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Chapter 6 89 belief or faith in a positive future for one’s children, as part of an attitude of parental hope, is also the root of full-fledged trust. One could say that parents aim for the flourishing life of their children because they have faith in, and hope for, and therefore also (a priori) trust in their children, the future and the future flourishing of their children. 6.2 H OW SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT HUMAN FLOURISHING AS AN IDEAL AIM OF EDUCATION ? I asked if human flourishing should be seen as an ideal, overarching aim of education, and if so, in what way it should be theorised and what it implies for education, particularly for parents. On the basis of the four chapters in this dissertation, I argue that human flourishing can only be meaningfully defended as an aim of education in a theory that gives due acknowledgment to the educational practices it describes. By this I mean that: (a) It should be clear that a flourishing life cannot be achieved by human effort alone, it is for a significant part up to luck, i.e. it should be clear that (striving for) flourishing is inherently fragile. (b) It should be taken into account that child-rearing, as a necessary part of aiming for a flourishing life of children, inherently involves taking an existential risk, in the sense that 1) there is always the risk that the child does not become what the parent intended, and 2) the parent risks herself in undertaking this endeavour. (c) It should be made clear in what way flourishing is conceptualised, and what consequences that has for aiming for the future flourishing life of children. Flourishing is best conceptualised as an ideal, but it should always be made clear that there is a gap between a perfect flourishing life and what is realistically possible, and between those two and what is actually happening in the world at this moment. (d) There should also be nonideal theory on education for flourishing, to counterbalance the ideal theory that is currently available. A combination of ideal and nonideal theory on education for flourishing is most desirable, because this allows both a description of ideal education and a necessary focus on actual problems that threaten even getting anywhere near(er) this ideal.