Love and human flourishing

Abstract

We present arguments that the promotion of love within society has tremendous underutilized potential to enhance human flourishing. Some indication that this may be so can be found in sweeping claims sometimes made about love within philosophical, theological, psychological, sociological, and even economic, business and management literatures. We review definitional and theoretical considerations concerning love and flourishing. We summarize various streams of empirical evidence for the role of love in the promotion of human flourishing. We then argue that social policy oriented towards promoting love within families, friendships, schools, workplaces, religious communities, medicine, politics and the media could make substantial contributions to advancing societal flourishing.