What is happiness, and how can it be obtained? The question
of happiness is a perennial human concern, one for which all people seek an
answer. The question may be answered, and happiness itself defined, in various
ways, and these ways are fundamental to the religious, philosophical and
artistic traditions of the world. In the history of Catholic philosophy,
particularly during the Middle Ages, two of the greatest thinkers - Boethius (most
notably in his classic work, The Consolation of Philosophy) and St.
Thomas Aquinas - gave their own answers to this question, and while they
diverged on some points, they agreed on the essential concepts. Through an
examination of the conceptions of happiness and its means of attainment given
by these two philosophers, happiness may be more fully understood, modern understandings
of it examined in a new light and obstacles to becoming happy more readily
overcome.
In the Scholastic tradition which Boethius helped to begin
and whose most eminent champion was St. Thomas Aquinas, it is fitting to first
give the definitions of happiness offered by these two philosophers. For St.
Thomas, happiness consists in the acquisition of the last end, the highest
perfection or summum bonum, namely eternal life in union with God. “[S]ince
everything desires its own perfection, a man desires for his ultimate end, that
which he desires as his perfect and crowning good.” No
actions are done without purpose, whether by natural instinct or by the free
will of a rational agent; this teleological purpose or goal of action is the
ultimate end, the highest perfection possible for the agent. Human acts are
thus performed for the perfection of the individual person, and this perfection
is the intended end of each act, even if intermediate ends are pursued as means
to or substitutes for this ultimate end. The perfection of human nature, which
St. Thomas understood to be the condition of happiness, is the “perfect and
crowning good,” whom he identified as God, the principle and source in whom all
created goods participate. Edward Feser, in his book Aquinas, explains
St. Thomas’s use of the term “desire” more precisely:
[B]y
‘desirable’ Aquinas does not mean that which conforms to some desire we
happen contingently to have, nor even, necessarily, anything desired in a
conscious way. Here as elsewhere, it is the notion of the final cause – the end
or goal towards which a thing is directed by nature – that is key.
St. Thomas’s definition of happiness is largely consistent
with that of Boethius, as both were heirs of the Platonic, Aristotelian and
Christian philosophical traditions. However, while Boethius’s Catholic
worldview is more explicit in works other than The Consolation of
Philosophy, the most significant philosophical difference between the two
thinkers is that Boethius was primarily Platonic in influence, seeing Plato
(and Socrates through him) as the greatest philosopher and Aristotle as
admirable but more derivative, whereas St. Thomas held Aristotle to be “the
Philosopher,” and in his own work he perfected the fusion of Aristotelian
philosophy with Platonism and Catholic doctrine sought after by medieval thinkers
for decades. Accordingly, the description of Boethius’s understanding of
happiness as given by St. Thomas accurately distills the disparity between
them:
Boethius,
in defining happiness, considered happiness in general: for considered thus it
is the perfect common good; and he signified this by saying that happiness is
‘a state made perfect by the aggregate of all good things,’ thus implying that
the state of a happy man consists in possessing the perfect good. But Aristotle
expressed the very essence of happiness, showing by what man is established in
this state, and that it is by some kind of operation. And so it is that he
proves happiness to be ‘the perfect good’.
Boethius and St. Thomas thus share
the same essential definition of happiness, but by Aristotle’s insights St.
Thomas apprehends not only the state of happiness as “the aggregate of all good
things,” but also the essence of happiness itself as “the perfect good” and the
proper means of attaining it via an intellectual operation. Boethius also
understood the intellectual nature of happiness, as he observed, “you, made in the
likeness of God by virtue of your reason,” agreeing
with St. Thomas that the intellect is the means by which we behold God and thus
gain happiness.
Happiness, from these definitions, may be further clarified
by distinguishing between what St. Thomas calls perfect and imperfect
happiness. The form or degree of happiness attainable in this life is only the
imperfect, because our ultimate end of union with God as the highest good and
perfection of our nature can only be gained through the elevation of the human
intellect by grace to directly see and thus perfectly know God in the Beatific
Vision of Heaven. St. Thomas uses an admixture of theology with his
philosophical treatment of happiness, but even the recognition of our perfect
happiness as consisting only in beholding God, alongside our incapacity to
reach this goal prior to death and without the personal elevation of God, is a
truth that can be known by reason alone; St. Thomas simply gives the revealed
answer to this dilemma in the salvific joy promised by Jesus Christ in
Scripture.
