The current global economic crisis has provoked a broad discussion that extends far beyond debates about payments, supports, subsidies, debt, and stimulus packages. Social critics excoriate corporate greed, demand vigilant regulation, castigate the excesses underlying the crisis, and call for a transformation of a “more-is-better” consumerist lifestyle. “Never before,” observes sociologist Robert Bellah, “have calls for criticism of and alternatives to the existing order seemed so urgent.” And, responding to Barack Obama’s inauguration as America’s 44th president, Thomas L. Friedman observed, “While it is impossible to exaggerate what a radical departure it is from our past that we have inaugurated a black man as president, it is equally impossible to exaggerate how much our future depends on a radical departure from our present.” For theologian Sallie McFague, this departure requires a lifestyle that acknowledges the basic needs of all human beings and other creatures living in mutual need and reciprocity—or, in other terms, an ecology of human flourishing grounded in the recognition of the interdependence of all life forms and the consequent ethic of communality and “enoughness” that flows from it.

During the academic year 2009–2010, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, in conjunction with the Weatherhead Center and the Harvard Center for the Environment, is organizing a series of programs to explore several dimensions of an ecology of human flourishing—economic, sociological, religious, ethical, environmental, historical, literary. Our discussions examine how notions of human flourishing, quality of life, and common good have been constructed and, in the contemporary world, how issues of distributive justice, poverty and economic inequality, global health, and environmental sustainability illuminate or challenge these notions.

Current Academic Year

• 2009–2010 Seminar Schedule

Contact Information

Rebecca Kline Esterson
E-mail: resterson@hds.harvard.edu