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Chapter 2 22 to make clearer how the proposed criteria should be understood. Ideally, a human being’s life will develop in such a way – and education will contribute to this development – that all of her potential can be actualised, whilst creating a harmonious balance between her potentials and other goods she aims to realise, and that she is happy with it too. This is ‘picture perfect’; and it represents a conception of perfect flourishing, which is practically unrealisable. A more realistic ‘picture’ of a flourishing life takes into account that ‘life will get in the way’. De Ruyter writes that ‘when one takes into account what people can achieve given their circumstances and abilities, one has a realistic conception of flourishing in mind’. 31 The ideal of perfect flourishing is still being pursued, but one realises that we, human beings, cannot always create the best circumstances for us to flourish, nor are we able to fully optimise all of our abilities. 32 And above that, sometimes we just do not succeed in doing our best, or it is simply difficult to decide what the best thing to do would be (when values conflict for example). The ideal of flourishing functions as a regulative ideal to structure our development and give us (high) aims to strive at. 33 But we need not maintain that human beings do not flourish until their lives are perfect, nor that it is ‘bad’ to not have a perfect life; in fact, it is human. The formal criteria we propose reflect this high goal of perfect flourishing; but it is important to keep in mind that flourishing is a matter of degree, and that the criteria need not be applied so strictly as to demand perfection. 34 As said before, according to Aristotle we can only judge whether someone has had a flourishing life at the end of that life. 35 On the one hand, it makes sense, in reference to the ideal, to attribute flourishing to an entire life. But on the other hand, that is not the only way in which the word flourishing is used in daily life. It is not awkward to speak of ‘flourishing children’ or to call someone a flourishing human being who is not dead yet (or on her deathbed). Therefore, we think that it is helpful to distinguish between ‘a flourishing life’ (being the ideal) and the verb ‘to flourish’ (representing an actual evaluation). 36 A flourishing life refers to the (Aristotelian) ideal of flourishing throughout an entire lifetime while the verb ‘to flourish’ is used in situations where an evaluations is made about a certain time-slice in someone’s life and in which less demanding standards are applied. 37 That is why we, for example, can say that a child has a flourishing childhood. This gives her – no doubt – a large advantage for the rest of her life, but does not guarantee a flourishing life; we don’t know yet if, and to what degree, this child will be able to fulfil 31 De Ruyter 2015, p. 89. 32 See also Lawrence 1993. 33 See Emmet 1994. 34 See also chapter 5 of this dissertation which takes a different, but related angle at this and discusses the difference between ideals and goals . 35 Aristotle 2009, p. 12, 1098a17-19. 36 E.g. De Ruyter 2007; 2015. 37 De Ruyter 2015, p. 89.