Query:

My students have just finished your book How and How Not to be Happy.  They all really liked it.  Several, some of them atheists, emailed me privately that the book helped them rethink their lives and values in a positive way.  One told his mom to listen to it in the audio version.

However, several did have questions and objections.  In particular, what would you say about people who claim they don't experience the desire for complete happiness?  And what would you say about people who seem to be perfectly happy but are atheists?

Reply:

I’m glad they liked the book!  Concerning their first question or objection, “What would you say about people who claim they don't experience the desire for complete happiness?”  Let me ask in turn, if they don’t desire that kind of happiness, then what kind do they desire?  Partial, flawed, and precarious happiness?  I don’t believe it.  Complete happiness means happiness so perfect that it leaves nothing further to be desired.  Do they not desire that?  They may not be pining away, saying “More, more, more!”  But I don’t think they are pleading, “Okay, I’m happy enough now!  Don’t make me any happier, I’m begging you!”

Just like everyone else, people who speak as they do desire complete happiness -- but for fear of disappointment, they are trying not to desire it.  They say they “don’t experience the desire for” complete happiness because they are trying to resign themselves to not having all that they could wish.  They think they will be happier if they “settle.”

Concerning the second question or objection, “What would you say about people who seem to be perfectly happy but are atheists?” -- I wouldn’t dream of denying that an atheist might have the partial, flawed, precarious happiness of this life.  The closest formula for that is good character along with good fortune – as I put it in the book, virtue plus luck.  But of course none of us has as much virtue as he needs, and the thing about luck is that it tends to run out.

But really -- perfectly happy?  If anyone did claim that he couldn’t be any happier than he already was, I would say that he didn’t have much imagination.  I don’t even claim perfect happiness for theists in this life, because the happiness of the blessed will not be complete until we see God.  They will be perfectly happy only when we are face to face with the very source of all meaning and happiness, who redeems even our present suffering.  For now, we live in hope and longing.

Maybe that’s a good note on which to end this Advent post.

Related:

How and How Not to Be Happy

“God Rest Ye Merry, Melancholics”

Advertisements are well worth analyzing, since they make up so much of our education.  Recently I passed by a billboard showing a photograph of people who had climbed ‘way up into the hills, and now, late in the day, were having a beer.  The motto:  “It isn't worth it unless you enjoy it.”

I’ll bet the flacks who composed the slogan never expected anyone to disagree.

Well, I have been known to have a beer with friends too (I like stout).  But think about that motto.  “It,” I suppose, means whatever one aims to achieve.  Replace that vague word with an actual achievement.  Your pick.

It isn’t worth changing the baby’s diaper unless you enjoy it.  It isn’t worth getting off drugs unless you enjoy it.  It isn’t worth learning to read unless you enjoy it.  It isn’t worth being kind to the old lady next door unless you enjoy it.  It isn’t worth driving carefully unless you enjoy it.

Hmm.  How would the philosophy of beerism be expressed as a syllogism?  Perhaps something like this.

1.  Nothing is good except pleasure.

2.  What you achieve doesn’t ever give you pleasure in itself.

3.  Therefore it is pointless to achieve anything unless you are rewarded with some other unrelated pleasure, such as beer.

But really:

Lots of things are good besides pleasure.

Difficult achievements usually do give you pleasure in themselves.

It can be fun to enjoy a beer with friends when you have achieved something together, but it isn’t the beer that makes the achievement worth doing.  And you could have had the beer without doing it.

You aren’t celebrating the beer.  You are enjoying the beer to celebrate the achievement.

Recently I came across this unintentionally revealing statement by actress Drew Barrymore.  “Being with a woman,” she said, “is like exploring your own body, but through someone else".

Exactly.

Query:

I am wondering how justice fits with traditional definitions of natural law.  Aquinas mentions five fundamental natural law precepts, namely life, the procreative union of male and female, the education of the young, living in society, and the worship of God.  Most natural law thinkers would also state that justice is a key principle of the natural law.  However, it does not seem to me to be clearly stated within Aquinas’s fundamental precepts or to fit neatly with them.

Reply:

Very good question, but I think you have this difficulty with St. Thomas only because of a misreading – a common one.

In the place in the Summa theologiae I think you have in mind, he says that the order of the precepts of natural law corresponds to the order of the natural inclinations, and he speaks of three inclinations – the inclination we share with all substances, the inclination we share with all animals, and the inclination which pertains more particularly to our rationality.  You would think, then, that there should be only three fundamental precepts.  The reason there are more than three is that his term “inclination” refers not to particular inclinations, as we would use the word “inclination,” but to broad categories of inclinations.

