The Good Life and Happiness

pp. 127-133

Think/Pair/Share

What is the “Good Life”? What is happiness? How are they connected?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gaBZ4cDuIA

Do you feel the message from this commercial embodies the “Good Life”? What part of the “Good Life” do you feel was missing?

The Christian tradition has always believed that we have been created for happiness.

We recognize this desire for happiness as natural, as God has placed it in the human heart.

The desire for happiness is connected intimately to ethics and morality.

The good life (ethical and moral) is also a happy life.

Plato (427-347 B.C.)

The closest we come to good is through contemplation.

Plato had a high regard for the good – like the sun.

We cannot locate the good as it is in all things without being something itself. (We can’t find the good, only good things)

Reason finds the good that pervades everything – the highest pursuit in life is to contemplate the good.

Aristotle (384-32 B.C.)

Student of Plato, teacher to Alexander the Great.

The good is to be found in God – God is the mover who inscribed the good in all of creation.

Contemplation is the highest good – but it is not the idea of good, but rather the good that is within all things.

Each thing has and end and each thing is oriented toward its good, so long as it is oriented to its end.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) A Dominican friar who incorporated Aristotle’s thinking into theology.

At our core is a desire to do good, according to Aquinas (natural desire to do good is the basis of ethics).

For Aquinas and Aristotle, God is the highest good.

The fullness of a good life is experienced in the resurrection.

2 Levels of Aquinas’s Ethics1) Aristotle’s view of the good life and

happiness from living well and acting well – using our intelligences and capabilities.

God’s creation is good – We must use our intellect and sensory capacities and follow natural law – the light of understanding placed in us by God.

We know what we must do and what e must not not do.

Cardinal Virtues (from Aristotle)Prudence – How to reason well in moral decision making.

Temperance – How to remain moderate in the exercise of the emotions.

Fortitude – How to be courageous in the face of life’s difficulties.

Justice – How to act well in relation to others

2) God’s self-gift to us in Jesus and the Holy Spirit changes the way we define good.

From St. Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians (3 things that last – Theological Virtues)

Spiritual life is structured around them.

They come from God.

Theological Virtues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuyKsaj6GbM

Faith – Trusting in God’s self-revealing action

Hope – Expectation of God’s fulfillment of his promise of salvation and redemption.

Charity (love) – God’s love for us as the model to love others.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Lived during the Age of Enlightenment.

He rejected Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ idea that happiness is a byproduct of doing good.

Believe in good will – we must find the reason for doing good within ourselves – it then becomes our duty.

Faith, hope and charity lose there place in Kant’s ethical theory.

Kant believed the supreme good was attainable but not in this life.

God too is held to duty just as we are, according to Kant, since God is needed to achieve the supreme good in the next life.

Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) God, the Infinite Good is at the heart of ethics.

Good is a call or vocation.

Good requires a response to another.

We are called to recognize the needs of others.