Enacting Integral Human Development - Softcover

Sedmak, Clemens

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1626985529 ISBN 13: 9781626985520

Publisher: Orbis Books (USA), 2023

Synopsis

"Integral Human Development" (IHD) is a term coined by Louis-Joseph Lebret OP and then used by Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum Progressio in 1967. It is, in a way, the Catholic approach to human development and has been adopted by Catholic Relief Services. Pope Francis has emphasized the idea with the creation of a special dicastery of which Cardinal Czerny is the new Prefect. Similar to Enacting Catholic Social Teaching, the book emphasizes practice and examples without being a simple "how-to" book.

About this title

About the Author

Clemens Sedmak is professor of social ethics and interim director, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, University of Notre Dame. His recent books include The Capacity to Be Displaced: Resilience, Mission, and Inner Strength (Brill, 2017), and Enacting Catholic Social Teaching (Orbis, 2022).

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US$30.00

RELIGION / Christian Living / Social Issues

RELIGION / Christian Theology / Ethics

RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic

Enacting Integral Human Development

Cover design: Michael Calvente

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A few years ago, the Washington Post featured an article in its September 10, 2018, edition that described Chamseddine Marzoug, a fifty-two-year-old former fisherman who scours the beaches of his Tunisian town for bodies of drowned refugees every morning. “When he finds one, he puts it in a body bag. He delivers the bodies to the hospital for a medical report. Later, he washes the corpses and takes them to the graveyard—marked by a sign displayed in six languages: Cemetery for Unknown—where he has dug the graves with a spade and pickax.” The article is entitled A Tunisian Gravedigger Gives Migrants What They Were Deprived of in Life: Dignity. 1 Chamseddine Marzoug’s engagement reflects a commitment to the dignity of the human person beyond an obvious economic advantage. He has a sense of the human person that motivates expressions of respect and solidarity beyond the lifespan. Terms like “piety” or “a sense of the sacred” could be used to characterize this practice. There seems to be a specific moment at work here, a moment of being in the presence of something bigger than oneself, be it death, be it the dignity of the human person, be it human suffering. Chamseddine Marzoug’s service is a sign of a commitment that is nourished by something deeper than sympathy with the living. In short, Marzoug’s engagement could be seen as a commitment to Integral Human Development (or IHD).2

The concept of “Integral Human Development” seems grand and lofty. It can however be explained quite easily through a short formula: Integral Human Development is the development of the whole person and the development of each person. This deceptively simple characterization dates back to 1967, when Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical Populorum Progressio, talked about “authentic human development.” Development “cannot be restricted to economic growth alone. To be authentic, it must be well rounded; it must foster the development of each person and of the whole person.”3 The official Latin version uses the word progressio for “growth,” whereas the Italian and the Spanish translations work with “sviluppo” and “desarrollo” (development), respectively. Growth, progress, and development point to different aspects of organic change that happens in steps whereby one step is based on the previous one.

Origins of the Term

The origin of this idea is indicated in the quoted passage from Populorum Progressio with a reference to Louis-Joseph Lebret.4 Lebret himself used the term développement authentique (Lebret 1961, 75). Lebret had been one of the experts the pope had consulted in the making of the encyclical and was explicitly mentioned in the press conference on March 28, 1967, by Monsignor Poupard, when the encyclical Populorum Progressio was officially presented. Lebret, a French Dominican priest and economist, was inspired to take a closer look at ethical questions of development on noting that processes of societal advancement that benefit some give rise to the deprivation and suffering of others. In 1929, he came face to face with the dire poverty of French fishermen in his own homeland on the coast of Brittany; he traced the roots of their poverty and found them to stem from global changes and the fact that family fishermen no longer stood a chance of making a decent living against large-scale commercial fishing with its mechanization.5 The internationalization and the industrialization of fishing found its victims in village fishing communities and family fisheries. “The experience of fishing exploitation by a foreign industry at the expense of local workers gave him concrete knowledge of the injustice of a system that was not limited to the problems of a particular region” (Bossi 2012, 253). There is a valuedimension from the beginning in Lebret’s thinking about development.

