Tag Archives: Happiness

Happiness and the Good Life

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Happiness is one of the most enduring ideas in the history of the world. One could go all the way back to the ancient Greeks and their idea of happiness as human flourishing, or eudaimonia. In our time, happiness is still a fundamental idea in the lives of ordinary people. You would be hard pressed to find a person who does not want to be happy. In fact, since the human will is inclined to work towards the good that it perceives, a man cannot help but act towards his own happiness. Or, at the very least, his perceived happiness. Herein lies the issue in many of our modern day conversations about happiness, for as much as it is talked about it is almost never defined. Postmodernists did away with the idea that there was any uniting narrative for humanity, and it seems that as a consequence the idea that happiness had any objective basis was thrown out as well. The prevailing notion in our age is that the question of what makes a person happy is up to each individual to decide for him or herself. So what is happiness? And how should we go about obtaining it?

Happiness as an Activity

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines happiness as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. Thus, happiness is not merely a feeling or something that can be subjectively defined. It is an activity which we participate in. A person is happy insofar as they are virtuous. This view is more robust than our modern conception of happiness. Our modern conception of happiness is based around how a man feels about his life, or the external circumstances of his life, but if we view happiness as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue then it is not dependent on the external circumstances of one’s life. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, makes the case that meaning and happiness are not found in one’s external circumstances. He observes that those who were able to survive the concentration camps were not necessarily the most physically fit, but the ones who had a strong interior life. This fits with Aristotle’s further commentary on happiness in Book X of Nicomachean Ethics. He writes, “If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us… That this activity is contemplative we have already said.” So for Aristotle, happiness is a contemplative activity. This does not mean that in order to be happy we need to withdraw from society and go live a life of contemplation in the wilderness. We are social creatures, we need relationships to flourish, and have obligations to our families and society. However, true happiness cannot be found unless we take intentional time to spend in contemplation and reflection. The man who lives only for his shallow external circumstances will find that his happiness is not enduring and can be stripped away in a moment’s notice.

Man’s Final End

Aristotle’s vision of happiness is a natural happiness. It is a happiness that we can achieve by our own nature. However, there is a happiness promised to us as Christians that we cannot achieve by our nature: supernatural happiness. For Aquinas, this supernatural happiness finds its completion in the Beatific Vision which is the vision of God enjoyed by those in Heaven. Christ speaks of this happiness when He says, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (Jn 15: 10-11). Natural happiness is not a complete picture of human happiness. We were not created for this life alone. The beginning of the Baltimore Catechism sums this up well: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.” Supernatural happiness cannot be achieved separate from natural happiness. Grace perfects nature and does not destroy it as Aquinas famously stated. We ought to seek virtue in this life, and by cooperation with God’s grace and the sacraments obtain everlasting happiness in the next. Any other view of happiness will be incomplete.

Aristotle correctly posits that in order for happiness to be our final end it must be self-sufficient and not lacking. However, if we restrict our happiness to things of this life we will run into the problem of desire which C.S. Lewis speaks of in Mere Christianity when he says, “I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy.” Therefore, seek virtue and happiness in this life, but never despair of our ultimate happiness in the next. Let us always keep in mind the closing lines of the serenity prayer: “Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.”

Beginning at the End

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In the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the novel’s protagonist Arthur Dent journeys to a distant planet and meets an alien race.  He finds that this race has built a supercomputer that successfully calculated the meaning of life as the number 42.  Despite the absurdity of the response, a deep truth emerges.  The truth is that there is an objective answer to the question of what the meaning of life is and it is happiness.  In recognition of this fact, the Catechism quotes St. Augustine’s state that we “all want to live happily; in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated.”  

To see the truth of this, we must begin by examining the nature of man himself.  We begin with the simple definition of Aristotle that man is a rational animal.  Like all animals, man acts with a purpose.  However, because man is also rational, truly human acts are not only done for a purpose but also proceed from deliberation and are freely chosen.  In other words, everything we do is oriented toward the attainment of some freely chosen end. 

