To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil [Hardcover]

In his 2010 bookWhat 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, crucial dimensions of the richness of our own lived lives, what thinkers in previous ages might have called our souls or hearts. Building on Smiths previous work,To Flourish or Destructexamines 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?
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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 endsa failure that can result in varying gradations of evil. Rooted in critical realism and informed by work in philosophy, psychology, and other fields, Smiths ambitious book situates the idea of personhood at the center of our attempts to understand how we might shape good human lives and societies.

Christian Smithis the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, where he directs the Center for the Study of Religion and Society and the Notre Dame Center for Social Research.? He is the author or coauthor of several books, includingWhat Is a Person?andSoul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.