Based on this, St. Thomas described, in a sense, two forms
of imperfect happiness which are indeed obtainable in this life. The first form
of imperfect happiness is gained through virtue, in “an operation of the
practical intellect directing human actions and passions.” However,
because the practical intellect only pursues actions ordained to ends other
than themselves, it cannot perfect human nature, and thus happiness is obtained
rather through the speculative intellect, which apprehends and possesses goods as
fitting for their own sakes. The end of the speculative intellect is the
contemplation of truth and the supreme good as known. Since we cannot behold
ultimate truth perfectly in this life, we can only contemplate in a lesser way,
and this is the second form of imperfect happiness attainable in this life,
consisting in the contemplation of participated truths and goods through the
medium of the senses, but St. Thomas says that we can live an authentic
contemplative life, as the highest fulfillment of human nature, even in the
midst of the active life, the latter of which can aid the former via virtue, if
we orient our lives to contemplation: “since he can always easily turn to it,
and since he ordains the very cessation, by sleeping or occupying himself
otherwise, to the aforesaid occupation, the latter seems, as it were,
continuous.” While imperfect happiness
is available in this life as a kind of consolation, St. Thomas does not see
this as a substitute for or alternative to perfect happiness; rather, he sees
perfect happiness as natural to man and the ultimate end of all our acts: “man
is ordained to happiness through principles that are in him; since he is
ordained thereto naturally.” Thus,
since anything to which we are ordained for our perfection cannot be to its
imperfect form but only its perfect, we are made for union with God by nature
and cannot be satisfied by imperfect happiness.
Boethius largely shares St. Thomas’s view of perfect
happiness. For him, happiness is a partaking of the perfect happiness or
goodness of God, whose happiness is his essence, whereas for us happiness is
created as our possession of God who is the perfection of the good. While he,
like St. Thomas, believed that material goods can be enjoyed as such, they
cannot bring true happiness and thus happiness is only perfected in union with
God. While he did not seem to explicitly distinguish perfect and imperfect
happiness as did St. Thomas, Boethius still described the possibility of
happiness in this life as deriving from virtue, which is immune to the whims of
fortune or any changes caused by the finitude of the world; only the voluntary
choices of the individual can cause virtue to grow or be lost, and as a kind of
means toward or preparation for the attainment of the highest good in God,
virtue is the highest possible satisfaction of the human soul obtainable in
this world.
The greatest and most common struggle humans face in this
life is the discernment of what happiness is and what means to pursue in order
to attain it. In this lifelong yearning, worldly goods are frequently confused
for higher goods, and this is due, St. Thomas explains through his Aristotelian
lens, to the fact that all human knowledge begins in the senses, and so
material goods are the most easily recognized. However, according to St. Thomas,
goods which are exterior to man or are purely bodily “are ordained to the goods
of the soul, as to their end,” since
man’s highest power and that which makes him to be human is his intellect and
thus happiness consists primarily in the perfection of the intellectual soul.
The senses aid happiness because the intellect comes to know the truth which is
its perfection in this world antecedently through the senses. Even in the New
Heaven and Earth, when, according to revelation, the saints will be given
spiritual bodies and will behold God in the Beatific Vision in a more corporeal
way, “at the resurrection, ‘from the very happiness of the soul,’ as Augustine
says, ‘the body and the bodily senses will receive a certain overflow, so as to
be perfected in their operations’.” Nevertheless, at that time, “the operation
whereby man’s mind is united to God will not depend on the senses”. Thus,
material or bodily goods in this life, since they are only possessed in a
finite, temporary way, often dependent on other people or situations and on
worldly fortunes, can never perfect our intellect and bring true happiness.
