Sustainability and Flourishing: What's Love Got to Do with It?

摘要

Flourishing is essential to the health and well-being of individuals and the natural world. Understanding what drives flourishing has implications for everything from better interpersonal relations, which we rely on to go about our lives, to better care for the world, which we need to live. A synthesis of two theories from two very different disciplinary perspectives---John R. Ehrenfeld's "sustainability-as-flourishing" and Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body---reveals a wellspring that leads to flourishing. Ehrenfeld's sustainability-as-flourishing is a systems-thinking approach to sustainability that encompasses four domains of care: human (self-care), ethical (other-care), natural (care for the world), and spiritual (care for the transcendent). The Theology of the Body is an examination of human sexuality and divine love exploring the mystery of God manifest in the physical being of humankind. The erotic union of the physical body with the divine explored in the Theology of the Body is a pathway toward flourishing that complements and enriches Ehrenfeld's vision of sustainability. This theoretical investigation distills an essential element of love linking the two theories---investment in the well-being of an other for the other's sake (IWB)---offering new knowledge in the form of an integrated model demonstrating IWB as a wellspring that can lead to flourishing.