In the late 1960s, the concept of “development” had been conceived mainly in terms of economic progress. It included agricultural assistance, water purification plants, installation of new wells, distribution of medicine, and a variety of other measures. Economic planners argued that the greatest poverty in Latin American countries could be alleviated by massive job creation unleashed by substantial infusion of investment capital. (Pope 2019, 126)

Lebret challenged this view. Through participatory research in France and in Latin American communities, he arrived at an understanding of the necessity of human-centered development. Development is not the same as economic growth; this also means that development is not the same as measurable living standards and that ethics and theology are no less important as conversation partners on development than political science and economics. Development is not something that is done to people, but rather done through people, with people. Lebret’s first concern was people, not processes, projects, or products. Lebret was deeply interested in and committed to social transformation. In 1941, he founded Économie et Humanisme, a Dominican-supported movement of research and practice. He also helped found IRFED (Institut Internationale de Recherche et Formation en vue du Développement Harmonisé) in Paris in 1958, a training and research center on development, worldwide, thus “pursuing his ambition of developing a practical ethical vision for development globally” (Anaehobi 2021, 129).

Lebret’s vision of development is a vision of organic and harmonious growth and change—using “a living image: a plant develops, an animal develops, and a human person develops. It is about an internal balance that continues in growth. It concerns a harmony that is related to the nature of being in the process of development” (Lebret 1961, 38). This idea of organic growth works best with the idea of an order in which the human person is embedded; it is less compatible with a constructivist understanding of reality and the person, and also less compatible with an approach to “top-down planned development.” Lebret’s image of organic growth expresses his sense of and respect for the human person. He coined the term “human economy,” that is, an economy that would be “favourable to human development,” to “a fully human life,” as he wrote in his 1954 essay “Économie et Humanisme.”

A “fully human life” is more than a provision of basic goods. It respects “dignity needs.” Dignity needs are a class of personal needs that allow a person to live a dignified life. They include, according to Lebret, space—a space to which one can retreat and contemplate, perhaps also a space to entertain friends or to ponder a literary work or other artistic evocations of one’s inner life (Bossi 2012). A dignity perspective moves us beyond food and shelter and necessary external conditions. It moves us to an inner sphere, to the inner life, to the space that has been called the soul. Even though psychologists and theologians may talk about different things in their discourses on the soul, the concept of the soul generally points to interiority, an inner “force” or “space” that can be formed and that animates the person. Integral human development expresses an understanding of development that recognizes the importance of (the idea of ) the soul.

Immanuel Kant famously made the point that the existence of the soul cannot be proven but that the postulate of its existence plays an important role in moral philosophy. Belief in the soul allows us to tell a different story about human agency and the human person. It allows us to tell a story about the “More” of human existence (there is more to human life than the visible and tangible and material and even the temporal). Development ethicist Denis Goulet, who had studied with Lebret, expressed this point well: “Societies are more human, or more developed, not when men and women ‘have more’ but when they are enabled to ‘be more.’” (Goulet 1995, 6–7). Qualitative human enrichment becomes the point of development and a sense of community that recognizes the human need of belonging and the reality of dependence and interconnectedness. The choice between “being” and “having” can be seen as a fundamental choice, an insight developed by Erich Fromm in his influential book, To Have or to Be? For good reasons, a key notion in Lebret’s work and thinking was the word compassion: “It expressed an existential fellowship with every man [person] who strives to unite the world under a common destiny and to collectively create the structures that the realization of this aspiration calls for. To love is to identify oneself with one’s neighbour, with all men [persons], and to create with them the conditions for their self-fulfilment” (Cosmao 1970, 68)

This commitment to “More” (“Magis”) is an important aspect of the human condition. The understanding of human flourishing is linked to the idea of the growing realization of one’s potential. In this sense, Integral Human Development points to a kind of “fullness.” The meaning of “integral” in the context of “Integral Human Development” is linked to Jacques Maritain’s understanding of integral humanism; Populorum Progressio 42 talks about a full-bodied humanism that points the way to God.6 Integral Human Development has been characterized by Anthony Annett as “a eudaimonistic vision. It recognizes that every person, in line with his or her dignity, is called to flourishing and selfactualization, and it presumes a common duty to make this a reality” (Annett 2016, 49).7 There is a relational aspect at work here (persons as relational beings) and a teleological aspect (persons have a “direction of growth”). Flourishing is an expression of the communal nature of the person and also a moral task for communities to support the flourishing of persons. Development in this thinking has a direction, the direction of an ever-more humanized world. Development is seen by Lebret as a humanizing process of standing in relationships of solidarity, based on the recognition of universal human dignity and a commitment to promoting the common good in all spheres of life. This is what Lebret called “human ascent,” the primary goal of Integral Human Development.8