Boethius, through the poetic figure of the “goddess of
fortune,” gave the understanding of material goods which St. Thomas and
countless other philosophers through the ages would adopt in its essence. Goods
which are finite, temporary, exterior or dependent on others can never bring
true happiness, since only the full and complete possession of the highest good
with permanence can perfect human nature and bring eternal happiness. As St.
Thomas would echo centuries later, these goods are also “goods of fortune,”
often dependent upon chance beyond one’s own control and as such cannot be
truly possessed. As Boethius explained, “One service only can Fortune do, when
she reveals her own nature and distinguishes true friends from false.” (22) As
Thomas Albert Howard explains Boethius’s position, “Philosophy suggests to
Boethius that misfortune can have a salutary effect insofar as it reminds us of
the true nature of things and prompts us to seek more enduring forms of joy.”
By giving and taking away its goods arbitrarily, fortune can serve the purpose
of reminding people that we cannot be satisfied by that which can be obtained
through fortune, and the perceptive can thus be led to the Good which is immune
to fortune’s inscrutable will and is truly permanent and authentic. This
supreme Good is known through the intellect, and thus Boethius further counters
the desire for external goods: “Have ye no good of your own implanted within
you, that ye seek your good in things external and separate?” (35) As Matthew
D. Walz explains, “[A] thing of fortune is good if and only if it always makes
good that to which it is joined. Lacking universal beneficiality, a thing of
fortune must be intrinsically indifferent.”
In the human struggle for happiness and the attempt to
discern the perfect good amidst worldly goods apprehended by the senses, an
equal or even greater source of confusion is in interior rather than purely
exterior and material goods. However, because interior goods are still only
imperfect in themselves and subject to our fallible grasp, they cannot bring
perfect happiness:
For
that good which is the last end, is the perfect good fulfilling the desire. Now
man's appetite, otherwise the will, is for the universal good. And any good
inherent to the soul is a participated good, and consequently a portioned good.
Therefore none of them can be man's last end.
(I-II, 2, 7)
St. Thomas explains that the
speculative or sapiential sciences, although they are studied for fitting
objects rather than as mere means to other ends, can still only come to know
and contemplate truths which are participations of that truth that is
essentially true, i.e. God, since “the entire consideration of speculative
sciences cannot extend farther than knowledge of sensibles can lead”
(ST I-II, 3, 6) through abstraction, and these participated truths cannot fully
perfect the intellect because they only give imperfect knowledge. St. Thomas
does, however, in his In libros metaphysicorum, emphasize that the
sciences are ordered toward happiness: “All sciences and arts, however, have a
single aim, man’s perfection, which is his happiness.” Similarly,
pleasure, while an interior experience, is either delight or bodily pleasure.
Delight as the result of the possession of a fitting good is only derivative
and is not the fitting good itself, being an accident of happiness rather than
pertaining to the essence of man’s happiness itself, and in this world, it can
also lead to sadness through excess or by confusedly taking pleasure in what is
not good. Worse still, bodily pleasure is not even a proper accident of true
happiness but is only fitting to the body whose good is inferior to the good of
the soul. Even the goods of the soul, through which man attains happiness as
the perfection of the intellect, are only means to the perfect end of union
with God as good done for its own sake and as that which constitutes happiness
in its essence, and so these cannot give perfect happiness.
On this point, Boethius also points out the limitations of
human pleasures and knowledge and identifies the highest good as God alone.
However, from his more Platonic angle, he also emphasizes the value of interior
goods as the means for achieving happiness, writing: “‘Why, then, ye children
of mortality, seek ye from without that happiness whose seat is only within
us?” (31) Note that Boethius does not say, “that happiness which is within,” as
if the content of happiness were to be found in interior goods, but rather that
the “seat” of happiness is within, thus agreeing with St. Thomas in identifying
the intellect as the instrument and possessor of happiness.
Finite goods cannot be the ultimate end of human action and
thus are incapable of constituting true happiness. The immediacy of the senses
and the desirability of pleasure greatly obscure this point, since “[t]he
essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable,”
(ST I, 5, 1) and so goods which are attainable in this life can seem to
guarantee happiness more than union with God, whose existence is not
self-evident and whose essence cannot be seen in this life due to human
finitude and sin. However, Boethius, and St. Thomas who condensed his model in
the Summa theologiae, examine the goods of this world individually and
prove that none are capable of granting happiness.
