Identity, Relational Reflexivity and Human Flourishing

Abstract

This paper aims to present the contribution that the Italian sociologist Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Paradigm can offer to contemporary reflections on human flourishing, particularly through its distinctive conception of the formation of human identity within a theoretical framework centered on the value of relationships. It begins with the question of human identity and the way in which this presupposes a further notion, namely reflexivity, understood in relational terms. On this basis, the paper offers a concise (and necessarily non-exhaustive) presentation of Donati’s thought, before developing its central concepts and relating them to the question of human flourishing.