By embracing the idea of a human-centered economy and an understanding of development based on human dignity and the common good, Lebret offers a vision of human growth and social change that speaks to people from many different moral and religious traditions. This horizon that transcends the Catholic and Christian context is also noticeable in the sources used by Lebret. Even though his central inspiration remained Catholic, he made use of ideas from various sources, including existentialist philosophy or the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore (Lebret 1961, 128). “Integral human development” is a term capacious enough to integrate different traditions and inspirations. There can be no doubt that Louis-Joseph Lebret has contributed to a specific and human-centered understanding of development that continues to be relevant and influential.9 The term “Integral Human Development” is, at the same time, the end of a journey and the beginning of a journey. There is much work to do for the concept to do its work.

Further Developments

This brings us to the question, what is distinctive about the concept of Integral Human Development? Respecting human rights, aiming for participatory approaches, and cultivating respect for the dignity of the human person are not new. We could also state that the idea that human development is multidimensional may have been challenging in the times of Louis-Joseph Lebret, who had to fight against a predominantly economic understanding of development, but meanwhile the “beyond GDP”–movement has become well established (Fleurbaey 2009; Fleurbaey/Blanchet 2013). Robert Kennedy’s famous “Remarks at the University of Kansas” (March 18, 1968) may have been revolutionary then, but they are widely accepted today—Kennedy made the point that

the gross national product . . . does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.10 In a sense, he expressed a concern with the integral nature of human development. This was more than fifty years ago.

Today, we have to ask ourselves, is there anything specific about the idea of integral human development? Sévérine Deneulin (2018) mentions five important aspects of Integral Human Development: inseparability of the spiritual and the material, open-ended multidimensionality, interconnectedness, reality of personal and social sin, and the need for conversion. These dimensions point to implications of the term that are clearly compatible with any understanding of development, personhood, or community

With Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ in 2015, the discourse on Integral Human Development has gained a new momentum (Pfeil 2018; Gianfreda 2019). Laudato Si’ is an expression of concern with the state and the future of the planet, our common home. It provides an integral view with the explicit notion of an integral ecology. The whole document develops the thesis that everything is connected (Laudato Si’ 16, 42, 70, 92, 117, 138, 240). This integral view comes with the obligation to think in different terms: “Interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan” (Laudato Si’ 164). The name-giving person behind the encyclical is also used as a representative for an integral view— St. Francis of Assisi “shows us how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace” (Laudato Si’ 10). Integral development requires “a conversation which includes everyone” (Laudato Si’ 14). Both by promoting an integral view of the world and by reflecting on authentic development explicitly, Laudato Si’ has contributed to a deepening of the concept of Integral Human Development with an ecological perspective (Laudato Si’ 141) and with a long-term perspective that explicitly considers future generations (Laudato Si’ 159: “We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity”).

Integral Human Development also needs to recognize culture as an integral part of development (Laudato Si’ 143); the disappearance of a culture can be as serious as the disappearance of a plant or species (Laudato Si’ 145). Similar to the recognition of culture, the encyclical calls for a recognition of the contributions of religions (Laudato Si’ 62) and wisdom traditions (Laudato Si’ 63). In short, Integral Human Development is presented as the respect for and as an expression of the integrity of interconnectedness. The text has invited a new way to think about dignity (it even contains a line about “the intrinsic dignity of the world” in paragraph 115) and is critical of a “tyrannical” or “distorted” or “excessive” anthropocentrism (Laudato Si’ 68, 69, 116). This is a new chapter in the discourse on Integral Human Development.

We could read Laudato Si’ as an invitation to a two-fold transformation: (1) the ecological crisis cannot be approached with the means of technological progress; and (2) technological challenges must be transformed into moral concerns. But we cannot stop there. The encyclical invites a further step: moral concerns are translated into spiritual questions.11 The consideration of both moral and spiritual aspects sheds light on the meaning of “integral” in “Integral Human Development.”