Riches, which seem with worldly eyes to be the surest and
most important means of attaining the good, can in fact only grant the goods of
the body, for which wealth is made. As such, wealth is only “ordained to man as
to its end,” and thus are below us and
cannot be our ultimate end. They are also finite and incapable of bringing
infinite satisfaction, and, as being easily subject to the whims of fortune,
inevitably lead to fear of their loss, pain from the envy of others, and even
if they are given away, “riches cannot pass to many without being lessened in
the process.” (33) Since “[m]an’s good consists in retaining happiness rather
than in spreading it,”
as we cannot be happy in something that brings good only by its loss, happiness
cannot consist in wealth. As Dr. Peter Kreeft explains what could appear to be St.
Thomas promoting selfishness,
When
St. Thomas says that happiness, unlike wealth, is good when possessed, not when
spread, he does not mean that our happiness is not in fact increased when we
make others happy, but that the essential meaning of ‘happiness’ is the
satisfaction of an individual’s desires [for his highest good, the summum bonum].
These may and should include the desire to make others happy too.
Further, wealth is only a means to
the ends of bodily goods and is not an end in itself, and even in this usage it
can only bring temporary relief to bodily needs, eventually requiring more
wealth and thus never being truly satisfactory and perfect. “How in the world,
then, can want be driven away by riches?” (54)
Honor, glory and fame, similarly, are not goods in
themselves but only derivative of some other good, namely virtue or excellence
(whether real or artificial), and are not held by the honorable but only in
those who hold someone in honor due to their perceived virtue: “Happiness is in
the happy. But honor is not in the honored, but rather in him who honors, and
who offers deference to the person honored.”
As the good which constitutes true happiness cannot be mixed with evil, honor
cannot constitute happiness; “hence arises our indignation that honours so
often fall to the most iniquitous of men.” (55) Like riches, they are finite
and exterior to man and so cannot be happiness or be the means to possessing
it, nor can they even satisfy urges to the degree possible through riches.
Power, pleasure and other bodily goods, as well as the goods
of the soul, as explained above, cannot constitute true happiness anymore than
can riches or honor for similar reasons, since none of these goods are goods in
themselves, nor are they infinite and thus fully satisfying of man’s desire for
the highest goods. Further, each of these lower or participated goods, while
they can bring an inferior measure of satisfaction or, in the case of the
powers of the soul, can be means to achieving happiness, are in fact possessed
in their perfection and wholeness by God, who is the summit and principle of
all goodness without any limitation, and so only union with God can bring true,
permanent and satisfying happiness through the perfection of the good. “Final
and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine
Essence,” (ST I-II, 3, 8) and this
vision is called Beatitude, granting all the interior and personal goods which
people seek from worldly goods, delineated by Boethius as “independence,
reverence, power, renown, and joy of heart,” (50) achieved only in union with God
through the elevation of the intellect by grace. Because all created goods can
bring evils with them, such as envy and greed from wealth, falsity from honor
or fear of retribution from power, they can never constitute Beatitude: “since
happiness is man's supreme good, it is incompatible with any evil.”
Boethius further explains that those who are wicked do not
in fact possess worldly goods as it may appear or be claimed, and that virtue,
as the goodness of the soul, is the only real source of those goods sought
through material gain. True power, for example, is not in the body but in the
capacity to satisfy the goal of all human action, namely happiness; only the
virtuous can accomplish this, while the wicked are impotent regardless of their
physical or political power. Similarly, honor without real virtue is false and
only leads to hypocrisy and dishonor, whereas true honor derives from virtue,
and so even if one loses public honor, as did Boethius, one retains genuine
honor due to the possession of authentic virtue. In this way, virtue can grant
a happiness in this life far surpassing all worldly goods, and even perceived
bad fortune can work to increase virtue, instructing about the futility of
worldliness, punishing and thus correcting wrongdoing, and giving outward signs
of interior goods whenever a worldly good is possessed: “the good are always
strong, the bad always weak and impotent… vices never go unpunished, nor
virtues unrewarded… good fortune ever befalls the good, and ill fortune the
bad.”