Upon examination of human acts, one finds that man acts for the attainment of a myriad of ends.  However, to say that there is a single meaning or purpose to life is to say that there is a single end behind everything that man does.  How can one say this without contradiction?

St. Thomas addresses this question in the Summa Theologiae.  He proves that man has an ultimate end that motivates everything he does and that all men have the same end. 

He begins by proving that man has a last end in a manner that is parallel to his argument for the existence of God as the first cause.  He argues that there cannot be an infinite regress of ends without a final end.

Next, St. Thomas shows why this final end is that which motivates all of man’s actions.  This ultimate end must fulfill all our desires.  Everything man desires is desired in terms of this final end even though we may only be subconsciously aware of it.  Each and every good that is pursued derives it goodness from its relation to the ultimate good.  

Finally, St. Thomas argues that because all men have the same nature (i.e. the same human essence that equips them for human operations) all men must have the same goal.  This goal is complete human fulfillment which is referred to as happiness or beatitude.

Happiness is the ultimate end of life because it fits each of the criteria.  Everyone desires to be happy and it is desired only as an end in itself.  Nobody desires happiness for the sake of something else.  Happiness is the motivation behind every decision and action.

Even though it seems that everyone agrees on the idea that happiness is the meaning of life, nearly everyone disagrees as to what is the ultimate cause of this happiness.  So the question of what this happiness consists in must now be addressed.

The Contenders

To address this question, the Angelic Doctor looks at eight possibilities.  By looking empirically at human nature, he comes to a single, final end through the process of elimination.

He begins by looking at riches and finds that wealth is merely a means to an end.  It is “sought for the sake of something else, namely as a support of human nature (natural wealth)” or as “means to exchange those natural goods.”  Like other bodily goods, it also cannot be used to obtain spiritual goods and thus cannot fulfill man in his totality.  The goods of the body are subordinate to the goods of the soul and therefore cannot be the supreme good.

St. Thomas then looks at honor, fame and power.  We must be in possession of happiness and we do not possess honor but receive it from without.  With fame we find that the controlling source is outside us while power is no more than the capacity to do something.  Happiness is a state.

St. Thomas then looks at pleasure but notes that it always accompanies something else.  Thus, pleasure is an accident to happiness and not the source of happiness.  Likewise he looks at the goods of the soul such as the intellectual and moral virtues. Although happiness resides in the human soul, its source is outside of it.

And the Winner Is…

What this means concretely is that happiness cannot be found in the will because it remains the goal of the will to desire the good and unite man to it.  It is not the power through which goods outside the soul are experienced.  This can only happen in the intellect.

Man, through his power of abstraction, is able to unite to the essence of a thing through knowledge.  The thing known becomes united to the knower, it literally becomes a part of him.  This is why the Bible often uses knowledge as an analogy or euphemism for the marital embrace.  When the intellect comes to know God in the Beatific vision, that is to “see Him as He really is” it is fully satisfied because it knows God and all things through Him.  Faith is a preview of this, but ultimately passes away when vision is granted.

All of this “dry” philosophy would be little more than an intellectual exercise unless it didn’t also change our view of the world. After all, St. Thomas is only demonstrating what the Faith already teaches. We were made for God. But by showing the reasonableness of the Faith, it makes it very practical. This ought to teach us to put first things first. As free creatures, everything we do either moves us closer to God or away from Him. We need to examine each and every one of our actions against this measuring stick. It was St. Ignatius, in his Principle and Foundation who put the practical aspects of this proof most succinctly:

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things as much as we are able, so that we do not necessarily want health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long rather than a short life, and so in all the rest, so that we ultimately desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which God created us

In conclusion, thanks to reason enlightened by faith, we are able to come to the conclusion that all men seek the vision of God as their ultimate end.  Like the Angelic Doctor, we pray that our rational justification match his answer to the voice asking him what he wanted as his reward: “Only Yourself Lord.”