Two years after the publication of Laudato Si’, the idea of Integral Human Development was strengthened through the establishment of an official structure: the concern with “Integral Human Development” has been institutionalized in a special office of the Vatican, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. When it was first established in 2017 through the Apostolic Letter Humanam Progressionem, integral human development was characterized as a kind of development that “takes place by attending to the inestimable goods of justice, peace, and the care of creation.” The Dicastery was entrusted to deal with “issues regarding migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture.” This gives us a sense of the unity of development, justice, peace, and care of creation. Integral Human Development cannot be separated from these moral goods. In other words: the commitment to Integral Human Development entails a commitment to ecological integrity, structures of justice, and processes of peace.

These commitments have to be enacted with a special consideration for those who have been deprived of access to these goods, persons who have been marginalized and victimized. In the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, promulgated in 2022 to restructure the Roman Curia, the responsibility of the Dicastery was described with

the task of promoting the human person and the God-given dignity of all, together with human rights, health, justice and peace. It is principally concerned with matters relating to the economy and work, the care of creation and the earth as our “common home”, migration and humanitarian emergencies. (art.163)

In this document, we find a language that places personhood and dignity at the center of the institutional responsibility of the Dicastery. Article 165 of this document underlines the centrality of dignity once again (“to defend and promote the dignity and fundamental rights of human persons as well as their social, economic and political rights”) and lists those who are especially vulnerable (victims of human trafficking, forced prostitution, various forms of slavery and torture, prisoners, migrants, refugees, displaced persons). Even though lists have their clear limits, they provide a deeper sense of disadvantage and also confirm the idea that we owe special duties vis-à-vis the most disadvantaged as a key feature of Integral Human Development. It cannot be denied that the visibility of the idea and the term have been substantially elevated during the pontificate of Pope Francis.

Some Questions and Dilemmas

As any other substantial term, the concept of Integral Human Development has its challenges. It seems fuzzy and vague. With its commitment to pay special attention to the most vulnerable, the concept can lead to “vulnerability competition,” pitting disadvantaged groups against each other when comparing their struggles, a dynamic that can be observed in “survivors’ postwar competition for aid and compensation” (Králová 2017, 149). If people claim to be committed to Integral Human Development, they seem to claim a superior moral position, a sense of moral high ground. People have been concerned that the term comes with a sense of moral imperialism. There is a moral problem and risk, as one colleague put it, “to speak about IHD and ‘traditional’ international development as two separate approaches, with the former portrayed as a more enlightened, multi-dimensional approach and the latter portrayed as a one-way, top-down, often compassion-less process that only cares about income and material things.” This is, indeed, an inappropriate way of thinking about development. We have to be careful not to construe “straw people” who would view the poor as charity cases, and talk at them and impose ill-conceived solutions on them. Both discourses on and practices of development have moved on since Lebret’s time.

It also has to be recognized that the Catholic tradition has lost a lot of public moral authority in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and any connection of the discourse on Integral Human Development and an ecclesia triumphans is misplaced. There is a real concern with ever so subtle triumphalism. In an interview about Integral Human Development, a critic of the concept made the interesting remark: “Frankly, I think there is a bit of whininess in the conversation around IHD. People say ‘oh the Church knows better about human beings than you technocrats.’” We want to avoid any temptation to weaponize IHD and use IHD as an excluding approach to establish moral superiority. This is simply unacceptable and against the very idea of “authentic” or “integral” discourses.

Many other critical questions can be asked and have been asked when thinking about this idea: How do we measure Integral Human Development and know if it has occurred? Is it falsifiable? How can Integral Human Development be enacted and translated into practices? What do we make of the normative import of Integral Human Development? Or, as others have put it, what if all persons do not want to “be more” and just want more stuff ?12 Integral Human Development talks about “flourishing”—but what does it mean to truly flourish? Another colleague of mine has put a major challenge to the term in the following way:

We are at the point where the finite nature of the earth’s resources, and the extent of the damage we have done to them, means that the current state of “flourishing” that has served as the gold standard—the “first world lifestyle” is completely unsustainable and must be rethought from the ground up in order to ensure that everyone around the world has even the basics of what they need to survive. Related to this, are we truly flourishing? We have terrible inequalities in our own society, and it is not difficult to argue that the highest levels of flourishing imaginable rest on the suffering and labor of others. That not everyone can flourish; we don’t have the social resources in addition to lacking the physical resources. And those of us who would appear to represent peak flourishing; what does this actually look like? Are we not horribly stressed out and overstretched? Who gets enough sleep? Who feels that they are at peace?

