Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Happiness between Aristotle and Augustine
Just a bit of musing about human nature...Aristotle says happiness can only be achieved through virtue, which in his terms means the ability to be self-sufficient, to be the best "whatever" (carpenter, lawyer, etc) you can be. However, for Augustine, happiness comes from the hope of a life directed towards being with God in heaven. Obviously, one theory depends greatly on the individual, and the other the divine. Is it possible to be truly happy with one or the other? Are humans, as social creatures, able to be happy in a life that doesn't depend on the relationships or opinions of others? Conversely, can humans live a fulfilled and happy life without a sense or relationship with divinity?
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I do not think there needs to be one or the other, I believe there should be a combination of both. I believe that if humans achieve virtue, work hard for themselves, while keeping God in mind, they can achieve being the best they can be and can also achieve being with God in heaven. There needs to be a balance of each. No one should focus completely on themselves while forgetting God, but no one should completely forget themselves as well. Humans need to focus on themselves and focus on God at times separately, but also together. A life that has both virtue and God can lead to happiness in both the earthy and heavenly world.
ReplyDelete-Amanda Alcamo
I agree with Amanda. It is important for people to focus on their self-sufficiency, as Aristotle says, but it is also important to have a relationship with God, as Augustine says. There should be a healthy balance in life of both self-sufficiency and a dependency on God. I believe that someone who focuses solely on their happiness through being self-sufficient and forgets about God cannot live a fulfilled life because they don't have the idea that there is something bigger than themselves out there. It is important to keep our lives in perspective because although our self-sufficiency is important and a concrete element to our happiness, a relationship with divinity also contributes to our overall happiness as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Amanda as well. I believe that both are rather necessary to live a happy life. However, since we are social creatures, as you said, I think that a life devoid of social relationships would be difficult to classify as ‘happy.’ On the other hand, there are those people who do not believe in things like God or an afterlife, would we then assume that they are incapable of a happy life or that theirs is happiness built solely on social relationships?
ReplyDelete-April Currey
I don't mean to just hop on the bandwagon here, but I also agree with Amanda. I feel like, individually, each path has its pros and cons, so when one apples both to his or her life, they reap the most benefits from it. In Aristotle's view, which appears to be a more secular idea, you're left with the daunting questions of "what comes next?" and "whats the point?" With Augustine's view, however, putting your faith in God can help answer those questions. Although, not pursing any of your endeavors on earth would make you feel just as down in my opinion. Thus a median of the two would work best!
ReplyDeleteAlthough Augustine's proposition for happiness is very much centered around the belief in God, I do think that one could still take away certain truths from his argument without being religious at all. In City of God, Augustine defines being virtuous as having the ability to properly prioritize love. From his perspective, the highest love that one should have for someone/something should indubitably be God, because he is the highest good. One should then proceed to love everything else in order of its goodness, and when this order is correct, one can find true happiness. In my opinion, this reasoning is applicable to non-religious people as well, because their own version of the highest good does not necessarily have to be God. As long as their highest good is not something selfish, I think that they still can possess true happiness by Augustine's standards. To answer the second part of April's question, the happiness of non-religious people does not have to be built solely on social relationships; just because someone does not believe in God or an afterlife does not mean that his next priority has to do with other people. A non-religious person's highest good could be a certain, virtuous way of life, such as being diligent or honest.
ReplyDelete-Maureen Paglia
I know the point I brought up seems very black and white, and that the obvious middle ground is the incorporation between a life of self-fulfilled happiness in addition to a reverence towards God. Just something else I want to bring up is a point my theology teacher made to us about the teachings of the Catholic Church in relation to atheists going to heaven. That is, if someone engages in a life of self-offering love, then they have all the potential to enter into heaven, despite their belief in God during their lifetime. By self-offering love, that means one follows their conscience to the best of their ability, and basically tries to be the best “whatever” (as long as it is moral) they can be. This sounds a lot like Aristotle’s idea of happiness to me.
ReplyDeleteI think as a group, we seemed to distort Augustine's view on happiness on Wednesday. In Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, he explains, "So then, there are some thing which are meant to be enjoyed, others which are meant to be used, yet others which do both the enjoying and the using. Things that are to be enjoyed make us happy; things which are to be used help us on our way to happiness, providing us, so to say, with crutches and props for reaching the things that will make us happy, and enabling us to keep them." The main problem with unhappy people then is that they believe the "things meant to be used" are the final sources of happiness. Cars, food, or any material pleasure is only a supporter on our journey to happiness. If we treat these earthly pleasures as the "things to make us happy", we will never be satisfied as these types of these are objects that will always perish. We need to search for everlasting sources of happiness, which St. Augustine attributes to this conception of a one true God who makes it possible. Augustine is not trying to say that we cannot be happy on earth. He also is not saying that we can only by truly happy in heaven. What we need to take from this teaching is that we must change our outlook on the things in our life, and see if they are tings meant to make us happy, or merely to be used.
ReplyDeleteI think escalation is a necessary aspect of our earthly happiness because we need really obtain the ultimate happiness in this world. Objects don't really fit this need because the object simply is what it but bettering ourselves allows for this kind of escalation. However, no matter what we achieve in life whether it be material or immaterial, there can always be something else we want or are deprived of. Heaven is often the ultimate good, eliminating the need for escalation and thus achieving happiness.
ReplyDeleteI think that Aristotle's and Augustine's philosophies of happiness are not mutually exclusive, but rather I think they are one in the same for the truly happy and complete person. It is important to note that for Aristotle, happiness is not the ability to be self-sufficient, but rather "something complete and self-sufficient since it is the end of the things achievable in action" (Ethics 8). Happiness for Aristotle is a state of being, a way of living, and when one lives directed towards the virtue that to them is the highest form of good, one is placed in a state of happiness. Thus happiness is self-sufficient, because once achieved it, it is unaffected by external factors. Thus Augustine's philosophy that happiness is a life directed towards God, is the same for people experiencing Aristotle's happiness, because for those people, the highest virtue is a life directed towards God.
ReplyDeleteI think Liz's clarification of her point makes it seem like you don't need to be directed toward God at all. However, you say that atheists get into heaven by living a moral life, but that moral life is often parallel with the teachings of the church. Even though atheists do not have a relationship with any sort of divinity, their lineage can be traced back to a point where someone in their family believed in some sort of religion. Therefore, at some point their morals were defined based off of some sort of divinity. All in all, I do not think it is possible to have just one or the other. It is truly the combination of being the best you can be in order to be with God in heaven.
ReplyDelete