FREE ESSAY ON HAPPINESS OF ARISTOTLE AND AQUINAS

HAPPINESS OF ARISTOTLE AND AQUINAS

That men do in fact seek different things under the name of happiness does not, according
to Aristotle and Aquinas, alter the truth that the happiness they should seek must be
something appropriate to the humanity which is common to them all, rather than something
determined by their individually differing needs or temperaments. If it were the latter,
then Aristotle and Aquinas would admit that questions about what men should do to achieve
happiness would be answerable only by individual opinion or personal preference, not by
scientific analysis or demonstration. 
Aquinas, for example, admits that happy is the man who has an he desires, or whose every
wish is fulfilled, is a good and adequate definition only if it be understood in a
certain way. It is an inadequate definition if understood in another. For if we
understand it simply of all that man desires by his natural appetite, then it is true
that he who has all that he desires is happy; since nothing satisfies man's natural
desire, except the perfect good which is Happiness. But if we understand it of those
things that man desires according to the apprehension of reason, Aquinas continues, then
it does not belong to Happiness to have certain things that man desires; rather does it
belong to unhappiness, in so far as the possession of such things hinders a man from
having all that he desires naturally. For this reason, Aquinas points out, when Augustine
approved the statement that happy is he who has all he desires, he added the words
provided he desires nothing amiss. 
As men have the same complex nature, so they have the same set of natural desires. As
they have the same natural desires, so the real goods which can fulfill their needs
comprise the same variety for all. As different natural desires represent different parts
of human nature - lower and higher - so the several kinds of good are not equally good.
And, according to Aquinas, if the natural object of the human will is the universal good,
it follows that naught can satisfy man's will save the universal good. This, he holds, is
to be found, not in any created thing, but in God alone. 
Aquinas employs the conception of eternal beatitude not only to measure the imperfection
of earthly life, but also to insist that temporal happiness is happiness at all only to
the extent that it is a remote participation of true and perfect happiness. It cannot be
said of temporal happiness that it excludes every evil and fulfills every desire. In this
life every evil cannot be excluded - For this present life is subject to many unavoidable
evils: to ignorance on the part of the intellect; to inordinate affection on the part of
the appetite-; and to many penalties on the part of the body ... . Likewise, Aquinas
continues, neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life. For man naturally
desires the good which he has to be abiding . Now the goods of the present life pass away
since life itself passes away ... . Wherefore it is impossible to have true happiness in
this life. 
If perfect happiness consists in the vision of the Divine Essence, which men cannot
obtain in this life, then, according to Aquinas, only the earthly life which somehow
partakes of God has a measure of happiness in it. Earthly happiness, imperfect because of
its temporal and bodily conditions, consists in a life devoted to God - a kind of
inchoate participation here and now of the beatific vision hereafter. On earth there can
be only a beginning in respect of that operation whereby man is united to God. ... In the
present life, in as far as we fall short of the unity and continuity of that operation,
so do we fall short of perfect happiness. Nevertheless it is a participation of
happiness; and so much the greater, as the operation can be more continuous and more one.
Consequently the active life which is busy with many things, has less of happiness than
the contemplative life, which is busied with one thing, i.e., the contemplation of truth.