Additionally, some reflect on integral human development as a “good weather-term”: Can IHD be enacted in conflict zones? What is the role of IHD in war? Is there room for militarism in IHD? What of those who find their meaning and flourish as defenders/soldiers? What is an Integral Human Development response?13 Others worry about the potential restriction of freedoms imposed by the idea of Integral Human Development with its concern for creation and future generations. There is a passage in Laudato Si’ that explicitly states that “the time has come to accept decreased growth in some parts of the world” (Laudato Si’ 193). The Spanish version of the text with which Pope Francis has worked contains the phrase “ha llegado la hora de aceptar cierto decrecimiento en algunas partes del mundo.” An economist expressed concern in a conversation about the connection between Integral Human Development and special attention to the most disadvantaged since highest “return on investment” would not be yielded by focusing on the most vulnerable.

There have been “big picture”—questions attached to the term: What should we make of the anthropocentrism expressed in IHD? What is—or could be—the role of the nonhuman world in IHD? How vital are other species and the nonhuman world to Integral Human Development?

Other people are worried about the sectarian nature of the term, which does not play a major role in mainstream discourses, its religious origins, and its place in a tradition that can be seen as authoritarian and morally questionable. Colleagues have expressed concerns about the “baggage” of the term that is connected to a tradition with a clear concept of personhood that can be contested and criticized. For many anthropologists, for instance, the category of the person is always socially and historically contingent, open and malleable to transformation. The Catholic tradition has a particular “ontology of personhood” that does not have to be accepted by all. This matters since the “human” in “integral human development” is inextricably linked to a certain understanding of the human person in that tradition of origin. How can we respond to concerns about a suspicion of colonialism and the imposition of a preconceived idea of good human life?

One interesting concern that I have been confronted with is the worry about entitlements. The idea of Integral Human Development can be used as a source to justify entitlements and the claim “if you are committed to IHD you owe me the following list of services N1 to Nx.” This is another example of the possibility that the idea of Integral Human Development is weaponized and used to polarize and exclude others.

I have also encountered well-justified questions about the “ownership” of the term and the discourse on Integral Human Development. Who decides what is consistent with IHD? If we accept that the discourse on Integral Human Development is not controlled or owned by the Catholic Church, we might have to accept the question: Is the Catholic community really willing to share the concept and give up ownership?14 For example, is a “pluriversal” approach to personhood and development (Hutchings 2019) compatible with Integral Human Development and its seemingly firm value basis (“the whole person,” “each person”)? Can IHD sustain its connection to a specific ethical and faithbased tradition while also remaining open to radical difference? Can it sustain itself in the face of having its core categories productively estranged?

These are some of the fundamental questions about the implications of Integral Human Development. Next to these fundamental questions, there are some dilemmas with which we must deal. In working with the term “Integral Human Development,” we face a fundamental decision or dilemma: the more precise the term, the more exclusive the concept. In other words, the more clearly defined the meaning (“intension”) of the term, the fewer cases will fall under the term (“extension”). The more precise the intension of the term, the more restricted the extension of the term. You may have a clear definition, but this clear definition will include many possible alternative ways of making sense of the term. If the term is not capacious, you will lose support from many sides. If it is not precise, it will not be able to offer much guidance. Closely linked to this dilemma is the dilemma between a “thick connection to Catholic Social Teaching” and a “thin CST connection” (either you face the reproach of being excluding or the reproach of not honoring the tradition in which the concept is embedded). Similarly, we can identify the dilemma between “standardization” (if precisely defined and translated into a metrics) and “localization” (being open to pluralism and honoring the local context). These dilemmas point to the need for proper conversations.

Both questions and dilemmas can be seen as promises of challenges and sources of discursive labor. How can we then work with the concept and idea of integral human development?

