life. A classical philosophical framework regarding happiness and the meaning of life is important to allow this contemporary trends to address such important aspects of institutional organization without reducing it to a mere functionalistic practices.