'Human Development: A Re-Education in Freedom, Love and Happiness'

In October, the book 'Human Development: A Re-Education in Freedom, Love and Happiness' was published. Its author Patrick Whelan is a graduate of the Master's Programme 'Population and development'.

In the book, Patrick Whelan develops a theory of human development, and re-defines the concepts of freedom, love and happiness. To explain human development, he created a framework using the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Abraham Maslow, Anthony Giddens, and Amartya Sen, as well as his own additions and interpretations to glue it all together. To redefine freedom, he follows in the vein of Erich Fromm and Isaiah Berlin, analysing the domains where we are, and can become free. To define love, he looks to 7 ancient sources — the five major religions, as well as ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy. And, finally, to reveal the truth about happiness, he first disproves modern methods of defining happiness, then brings clarity to the concept of eudaimonia, and develops his own definition of happiness. 

While primarily marketed as a self-help book, the theory is meant to engage in a debate with the academic community as well.

 

Patrick Whelan graduated from the inaugural Master of Population and Development Programme at HSE, top of his cohort in 2017. Since then, he also graduated top of his cohort from a Master of Political Theory at the University of Toronto in 2019 and has most recently been the Principal of an international high school in the South of China.