Toward Some Substantial Aspects of the Term

A major and persistent question in connection to Integral Human Development is the question of its enactment. What does IHD mean “on the ground”? What is its “cash value”? What difference does an IHD-approach make to project designs, policy making, research activities, institutional practices? What does this mean in practice? The topic of this book is the very question of the enactment of integral human development. What does “Integral Human Development” mean in practice, how can it be implemented, applied, realized? Is it helpful when we look at specific questions? Let me offer an example. In a course on “Integral Human Development,” I ask students to grapple with a decision-making challenge. This is the assignment:

You are the Head of a Catholic Foundation that is dedicated to integral human development. You have a policy that you fund few projects, but these projects are funded to a maximum. At today’s Meeting of the Board, you have to decide between five 100,000 USD projects submitted by a (predominantly Catholic) village community:

a) A youth center: presently, the village youth has no place where they could meet on their own in a protected atmosphere

b) A recycling center: waste is a big challenge in the village; a recycling center could also raise awareness and generate revenue

c) A hospice: there is no place nearby or in the village where people can die with proper care.

d) A micro credit program: currently, villagers do not have access to financial services, which is a significant obstacle to entrepreneurship

e) An inclusion initiative to integrate children with special needs into the village school

Which project would you choose and why?

When students try to arrive at a decision, they have to ask deep questions about development and priorities. They have to consider the importance of the nonproductive aspects of human lives (the hospice), the challenge of integral ecology and the responsibility for the planet and future generations (the recycling center), they have to consider the central role of hope and building a future (the youth center), as well as the relevance of individual initiatives and sustainable livelihoods (the microcredit program), or the importance of a common good approach and social inclusion (the school initiative).

In these deliberations, the idea of integral human development may not provide a clear answer (even though it does help to recognize the plausibility of a hospice as an expression of human ascent), but the term serves as an invitation to ask certain questions about human needs, including “dignity needs.” What is the role of beauty in community development? A student once asked, “Giving money for a nice hair salon as part of a livelihoods project is not an efficient use of humanitarian aid because it is too nice—is it?” Another one struggled with the challenge of the common good: “When we say that we do not want to leave anyone behind—are we not only wasting resources?”

In spite of (or because of ) all the questions mentioned above, the term “integral human development” is a fruitful source of questions. I would also like to suggest distinguishing between the term “Integral Human Development,” the different possible translations of the term (“authentic human development,” “fully human development,” “holistic human development”), and the idea behind the term. My claim would be that the idea of Integral Human Development can be expressed in many different ways and can be identified in many different traditions—with a concern about social change processes that do justice to the human person and the human community. As a term that is embedded in a particular tradition, the concept of integral human development implies particular commitments. We can still discuss whether these commitments hold for those who adopt “the idea of IHD” (rather than the tradition of origin).

When we take a closer look at the idea of Integral Human Development, we can identify a few important reference points: The central role of human dignity; a relational understanding of the human person; a moral understanding of development; the recognition of material needs and realities; the consideration of cultural richness, beauty, and the imagination and the importance of nonproductive aspects of human life; special consideration of the most disadvantaged and those left behind; a recognition of fundamental equality and the universal destination of goods; the recognition of interconnectedness and integral ecology;15 a sense of “first and last questions” (“why”-questions beyond the “how”). Asking first and last questions goes beyond an instrumental understanding of rationality that is only occupied with “means” but does not ask about “ends.” Pope Francis observed, “We have too many means and only a few insubstantial ends.”16

The concept of Integral Human Development may be vague, but, as I have mentioned, it is not compatible with any and all approaches—especially not when seen in the context of its tradition of origin, the Catholic Social Tradition. Integral Human Development places human dignity at the core of any assessment of social situations; it is incompatible with a view of the human person as an “unencumbered self ” and considers the person as a relational being with a history and a multidimensional existence. The conception of the human person as a complex being is close to what Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self had characterized as “interiority,” a complexity of desires, beliefs, and emotions. The subject of development is not a “one-dimensional person” (Herbert Marcuse 2002); she does not live by bread alone.17 IHD invites an understanding of the human person beyond any of the roles she may inhabit: a patient in a hospital is “so much more” than a patient; an incarcerated person is “so much more” than a prisoner; a refugee is “so much more” than a refugee; a person living in poverty is “so much more” than a poor person.18 Integral Human Development recognizes the many aspects of human lives and is not compatible with a one-dimensional understanding of the human condition (be it materialist, be it spiritualist). The idea of the consideration of “the whole person” expresses a commitment to the multifariousness of human life and the multidimensionality of development (a claim that is hardly original, as we have seen—but a claim with implications nonetheless)

