Chapter 7 The good life: Our search for

happiness

What Makes You Happy?

Watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZaIsR9seMo

While you watch the video, really listen to what makes the different people happy.

What Makes You Happy

Please be silent for the next two to three minutes and really think about what makes you happy

Write your name down on the card in front of you

Underneath it write down one thing that makes you happy.

Please make it something that you feel comfortable sharing, as I will be collecting them

Would anyone like to share what makes them happy with the class?

The good life: Our search for happiness

It is universally acknowledged that despite all set-backs, failures, sickness, and disabilities, people want to be happy!

The search to be happy lies behind every human vocation, and every choice we make

The Christian tradition has always believed that we were created for happiness. It recognizes this desire as natural, insisting that God has placed it in the human heart

The desire for happiness is connected with ethics and morality

All ethical theories insist that ethics is in search of the good

Most ethical thinkers propose that the good life, this is, the ethical, moral life, is also the happy life

The good life, the ethical/moral life and the happy life are the same thing

There are 5 key thinkers in this chapter

We will look at the way they understand the link between moral goodness and happiness

Learning Goals

By the end of this lesson, we will be able to:

1) Identify five key thinkers and examine the way that they understand the connection between happiness and moral goodness.

2) State the similarities and differences between their ideas

3) Identify the three components of the Catholic approach to ethics and morality, and explain which thinkers are consistent with Catholic ethics.

Key Thinkers

1) Plato (427-347 BC)

2) Aristotle (384-322 BC)

3) St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

4) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

5) Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995)

Three Ways of Pursuing the Good

1) Teleological: Natural Ethics

2)Deontological: Obligation

3) Impact of the Gospel

Group Activity

You will be given a number from 1 to 5. This will be your group number

1) Plato (pgs. 128-9)

2) Aristotle (pgs. 129-130)

3) St. Thomas Aquinas (pgs. 130-2)

4) Immanuel Kant and Emmanuel Levians (pgs. 132-3)

5) Three ways of pursuing the good (134)

Each group will read the passage written about their designated thinker.

On a piece of chart paper, each student will write at least one point regarding their thinker’s theory of the good.

The group will answer together the question: how does this thinker’s understanding of goodness relate to happiness?

The last group will summarize the three ways of pursuing the good on pg. 134.

Each group will elect one speaker to share the group’s ideas with the class.

YOU WILL HAVE 30 MINUTES TO COMPLETE THE ACTIVITY

Plato (427-347 BC)

Plato compared the good to the sun: “Just as the sun is the source of light and through it we can see things, so the good shines upon all our actions and is in all our actions

We cannot actually locate the good anywhere in particular, we only find it in good things

The closest we come to the good is in contemplation; in contemplation the good radiates through us

Because philosophers are contemplators of the good they are closest to it

They are the happiest because they make true choices about the value and worth of their actions; they measure their actions by their value, not by how much they enjoy them

Plato vs. Sophism

Plato struggled against Sophism in his time

Sophists proclaimed there could be no truth; the truth is just an opinion. If there is no absolute truth, there can be no universal moral code

They held that life is ruled by basic needs and desires and not reason. Eg. Callicles said that the best life is one of sensual pleasure

Refused any kind of thinking about moral principles or the good

As a result, there was no agreement on how citizens should act

Plato combated this crisis through Reason. Reason finds the good that pervades everything and the highest pursuit in life is to contemplate the good

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

His concern for the good arose out of political considerations

Like Plato, he was concerned with the shortsightedness of searching for happiness by following one’s instincts and sensual pleasures

The search for the good has to do with acting intelligently. Like Plato, he thought that philosophers were most likely to succeed

People do not find the good, they find a good

Absolute good can only be found in God

God inscribes good into the nature of all things

To find the good in anything is to find its purpose

A person develops good character by acting virtuously (virtues serve to control passions)

The good is found in middle ground rather than extremes

The mark of humanity is the ability to act rationally

To act ethically is to engage in our ability to reason

To live an ethical life is the highest form of happiness

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Incorporated Aristotle’s thinking into theology

Like Aristotle, he believed that the ethical is inscribed in the nature of all creatures

At a person’s core is the desire for the good (happiness)

The basis of ethics is following our natural desire for the good

Equated God with the highest good, however this God is the Trinitarian God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)

People were made for happiness

Because of God’s love for us as shown in Jesus, there is a fuller happiness called blessedness that is only to be found in the loving vision of God.

The fullness of a good life is not found on earth. True happiness is only found in the resurrection as God’s pure gift

Connection between the good life and people that act according to reason

To know how to use one’s intellectual and sensual capacities one must follow 4 virtues

The Cardinal Virtues

1) Prudence (how to reason well in moral decision making)

2) Temperance (how to remain moderate in the exercise of the emotions)

3) Fortitude (how to be courageous in the face of life’s difficulties)

4) Justice (how to act well in relation to others)

Unlike Aristotle, Aquinas believes that Jesus changes the way we define what is good.

Introduces three new virtues that are purely God’s gift: Faith, Hope and Charity

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Lived in the time of the Enlightenment, a time characterized by the sweeping away of any authority that could not justify itself through reason.

Only reason had authority

Rejected an ethics such as proposed by Aristotle and Aquinas, which emphasized happiness as the byproduct of doing good

According to Kant, people do good because it is their duty. They must find the reason for doing good within themselves

Good will is the most important good in life

Kant acknowledged the immortality of the soul by believing that humans could not achieve the supreme good in this life.

Kant’s God also has a duty: to make certain that human beings can indeed achieve the supreme good. It is no longer the self-gift from God to us

Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995)

God is the infinite Good. He is at the heart of all ethics

The good/happiness is a vocation. It does not come from ourselves

The good is found in the faces of others

When I am called to the other, I am called to be good without reward

It is the other who awakens the highest good within me

Three ways of pursuing the good

Which key thinker’s ideas are consistent with Catholic ethics?

There are three components of the Catholic approach to ethics and morality:

1)Teleological: Natural Ethics: Aristotle’s approach as reflected in the work of Aquinas.

Begins with questions about human happiness

Then explores human actions: How does evil enter them? How are they effected by passions and emotions, and how they gradually become habits and virtues

Explores action from the perspective of God’s self-gift

2) Deontological: Obligation

Kant (duty), Levinas (call to the other)

What is the role of obligation in our decision making?

How do we make moral judgments?

3) Impact of the gospel

Impact of the gospels on our actions

Proclaims the Son of God has entered human history as a man to open up possibilities for actions that are motivated by God’s love

Resources

All information can be found in chapter 7 of In Search of the Good: A Catholic Understanding of Moral Living. (pgs. 127-134)