Project

	for constellating interdomainal thought gary e. davis	May 21, 2026

Around 2020, the “Humanities and Human Flourishing” (HHF) research group asked “How can the humanities help us conceptualize human flourishing more deeply, cultivate it more effectively, and critique it more insightfully?” [ref.2.17: xiii]. depth, insight, and efficacy of conceptualization (the better sequence)—which I’ve been prospecting for more than a decade longer than the HHF project, beginning in the late 1990s. The HHF group wanted “…to make a way for humanities scholars to play a larger role in this domain…” [op cit: xiv]. “Scholars supporting a eudaimonic turn believe it could revitalize the humanities by encouraging deeper investigations into the eudaimonic hopes that initially gave rise to their disciplines and the various ways in which contemporary work can support and develop these hopes.” [op cit: xvi]. But their conception needed improvement, which employs a better conception of flourishing, as I sketched above: “a conceptual spirit….” (which is aspirational). Nonetheless, professionals are rightly concerned about the future of the human- ities relative to ascendence of “positive psychology” (which I re-conceive as “generative psychology’). “There is a real question here,” the HHF project notes, ”of who has the authority to judge matters of literary value or to guide students toward an appreciation of the transformative potential of literary experiences and literary ways of thinking” [ref.2.17: 3]. “Of course, the basis of any interdisciplinary enterprise is shared authority, pooled expertise. But the nature of the sharing in this case has yet to be worked out” [ibid]. So, what’s a good* way of constellating a “nature” of better—the best?—sharing? Ideally, that’s oriented by the best of humanity I can discern, being on an endless path of seeking to discern better humanity that renders the best of bumanity for intergenerational advancement of person-al life. That leads—I hope—to goodH discourse, constellatiing “the” best of humanity, venturing what’s best (clearly an interest of Literary valuing) for the sake of better humanity across generations; and prospecting the better constellating of better being— which also prospects practical entailments (though idealistic). Understanding is constellational. Paragraphs are constellational, in accord with grammatical cohering. These paragraphs link a little to the constellational mar-riage of my two web sites, which conceptually cohere (though how so—the con- ceptuality It gives altogether—isn’t yet formalized online, only offline). Anyway (and more accessibly), the ideal of the literary arts, perhaps, is to comprehend, as well as one's life can, wholly flourishing life, in all its complemen- tary differences belonging together—to-gather Meaningfully—in Our same humanity, which is intergenerational; at best, “paying forward” to our unborn heirs, in retrospected thanks to generations who made our lives as good as we may often be. That practically entails, for me, a sense of Literary humanities based in a genera- tive humanity of Literary ethicality, which I’ll discuss later: on the descensional side of a little more conceptual ascension.

next—>  evincing telic consilience from appellant cohering

 

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