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Chapter 2 25 death, as we have already referred to previously when we made the distinction between ‘a flourishing life’ and the verb ‘to flourish’. However, there is still another way in which life as a whole can be interpreted, namely in a holistic sense, as referring to the whole of one’s life spheres. This holistic interpretation is crucial for flourishing. A judgment about whether someone is flourishing takes into account all life- spheres. In that sense it is about a whole life, rather than one or some of its parts. For example, when someone is a successful banker, has a booming career and makes a lot of money, but neglects his wife and three children, because he works for over 80 hours a week and is never home, we would presumably not consider him to flourish. We hesitate to attribute flourishing to him, because he neglects a significant part of his life. He could be happy, though, in the subjective sense of feeling happy. Or, as for example MacIntyre puts it: What is important is to recognise that each life is a single, if complex, narrative of a particular subject, someone whose life is a whole into which the different parts have to be integrated, so that the pursuit of the goods of home and family reinforces the pursuit of the goods of the workplace and vice versa, and so too with the other diverse goods of a particular life. To integrate them is a task, a task rarely, if ever, completed. 48 In the case of the successful banker there is not enough integration, no balance, because there is neglect; and his wife and children suffer from it. 2b. A dynamic state Development is characteristic of human flourishing. 49 Development is necessary to actualise the human potential, because people cannot optimise themselves by pushing a button or drinking a magical potion. Nor can a person develop someone else’s potential; it is a personal process. 50 In other words, one has to do something in order to become a flourishing human being. According to Kraut, there is a widely accepted framework for thinking about normal human development, which gives us ‘platitudes’ that help us determine what is good for us. 51 There is no clear beginning or ending to the process of development. Only when a human being dies, development has ended for that particular human being (at least, for all we know). 48 MacIntyre and Dunne 2002, p. 10. 49 See for instance in Aristotle 2009; Lawrence 1993; Hurka 1999; Kraut 2007; Huta 2011; De Ruyter 2012. 50 Annas 1993, p. 37; Haybron 2008, p. 157. 51 Kraut 2007, p. 140.