This Postscript synthesizes the book’s central claim: that abandoning belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility does not lead to nihilism or despair, but instead paves the way for a more humane, compassionate, and just society. Rather than seeing ourselves as autonomous agents wholly responsible for our successes and failures, free will skepticism encourages us to recognize the deep causal influences – biological, social, and environmental – that shape human behavior. This recognition invites not fatalism, but moral clarity: a shift from blame to understanding, from retribution to rehabilitation, and from judgment to empathy. The Postscript highlights the real-world implications of this paradigm shift, especially in areas such as criminal justice, where punitive attitudes can be replaced with restorative, forward-looking models that aim to reduce harm and promote healing. It also discusses interpersonal relationships, arguing that viewing others through the lens of compassion and causal understanding can foster forgiveness and reduce moral anger. Ultimately, the Postscript reaffirms the book’s hopeful message: that living without free will allows us to embrace a deeper ethics – one rooted in fairness, humility, and solidarity – and that such a shift can enhance both individual well-being and collective flourishing.

This chapter explores the capability approach (CA) in relation to decent work (DW) and flourishing at work, presenting a nuanced framework for understanding and enhancing employment quality. Decent work encompasses job security, fair wages, safe working conditions, and respect for workers’ rights. Flourishing at work extends the concept of DW by considering how work contributes to well-being, personal growth, and fulfilment. Combining the frameworks of DW and flourishing at work with the CA offers a comprehensive understanding of the role of work in human development. The connections among capabilities, DW, and flourishing at work are deeply intertwined, as all three concepts focus on enhancing human well-being, dignity, and growth potential. By integrating DW, capabilities, and human flourishing, policymakers, organisations, and civil society can move beyond compliance with minimum standards (decent work), centre human agency and diversity, and aspire to lives of emotional, psychological, and social well-being.

Drawing from critical realism and building on previous academic studies and writing theories and practices, the author advances approaches to academic writing that are both human and humane, by situating academic writing within the broader critical realist project of furthering human flourishing and emancipation; of what it means to be human; and of why things matter to people. Addressing what counts as human(e) in academic writing has become pressing, as concerns about machine-generated texts, such as Large Language Models like ChatGPT challenge understandings of truth, knowledge, and justice. Underlying the argument in this chapter is the assumption that writing in the academy is a social practice (specifically, a method of enquiry) that should be oriented towards epistemic virtues including commitment to truth and socially just standards of excellence. For academic writing to fulfil such commitments, the author argues that it needs to be human(e). For it to be human(e), it requires a writer–agent–knower to rationally judge between educative and harmful academic writing theories and practices, in the interests of human flourishing and emancipation.

This chapter explores Aristotle’s account of the good life as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics, emphasizing his empirical, observational approach to virtue, social life, and human flourishing. Aristotle presents human beings as inherently social and defines virtues—such as generosity, magnanimity, and justice—as traits expressed in habitual action and observed within social contexts. Justice, in particular, emerges as a “complete” virtue, operative only within the framework of law and reciprocity. Aristotle also articulates the importance of friendship (philia), distinguishing between lesser forms based on utility or pleasure and the highest form—friendship grounded in shared virtue. Intellectual virtues are treated alongside moral ones, with phronêsis (prudence or practical wisdom) guiding right action. Ultimately, Aristotle identifies contemplation as the highest human activity, likening it to divine activity. Though only attainable by few, contemplation fulfills the intellect’s potential and brings human beings closest to the divine. The chapter concludes by reflecting on Aristotle’s conception of divinity, the nature of blessedness, and how these inform a hierarchical vision of reality in which the contemplative life represents the fullest expression of human excellence.

What does Heidegger mean by “curiosity” and why does he characterize it as a kind of epistemic vice, when most contemporary accounts view it as a virtue? Being and Time disparagingly notes that curiosity “concerns itself with a kind of knowing, but just in order to have known” (BT 217/172); the curious person busies herself with “entertaining ‘incidentals’” (BT 358/310). Building on previous work – wherein I argue that virtues are best understood as tendencies to cope well with existential obstacles to flourishing (McMullin 2019) – I show that curiosity as Heidegger frames it is an epistemically vicious misunderstanding of self and world arising in large part from our tendencies toward impatience, arrogance, and fear. Because Heidegger’s account of curiosity in Being and Time is not well-developed, we will look at nearby texts to get a better understanding of this sometimes-overlooked concept in Heidegger’s corpus.

Research indicates that a segment of the lawyer population is impaired by mental illness, such as anxiety, depression, substance misuse, or suicide risk. A much higher number of lawyers likely fall on the languishing end of the mental health spectrum. If you are languishing, you may be at a higher risk of sliding into impairment. Mental health is assessed on a continuum, ranging from languishing to flourishing. Languishing has been described as feeling uninspired, joyless, and lacking the power to function at full capacity. And languishing may increase your risk of mental illness, such as major depressive episode, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, or substance use disorder. Lawyers may suffer from several obstacles to mental strength, including lack of self-awareness, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, social comparisons, trained pessimism, inability to regulate emotions, and inauthenticity from a failure to understand or leverage their temperament and personality strengths. Features of the lawyering culture may augment these obstacles and lead to lawyer languishing.

The book concludes with a discussion of the ways that virtue science can influence the discipline of psychology. First, it reiterates that virtue science is off to a good start. The success of virtue science calls the fact–value dichotomy into question because scientifically studying virtues is deeply imbued with value commitments. Virtue science is more interdisciplinary than psychology, and the value of working across disciplinary lines in virtue science recommends greater interdisciplinarity among psychologists. This interdisciplinarity in virtue science has helped to clarify the many philosophical contentions that tend to be ignored by psychologists or just built in as contentious assumptions. The STRIVE-4 Model clarifies how much improved conceptualization can enhance a research area, suggesting that psychology, as a discipline, can benefit from more systematic theory. Virtue science also calls for improved research, especially person-centered research and transcending self-report measures. Finally, virtue science calls for the recognition of the centrality of the aspiration to live well as human beings. Greater attention to this core aim can help psychologists to be much clearer and more direct about their objectives.

The introduction asks the question of why social scientists should study virtues empirically. It offers five reasons: (1) humans are moral animals, (2) moral behavior can be understood as an expression of acquired traits, (3) it is psychologically realistic to think that ordinary humans can acquire and express virtue traits, (4) moral education is valuable, and (5) virtues are often taken to be essential to a good life. The Introduction then addresses three challenges that virtue scientists must face: (1) the absence of empirically oriented virtue theory, (2) the overreliance of simple survey design in psychology, and (3) virtue skeptics. The Introduction concludes with an outline of the chapters of the book and how these chapters comprise the sections of the book.

This chapter discusses the field of moral development and explores what this research field can tell us about virtue development, which is a relatively neglected topic in virtue theory. The chapter is primarily about moral development in children, both because there is substantial scientific interest in this population and because virtue development must begin in childhood. Moral development research illuminates three apparently naturally developing preconditions for virtue development: (1) the ability to choose, (2) an interest in collective welfare, and (3) an interest in ethical normativity. Moral development research is also compatible with the STRIVE-4 Model in that it is primarily quantitative. Moral development generally does not focus on traits, with the exception of some research on moral identity, moral emotions, and moral exemplars. The chapter concludes by exploring how virtue science can contribute to moral development research, including an increased emphasis on (1) person-centered research, (2) the contextualizing of development in situations and roles, (3) flourishing, and (4) practical wisdom.