Naturalism, Human Flourishing, and Asian Philosophy

Naturalism, Human Flourishing, and Asian Philosophy: Owen Flanagan and Beyond is an edited volume of philosophical essays focusing on Owen Flanagan's naturalized comparative philosophy and moral psychology of human flourishing. Flanagan is a philosopher well-known for his naturalized approach to philosophical issues such as meaning, physicalism, causation, and consciousness in the analytic school of Western philosophy. Recently, he develops his philosophical interest in Asian philosophy and discusses diverse philosophical issues of human flourishing, Buddhism and Confucianism from comparative viewpoints. The current volume discusses his philosophy of human flourishing and his naturalized approaches to Buddhism and Confucianism. The volume consists of five sections with eleven chapters written by leading experts in the fields of philosophy, religion, and psychology. The first section is an introduction to Flanagan's philosophy. The introductory chapter provides a general overview of Flanagan's philosophy, i.e., his philosophy of naturalization, comparative approach to human flourishing, and detailed summaries of the following chapters. In the second section, the three chapters discuss Flanagan's naturalized eudaimonics of human flourishing. The third section discusses Flanagan's naturalized Buddhism. The fourth section analyzes Flanagan's interpretation of Confucian philosophy (specifically Mencius's moral sprouts), from the viewpoint of moral modularity and human flourishing. The fifth section is Flanagan's responses to the comments and criticisms developed in this volume.

Bongrae Seok is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy (2013) and Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame (2016), where he explores and discusses how interdisciplinary studies of psychology and neuroscience help us understand Asian philosophy.

Section I: Introduction 1. Introduction: Eudaimonic Human Flourishing and Naturalized Asian Philosophy Bongrae Seok Section II: Flanagan, Human Flourishing, and Meaning of Life 2. EudaimoniaCosmopolitan: Toward an Integrative, Developmental Model of a Good Life, East and West Jack J. Bauer and Peggy DesAutels 3. Metaphysics, Virtue, and Eudaimonia in Aristotle and Buddhism Nancy E. Snow 4. Living without a Canopy or Being Mortal and Responsible: Flanagan, Derrida, and Zen Buddhism on the Production of Meaning Jin Y. Park Section III: Flanagan and Naturalized Buddhism 5. Consciousness, Naturalism, and Human Flourishing Christian Coseru 6. Physicalism and Beyond: Flanagan, Buddhism, and Consciousness Matthew MacKenzie 7. Assessing Flanagan's Naturalistic Critique of the Luminosity of Mind in Buddhism Douglas L. Berger 8. More Things in Heaven and Earth: The Path to Nirvana, Naturalized Jonathan C. Gold Section IV: Flanagan, Moral Modularity, and Confucian Philosophy 9. Flanagan, Haidt, and Mencius: Naturalized Ethics and Modularity of Morals Bongrae Seok 10. Owen Flanagan on Moral Modularity and Comparative Philosophy Philip J. Ivanhoe Section V: Owen Flanagan's Responses to His Critics 11. Cross-Cultural Philosophy and Well-Being Owen Flanagan