Connolly , John - Aquinas on Happiness and the Will (unpublished chapter)

01/14/2011

Unpublished Manuscript

This is a book chapter about Aquinas' apparent paradox regarding human nature and happiness. The trouble can be summed up as follows:
P1. All humans desire their perfect good (happiness that is perfectly satisfying)
P2. Human nature is sufficient to attain perfectly satisfying happiness
C1. It's within human nature to attain its perfectly satisfying happiness
P3. Perfectly satisfying happiness is the Beatific Vision
P4. The Beatific Vision is received by God's grace only
C2. It's not within human nature to attain perfectly satisfying happiness

The chapter begins by discussing how Aquinas adopted much of the Nicomachean Ethics from Aristotle to talk about the naturally (according to human nature) attainable virtues (bravery, magnanimous-ness, etc.) (and prudence and theoretical reason), and also Aristotle's format for an ethic, that happiness for humans is attaining the goods according to their nature. The change comes when Aquinas posits that we desire, as our complete good, the Beatific Vision (knowledge of God). This desire is part of our nature-- we are paradoxical in some sense because we desire that which is beyond our nature, and it is this thing that will perfectly satisfy humans. (#3) Author points out a problem with this teleological concept of happiness: for Aquinas it is out of the reach of our nature, but still it is the only complete happiness for our nature.

Author delves into the paradox to investigate it more fully. The first investigation is whether Aquinas would be considered 'eudaimonistic' in the sense that Aristotle was. After all, Aristotle believed that:
1.humans have a particular nature
2.happiness for humans is finding (and attaining) the virtues in that nature
3.that happiness is perfectly satisfying.
Because Aquinas breaks both 2. and 3., isn't this a dramatic departure? (#5)

The next investigation is about the ends of human action-- Aquinas' teleology. This is a general review of Aquinas' theories of human action, not just activities done by humans but full-fledged human action. (#6-7) The key piece here is that every human action is done for the sake of one's ultimate end, perfectly satisfying happiness. (The Beatific Vision #8)

Author then spells out how, generally, Aquinas meant for his synthesis of Aristotle and Christian beliefs to work: attainment of the Aristotelian virtues is all humans can do by their natures but provides for imperfect happiness. Perfect happiness comes from receiving God's grace and then infusing those virtues with the divine gifts of Faith, Hope, and Charity. By acting with these infused virtues can humans become meritorious of the Beatific Vision. (#10-11) Does this make Aquinas an egoistic rationalist because he recommends being virtuous not as an end-in-itself but for the reward for such behavior? (#12) The trouble here is that grace is supposed to infuse a human with such virtues as charity, which is supposed to be performed out of love for God. It wouldn't be correct to call such performance self-serving, even though it is meritorious of divine reward. (#13) However, author believes that this ethic should be considered consequentialist, our aspirations for the Beatific Vision rewarded by our meritorious behavior while on earth. (#15)

Author returns to the apparent paradox of a perfect good that is desired but unattainable by nature in #16 and also discusses the limitations that Aquinas was under due to Papal edict: it was heretical to claim that humans had a God-like element in themselves, making it possible to attain their perfect good. (#17), yet it was also not possible to claim that the only happiness possible for human nature was that of the Aristotelian virtues, the non-grace-infused humanistic ones. One trouble for Aquinas is his sticking to the Aristotelian principle that "nature does nothing in vain" (#18), since God surpasses the nature of all creatures, yet we have the natural desire for the Beatific Vision as our perfectly satisfying happiness. This leads to the question as to whether the Beatific Vision itself surpasses human nature-- whether human nature desires something it cannot hold. Author believes that (#19) there is a second problem for the principle: desire will then imply the possibility of attaining that desire, which we know in the case of the Beatific Vision, is not attainable, it is instead given by God's will. [Interestingly, it is in the footnotes where Author tells us that, according to the Scholastics, there was a category for a desire with no expectation of fulfillment-- a "velleitas" or wish]

The dilemma that seems to arise here is even worse than the earlier one: at (#20) it seems that the created & finite nature of human beings makes it impossible to hold the Beatific Vision, or, that the Beatific Vision is attainable by a created & finite creature. Or, that a human being can be made to hold the Beatific Vision by having a part of itself be uncreated & infinite. Author believes that Eckhart holds this last disjunct (#21), but that Aquinas cannot due to orthodoxy.

The final portion of the chapter gives Aquinas' rejection of the divine component of the human soul, saying that any similarity between God and humans should be taken to be by analogy, not by sharing the same property. (#23-24)