Tuesday 11 August 2015

Happiness: The Western Philosophical Heritage

From Ellen T. Charry, God and the Art of Happiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010)

“Although the differences among them are significant, all the various ancient philosophical pathways with which Christianity competed affirmed that life ought to be lived purposefully. One should strive for the highest good that life offers: eudaemonia (variously translated as “well-being,” “flourishing,” or ”happiness”). The schools disagreed about the content of what a flourishing life looks like and about how to achieve it, but they agreed that a principled life is best. A casual or haphazard life is not likely to be a successful or enjoyable as a well-crafted one. Ancient philosophies of happiness are teleological: life reaches towards an achievable goal…In contract to happiness as sustained external pleasure, the ancients agreed that happiness is enjoying oneself in living morally and productively, and it is an external judgment on how one is faring at life. It is a judgment on how one orders one’s life as a whole, and it is the enjoyment of that life’s positive results. Both the enjoyment and the judgment are inspired by a pattern that identifies a life that is going well enough to be called a fine life – we might even say, a beautiful life. Overall, well-being comes from using oneself consistently, intentionally, and effectively, and hence it is a moral undertaking. Flourishing reflects the moral quality of one’s ultimate purpose or organizing principle.”

“Here is a taste of what Augustine plundered from these sources. He agreed with the Epicureans that a flourishing life must be a judgment about the whole of a life, both psychological and physical. Obversely, he thought that complete well-being is never assured: against the Epicurean denial of divine providence and judgment he asserted a strongly eschatological teaching that happiness is not completely realizable given the vicissitudes of life. He agreed with the Stoics that a happy life is a consistently virtuous one, but he disapproved of their disdain for the emotions and, like the Epicureans, disagreed that material well-being is not valuable as a good in its own right, even if it is not the highest good. From Plotinus he took the idea that happiness is a form of self-realization: realizing that our true identity lies in God and our likeness to God. Of course, Augustine meant the God of Israel, not of Plato. Again, he disagreed with Plotinus that care of the body is irrelevant to that realization, though he did not spell out how physical and spiritual well-being hold together.”

A fuller summary of Augustine's debt to the classical heritage is on pages 22-24.