Integral Human Development is incompatible with a “neutral” understanding of development. The concept of IHD qualifies “development” with a value perspective; it encourages a view that there is no value-neutral development, a position that has been expressed by, among many others, Amartya Sen, who underlined “the essential role of evaluation in that concept [development]. What is or is not regarded as a case of ‘development’ depends inescapably on the notion of what things are valuable to promote” (Sen 1988, 12). Development is value driven. In Lebret’s view, development “is not primarily an economic problem, nor simply the inability of social structures to meet new demands issuing from hitherto passive populations. Above all else, underdevelopment is a symptom of a worldwide crisis in human values; accordingly, development’s task is to create, in a world of chronic inequality and disequilibrium, new civilizations of solidarity. (Goulet 1996, 9). Populorum Progressio 23 contains the radical statement, “No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life.” This argument can be made both on an individual level and on the level of communities, even states and nations.

In his encyclical Laudato Si’ (106–114), Pope Francis made it very clear that integral human development is incompatible with a “technocratic paradigm,” that is, with an understanding that the problems we face can be solved through technological means without having to change one’s life (without a change of heart, without a conversion).19 He has expressed the same concern in his 2020 Exhortation Querida Amazonia where he states “that an integral ecology cannot be content simply with fine-tuning technical questions or political, juridical and social decisions. The best ecology always has an educational dimension that can encourage the development of new habits in individuals and groups” (58). A technocratic approach entails the tendency to control issues through mechanisms, technologies, objective measures. This is the default position of an organization when confronted with an issue, say sexual harassment. The organization will commission a report, establish a committee, and move toward policies and regulations.

Theodore Roszak has commented in an observation about technocracy that “those who govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts who, in turn, justify themselves to scientific forms of knowledge” (Roszak 1969, 8). We have seen aspects of this dynamic during the COVID-19 pandemic, with all the governance challenges because of delayed and ambivalent research results (Evans 2022) or a one-sided emphasis on virological aspects of the matter. The temptation of responding to complex social (and moral) challenges through technology is pervasive. For example, in an ethnographic account about building safety in the garment industry in Bangladesh, Hasan Ashraf argues that “a narrow and technocratic focus on buildings and building safety in Bangladesh ignores and conceals the actual processes and relationships that produce shop floor risks” (Ashraf 2017, 251). The approach through emphasizing building standards in Bangladesh tends to neglect the global nature of the industry and the power asymmetries that cannot be simply deleted by a policy change. Integral Human Development is a reminder of complexity and fragility.

Integral Human Development encourages people to ask fundamental questions about “the big picture” and “the point of economy and politics” in their value structure or the fundamental questions about first and last things, value hierarchies, and “ultimate values.” These questions about values and “right living” can open doors to think not only about “underdevelopment,” but also about “superdevelopment.”20 There is no doubt that there can be underdevelopment in the sense that people are forced to live in inhumane conditions without access to adequate food, safe housing, proper sanitary facilities, or drinking water. But there is also the real concern with overdevelopment. Superdevelopment is an expression of a “too much,” that is, a violation of “the enough.” In more classical terms, superdevelopment is a violation of temperance, of the knowledge of limits and appropriateness. The idea that there is not only a bottom but also a ceiling is also known from other areas of Catholic Social Teaching, for example, in connection to a just wage, which not only has to meet a threshold (living wage), but which also has to respect a limit, a maximum wage (Himes 2017). The interesting question, then, is the question of the tipping point. Where and when does development become overdevelopment, superdevelopment, excessive development?

Margaret Mead reflected on the notion of “overdevelopment” in a 1962 article for Foreign Affairs, pointing to negative indicators of development, “indices of social disorganization in those industrial countries in which political democracy and welfare-state organization have gone further than elsewhere—the indices of crime, delinquency, suicide, divorce, alcoholism and homicide. These are the current costs of overdevelopment” (Mead 1962, 86). A similar idea can be found in the thinking of Manfred Max-Neef, who reflected on human needs and human scale development (Max-Neef 1991).

In a seminar, I once asked students to give me examples of overdevelopment. They came up with examples like packaged peeled bananas, a car parked within a recreational vehicle, the city lights (and light pollution) of a major urban center, the artificial islands of Dubai. There is a “bottom” dimension and a “ceiling” dimension to Integral Human Development. Development can be excessive, wasteful, exaggerated. Lebret warned against a desire to see American levels of income as global standards: “One can live humanly with much less” (Lebret 1958, 91).

