Lecture 14 Notes

Refining Happiness and the Background to Law

I.    Aquinas on Happiness: Question 2
II.   Aquinas on Happiness: Question 3
III.  Background to Law

I.    Aquinas on Happiness: Question 2

• We can refine our arguments based on the crucial concepts we developed in the previous lecture.
• These were the concepts of matter/form, essence, accidental, end, and potency/act,

• Now consider that delight is consequent on bodily goods and the argument has even more bite!

II.   Aquinas on Happiness: Question 3: Article 8: Does Happiness Consist in Vision of Divine Essence?

1. "The object of the intellect is what a things is, i.e. the essence of the thing"
2. "The perfection of any power is determined by the nature of its object"
3. "Wherefore the intellect attains perfection insofar as it knows the essence of a thing" (FROM (1) AND (2))
4. "When we know an effect, and know that it has a cause there remains the desire to know about the cause what it is" -- i.e. to know the essence of the cause
5. "Man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek."
6. "If the human intellect, knowing some created effect [of God] knows no more of God than that He is there remains desire"
7. "Wherefore it is not perfectly happy" (FROM (4),(5) AND (6))
8. THEREFORE "for perfect happiness, the intellect needs to reach the very essence of the First Cause".

III.   Background to Law

A.   Introduction

• Aquinas’s discussion of law is taken from the Summa Theologiae, as is his discussion of happiness.
• Between the two discussions, there is a great deal of important material on human action and virtue.  These includes discussions of:
  

1. ...what makes actions voluntary and involuntary.
   
2. ...what faculties are involved in human actions.
   
3. ...what makes human action good or bad.
   
4. ...virtues in which good human life consists.
   

• On many of these topics, Aquinas follows Aristotle closely, though he provides a more detailed analysis.
  
• The section on law is an interesting point of divergence.  It is the most original, best known and influential parts of Summa Theologiae and one of best known and most influential bits of Catholic thought.
  
• Salient features: there are many kinds of law with special relations among them.
  

B.    Recall several important points we made when talking about Plato and Aristotle:

• Plato thinks that the attainment of virtue requires a good society.  In a good society, the legislators know the human good and establish by mandate what is to be feared in the soldiering class laws and instill temperance in the commercial class.
  
• Aristotle argues that ethics, study of the human good or human happiness, is part of "political science", i.e. study of how institutions arranged.  The laws must take account of what the human good, or human happiness, is.
  
• Both think we can know what human good is.  Both think that they know how virtue is acquired.  Both think a good society is one which helps people become good and virtuous. 
  
• They have different views of how virtue is known and acquired.  These different views lead to very different conceptions of good society.
  

C.    Some Similarities Between the Ancients and Aquinas

• Aquinas too thinks that he knows the human good: it is a virtuous life. 
  
• Aquinas too thinks that the good achieved only in good society.
• Aquinas too thinks that laws of a good society are framed to lead members of society to their good.
  

D.    Two Important Differences

• First, Aquinas stresses that societies are communites.  To understand importance of this, take the example of Notre Dame:

1. In virtue of being here, we have a relationship with other Notre Dame people as such, and only with them.
   
2. The quality of that relationship depends on health of institution, whether it is achieving its goals of providing good education, good dorm life, and so on.
   
3. Whether institution does well, e.g., achieves its goals, depends on what the members do.  Their working together to realize goals itself builds relationships.
   
4. The well-being of institutions, and of relationships in institutional life, is itself an important element of the happiness of members, as well as an important element of their living good life.
   

• So, the goods of the Notre Dame community are common goods.  Aquinas stresses that communities have common goods
  
• Second, Aquinas stresses that we are members of many communities:
  

1. Each of which has a common good: political society aims at justice, peace, moral virtue of members.  Humanity aims at flourishing of human beings.  Catholic Christendom aims at salvation.  The created universe reflects various aspects of God’s glory.  The "city of God" aims to praise, glorify, and contemplate God.
2. Whether each achieves its good depends on the commitments and collective activities of members.
   
3. When each community achieves common good, it perfects the relations among members, including the friendshipo relation.  Thus, friendship + flourishing of community are important elements of members’ good.
   

• Therefore, for Aquinas, in order to achieve the human good, find happiness, and leading a good life, one must be good member of communities
  

E.    This suggests a very complicated picture of human happiness:

• Different qualities of character, different virtues seem appropriate to life in different communities.  Life in political society demands patriotism, courage, justice.  These might seem quite different from virtues required of members of city of God, whose goal is contemplation.
  
• Aquinas thinks that these virtues and qualities of character are complementary; a good life combines them.
  
• Communities are well-structured insofar as they foster these virtues in their members.
  
• Recall that for Plato and Aristotle, a society can be good, such that it can lead its members to virtue, only if it has good laws.  The same is true for Aquinas: communities to which human beings belong have laws to guide their members.  Different communities will have different types of law.