These categories are pretty broad.  In speaking of what we share with animals, for example, he gives two examples -- sexual intercourse and the education of offspring, as you note – but then he says “and so forth.”  Rightly so, because we share a great many other things with other animals too, such as learning from sense impressions.  Then, in speaking of our rationality, he mentions the inclination to seek the truth, especially the truth about God, as well as the inclination to live in society.  Although this time he doesn’t say “and so forth,” once again these are just examples; they don’t exhaust the set of inclinations we have because of rationality.  For instance, only a rational creature seeks beauty and tries to be witty.

To back up for a moment, it’s pretty obvious how the inclination to know the truth is connected with rationality.  But how is the inclination live in society connected with it?  After all, don’t cows live in herds, and don’t birds live in flocks?  And they certainly aren’t rational.  Upon reflection, though, one realizes that what St. Thomas means here by society isn’t just how cows and birds hang around together, but partnership in a life shaped by truth and rational principle, something the beasts can’t enjoy.

And now things really get interesting, because among the rational principles essential to such a partnership is justice, which is equal treatment of those who are equal in the relevant respects.  So yes, we do have a natural inclination to seek justice -- and doing so is a fundamental precept of natural law.

My correspondent had continued:

I suppose there are two possibilities: one, that Aquinas’s definition needs to be supplemented by an additional precept, which leaves open the possibility that there are additional primary precepts of the natural law. I can imagine that this is an unattractive prospect for someone in the Thomist tradition!  

Reply:

As you now know, this Thomist thinks there are lots of other primary precepts -- and that the prospect is not at all unattractive! 

To avoid getting St. Thomas wrong, it’s important to keep in mind his fondness for the figure of speech called metonymy:  He often uses the most conspicuous instances of things as placeholders for entire sets of things, and this is what he is doing when he speaks of our inclinations.

My correspondent had again continued:

Another possibility is that justice is inherently related to the precept about human sociability.  Because we have an inherent need to live in society, and we ought to do to others what we would have done to us, it follows that we ought to give every person his due.  From this we could presumably deduce principles about impartiality, procedural fairness, etc. 

Reply:

Right!  And you know I agree, because your remark anticipates what I wrote a few lines above.

Related:

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law

Query:

The sources I’ve read say that according to Thomas Aquinas, human nature is characterised by certain natural dispositions or inclinations which need to be realized.  Would you say that this accurately characterizes his view?  The reason I ask is that it follows that whatever impedes the fulfilment of natural capacities is inherently evil.  But this seems to prove too much.  For instance, on this account the celibacy of a nun or a priest would be inherently evil, because it impedes the fulfilment of the natural tendency to procreate.

If the view I’ve described is correct, then it might illuminate a key difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic approaches to sexual ethics. For instance, it seems to me that it is good to have children, and we have a natural tendency to do so, but it does not follow that every sexual act must be procreative or potentially procreative.

Reply:

As to your first question:  Thomas Aquinas does hold that for any given nature -- such as a human being -- the good is that to which it is naturally inclined, that which its very nature disposes it to seek.  So far, so good.  However, the language of “impeding fulfillment” is dangerously imprecise.  Thomas Aquinas doesn’t think we must all be having sexual intercourse all the time just because there is a procreative inclination, any more than he thinks we must all be eating all the time just because there is a nutritive inclination.  Let’s work through this.

A power isn’t thwarted because I don’t use it, but because I don’t use it when I should use it, or because I use it at a time, or in a way, which frustrates its end or ends.  Thus, going on a diet does not undermine the purpose of the nutritive inclination – but it would be would be wrong to overeat, induce vomiting, and then eat some more.  Similarly, sexual abstinence does not undermine the purpose of the procreative inclination – but it would be dreadfully wrong to have sexual intercourse, but in a way which deliberately renders the act sterile.  That would be something like eating and vomiting.

Now as to your conclusion about Protestantism and Catholicism:  I think you are blurring the distinction between not trying to have a baby, and trying not to have a baby.  Catholic ethics does not teach that my wife and must be trying to conceive every time we enjoy marital intercourse; we may be simply expressing the love of our procreative union.  Nor does it teach that we may never abstain; but when we do have sexual intercourse, we must be open to the possibility which it carries.  We must never intentionally close the door to new life.

Incidentally, you call this the Catholic approach to sexual ethics, but until the Anglicans broke ranks in the early 1930s, it was the Protestant approach too.  Martin Luther agreed with it; so did John Calvin.