To Flourish or Destruct

To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil by Christian Smith, 278 pages

In To Flourish or Destruct Smith attempts to lay out a new direction for sociology predicated on critical realist personalism.  In Smith's view, sociology has long been dominated by faulty philosophical presumptions even - perhaps especially - when those presumptions have been ignored or denied.  Personalism is centered on the human person, which emerges from, but is not reducible to, a physical human body.  Society emerges in turn from the relationships and interactions of human persons.  Personhood is grounded in an essential human nature, which is ordered towards certain goods that result in human flourishing, the pursuit of which is mediated and enabled but not determined by society and culture.

The strengths of Smith's approach are considerable.  Personalism accepts the existence of free will, pursuing a middle path between atomistic individualism and social determinism, one which recognizes the importance of both the individual and the collective.  Perhaps most importantly, personalism allows for the reality of evil, and a means by which evils can be sociologically identified and confronted.  Although aimed at sociologists, To Flourish or Destruct is an important, insightful book which ought to have an impact far beyond the field.