Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T16:42:36.833Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Happiness and Transcendent Happiness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Stephen Theron
Stephen Theron
Affiliation:
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In this paper I first point out that happiness might of its nature be unamenable to the calculating ‘plan of life’ approach, and argue that the incompatible model of a personal search, by no means implying ‘ontological subjectivity’ though, fits in more smoothly with the idea. Secondly, I discuss the arguments assembled by Aquinas for a view of this type. I argue thirdly that although we can show there is some one thing in which all happiness consists, whatever it may be it must be incompatible with temporal life, whether or not any other is possible. Hence a discussion which excludes ‘transcendence’ will not get to grips with the concept of happiness.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 349 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 349 note 1 Uyl, Douglas den and Machan, Tibor R., ‘Recent work on the concept of happiness’, American Philosophical Quarterly (04 1983).Google Scholar

page 349 note 2 Benditt, Theodore, ‘Happiness’, Philosophical Studies XXV (1974), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 349 note 3 e.g. Kekes, , ‘Happiness’, Mind XCI (1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 349 note 4 Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘Modern moral philosophy’, Philosophy (1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 352 note 1 Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963), p. 147.Google Scholar

page 352 note 2 Cf. Geach, P. T., The Virtues (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

page 354 note 1 St Thomas Aquinas, Comm. in Sent. P. Lombardi, bk. 4, d. 33, q.1, a. 1 c.

page 354 note 2 Cf. Geach, P. T., ‘History of a fallacy’, in Logic Matters (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar

page 354 note 3 Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, 1094a 18 (Ross translation).

page 354 note 4 Anscombe, G. E. M., Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Home University Library (1971), p. 16.Google Scholar

page 355 note 1 Kenny, A., The Anatomy of the Soul (Oxford, 1973), p. 52.Google Scholar

page 355 note 2 Ibid. p. 53.

page 355 note 3 But against this tendency cf. especially Ross's, James F. review of Kenny's The God of the Philosophers in The Journal of Philosophy (1982), p. 410;Google Scholar also Geach's, review of his The Five Ways in The Philosophical Quarterly, (1970), p. 311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Theron, , ‘Esse’, The Nero Scholasticism (spring, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 356 note 1 Physics, viii, 5.

page 357 note 1 Cf. Geach, P. T., The Virtues, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

page 357 note 2 Augustine, St, The City of God, XIX. 1 (Pelican translation p. 843).Google Scholar

page 358 note 1 B. Russell, The Conquest of Happiness.

page 361 note 1 Grisez, G. G., ‘The first principle of practical reason’, in Aquinas, ed. Kenny, , London 1969.Google Scholar

page 363 note 1 In Three Philosophers.