Human Flourishing in Education as a New Paradigm for Liberal Democracy

In its recent report, the OECD (2025) endorsed human flourishing as the aim of education and stressed that in the age of AI, education must strengthen human agency, human meaning and human security and equip young people’s lives with a sense of purpose and fulfilment. This new paradigm is meant to replace the human capital theory pursued by policy makers since 1970s, now subject to critique as promoting education systems oriented at human productivity for the market economy and problem-solving contributing to a crisis of mental health and inadequate for the future. The new paradigm endorses the ancient ideal of human flourishing that allows for constant nurturing of distinctive human capacities that equip us not only to flourish as individuals but contribute to flourishing societies and economies, in harmony with the planet. In this paper, I discuss the potential of this paradigm in reshaping education as one of the most vital tools for reinvigorating liberal-democratic systems and their normative foundations aimed at practical purposes – the quality of life and the quality of managing common affairs through a democratic process. It is argued that there is a clear correlation between educational institutions’ promoting human flourishing, especially the formation of character and the virtues, as well as motivation and agency, and the quality of democratic institutions and outcomes. The new paradigm has a potential to deeply transform, in the long run, the social and political awareness and establish a new and sound foundations for inclusive democratic politics that values moral equality - the need to be the author of one’s own life. So far, this discussion involved scholars engaged in education studies and educators, but it certainly needs to reach the field of political research as well since the practical dimensions of this new paradigm not only would necessarily involve education policy but would also require democratic will and imagination. The paper proposes an interdisicplinary approach in research that would provide grounds for further discussion on the practical dimensions of human flourishing in education and political challenges.