Fr. Francis Selman explains further the benefits of delight from the virtue of
wisdom for happiness in this life:
“Another
way that sorrow is lessened is by contemplation of the truth, which brings the
greatest of delights. Since this is the highest joy, we can have this joy even
in the midst of suffering when we raise our minds to divine things. Thus, in
the midst of tribulation and discomfort, Boethius and St. Thomas More alike
found comfort by turning their minds to things above this world.”
While virtue and limited contemplation can grant an
imperfect happiness in this life, as a foretaste of perfect happiness in the
Beatific Vision, vice or sin is based in the corruption of the intellect in its
disordering of lower goods above higher goods, particularly without reference
to the ultimate Good as the principle and rule of all goodness, and in the
subsequent corruption of the will in desiring the good in a disordered way. As
St. Thomas explains, “Those who sin turn from that in which their last end really
consists: but they do not turn away from the intention of the last end, which
intention they mistakenly seek in other things.” The
will remains fixed on the ultimate good of perfect happiness as its last end,
but confuses lesser goods for its last end, caused by the confusion of the
intellect in its misjudgment of the order of goods. No one commits sin or falls
into vice believing their end to be evil, as it is impossible for the will to
desire anything other than its own happiness; sin is rather a confusion of
goods and of false goods for the highest good: “For the desire of the true good
is naturally implanted in the minds of men; only error leads them aside out of
the way in pursuit of the false.” (48) By the habituation of sin and the
darkening of the intellect, vice can enslave the will, destroying its freedom
to choose the good in fulfillment of its ultimate desire and preventing the
attainment of true happiness. The life of virtue, especially the theological
virtues of faith, hope and charity infused by grace, empowers the will to be
liberated from sin, for the intellect to know the proper order of goodness and
to thus pursue the perfect happiness of Beatitude.
From this comparison of the “theories of happiness” given by
Boethius and St. Thomas Aquinas, it is possible that many could be given the
impression that the fundamental premise of both great thinkers is this: we are
doomed in this life to unhappiness and can only wait for the afterlife to be
truly fulfilled. While both Boethius and St. Thomas describe a kind of
imperfect happiness that is in fact attainable in mortality, it is ultimately
unsatisfying and can even become a hindrance to the beatification of perfect
happiness in Heaven if treated as an end in itself, and this final hope would only
be held by those who accept not only those ideas of Boethius and St. Thomas
founded solely upon the natural light of human reason but also inspired by
Christian revelation. However, two answers can be given for this dilemma: first,
even without revelation one can know through reason that human nature is
designed, and all our actions tend for their last end, to the possession of the
perfect good, who is God. Thus, while Christian revelation provides an answer
to this natural human predilection for divine happiness, the desire itself is
undeniable and demands an answer, proving in itself that the answer is indeed
available, since as St. Thomas wrote, “[A] natural desire cannot be in vain.” Secondly,
for those who recognize the supernatural end of happiness in God and place
their hope and joy in the contemplation of his mystery, the goods of this world
need no longer be used as substitutes for God, as though they can be our last
end or provide true happiness on their own. Instead, they can be enjoyed for what
they are, and we need not excessively fear their loss, nor envy the goods of
others or be enslaved by our passions which cling to worldly comfort. We can
live in the expectation of hope, growing in wisdom and virtue in preparation
for our promise of eternal happiness.
Edward Feser, Aquinas (London: Oneworld,
2009), 35.
ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, ad. 2.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy,
trans. Richard Green (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2011), 32.
ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, ad. 4.
Thomas Albert Howard, “Pondering Evil,” Touchstone:
A Journal of Mere Christianity 33, no. 4,
Matthew D Walz, “Boethius, Christianity, and the
Limits of Stoicism,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 45, no. 4 (2018),
421.
Thomas Aquinas, In libros metaphysicorum,
prooemium, quoted in Ralph McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 59.