There is a beautiful Swedish term “lagom” (exactly the right amount). The term, “according to folklore, it is a contraction of laget om (‘around the team’), a phrase used by the Vikings to specify how much mead one should drink from the horn as it was passed around, to ensure that everyone would receive a fair share” (Williams and Devine 2005, 19). The idea of “just enough” so that all can have enough is an important aspect of “the development of each person.” One could also argue that the ability to say, “It is enough,” an expression of the beautiful virtue of temperance, is part of the development of the whole person. The idea of moderated development obviously takes place within a particular culture—a student of mine reflected on the tipping point from development to superdevelopment (overdevelopment) in a little note:

We were discussing how, in Uganda, house roofs can be made of grass or iron sheeting, but iron sheeting is expensive and grass roofs are free. We talked about how, in America, if it was to become the norm to build roofs with grass, how people would likely find a way to charge for it. That turned into a conversation of how ridiculous it is that people capitalize on very common natural resources—including a stick for sale that I found on the platform Etsy

Probably the most important aspect of Integral Human Development is its connection with “a preferential option for the poor” and the idea that the goods of the earth are meant for all, irrespective of privilege and one’s status in the birth lottery. This means that Integral Human Development expresses the commitment to the common good—it is incompatible with selective approaches that focus on majorities (e.g., “effective altruism”) and also with nationalistic approaches that deny international solidarity. The common good is a principle that takes the idea of “inclusion of all persons” seriously; it implies an approach to leave no one behind. A sincere commitment to the common good (the flourishing of a community based on the flourishing of each of its members) will call for a proper consideration of all, especially those who are most disadvantaged.

Let me emphasize this point: The incompatibility of Integral Human Development with selective approaches is probably the most substantial aspect. Even if one does not accept the “background tradition,” there is no doubt that integral human development, minimally and most simply understood as “the development of each person and the whole person,” is not compatible with selective approaches that would pursue—for good and persuasive reasons—the best possible return on investment. The approach of “the greatest good for the greatest number” is different from the idea of thinking about the community as a whole and the development of “each person.” The idea of integral human development seems naïve with the logic of a special attention to the most disadvantaged, which is a logical implication of the commitment to the development of “each person.” Because of the communitarian and personalist undertones, the background theory of IHD is ultimately at odds with the idea of a meritocracy, or utilitarianism and “effective altruism.”21 The common good is a moral good that invites us to see a community as a whole with the imperative of not leaving anyone behind. This approach faces practical challenges and may serve more as a “thorn in the flesh,” but it differs from perspectives that are willing to sacrifice people. The pandemic has evoked some of these debates around the primacy of dignity versus the primacy of efficiency.22 The idea of integral human development is a common-good–based approach with the aspiration to build flourishing communities on the basis of the flourishing of each of its members. In the following chapters, we will look into fundamental questions for this approach.

Integral Human Development is a concept that invites the deep and simple questions about the point and direction, end goal and form of social change. It also invites uncomfortable questions on an existential level. We can also ask the question, which sacrifices are we asked to make in the name of IHD? For example, a colleague of mine reflected on the fact that the University of Notre Dame is built on land traditionally owned and used by Native Americans, a fact that some colleagues honor with words like these: “I acknowledge my presence in the traditional homelands of Native peoples, including the Haudenosauneega, Miami, Peoria, and particularly the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik / Pokagon Potawatomi, who have been using this land for education for thousands of years, and continue to do so.” My colleague asked the question about “the flourishing of Notre Dame on land that members of the Indigenous communities consider to be unjustly usurped or occupied land. If IHD is about the flourishing of each person and the whole person, then Indigenous Peoples, as far as I have been able to understand, do not feel that they can flourish while historical injustices are not fully recognized and fractured relationships adequately repaired. What would such repair look like?”

No doubt, both concept and idea of integral human development are sources of fundamental questions, on an existential as well as on a political level. Integral Human Development is not a harmless concept; it is an invitation to ask uncomfortable questions.

Edition details

• Publisher: Orbis Books (USA)
• Publication date: 2023
• ISBN 10: 1626985529
• ISBN 13: 9781626985520
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272