THE MEANING OF TRUE HAPPINESS (maana ya Furaha ya Kweli)
INTRODUCTION
Happiness or beatitude is a personal
possession of a desirable good, ultimately the perfect good of an intellectual
nature[1]. It is man’s chief good
which signifies the state of satisfaction which a person feels on fulfilment of
his or her desire by the possession of the good. It is also said that a happy
person is one to whom good things happen. All rational beings have a special
goal which they admire and that is happiness. It is only a rational being which
can attain happiness. They alone can reflect on the state and consciously
appreciate the satisfaction they enjoy. On the other hand animals cannot attain
happiness because they move towards ends and have appetites that can only be
satisfied by things good for them instinctively.
Philosophically, happiness can be understood
as the moral goal of life or as an aspect of chance; it is synonymous with
luck. Thus, philosophers usually explicate on happiness as either a state of mind,
or a life that goes well for the person leading it. Before examining
what Saint Augustine understood what happiness really is; Let me look how
philosophers before him talked about it:
Plato asserts that those who are
moral are the only ones who may be truly happy. Thus, one must understand the cardinal
virtues, particularly justice. Through the thought experiment of the Ring
of Gyges, Plato comes to the conclusion that one who abuses power enslaves
himself to his appetites, while the man who chooses not to remains rationally
in control of himself, and therefore is happy. He also sees a type of happiness
stemming from social justice through fulfilling one's social
function; since this duty forms happiness; other typically seen sources of
happiness – such as leisure, wealth, and pleasure – are deemed
lesser, if not completely false, forms of happiness.
Aristotle on
the other hand held that eudaimonia is the goal of human thought and action.
Eudaimonia is usually translated as happiness,
but "human flourishing" may be a more accurate translation. Eudaimonia
involves activity, exhibiting virtue in accordance with reason. Aristotle
points to the fact that many aims are really only intermediate aims, and are
desired only because they make the achievement of higher aims possible.
Therefore, things such as wealth, intelligence, and courage are valued only in
relation to other things, while eudaimonia is the only thing valuable in
isolation. Aristotle regarded virtue as necessary for a person to be happy and
held that without virtue the most that may be attained is contentment.
Aristotle has been criticized for failing to show that virtue is necessary in
the way he claims it to be, and he does not address this moral skepticism.
Antisthenes
, often regarded as the founder of Cynicism, advocated an ascetic life lived in
accordance with virtue.
Xenophon testifies that Antisthenes had praised the joy that sprang "from
out of one's soul, “and Diogenes
Laertius relates that Antisthenes was fond of saying: "I would rather
go mad than feel pleasure." He maintained that virtue was sufficient in
itself to ensure happiness, only needing the strength of a Socrates. He,
along with all following Cynics, rejected any conventional notions of happiness
involving money, power, and fame, to
lead entirely virtuous, and thus happy, lives.
Thus, happiness can be gained through rigorous
training and by living in a way which was natural for humans, rejecting
all conventional desires, preferring a simple
life free from all possessions.
Diogenes of Snipe is most frequently seen as the perfect
embodiment of the philosophy. The Stoics
themselves saw him as one of the few, if not only, who have had achieved the
state of sage Stoicism was a
school of philosophy established by Zeno
of Citium. While Zeno was syncretic in thought, his primary influence were the
Cynics, with Crates of Thebes as his mentor. Stoics believe
that "virtue is sufficient for happiness".
One who has attained this sense of virtue would become a sage.
In the words of Epictetus, this sage would be "sick and yet happy, in
peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy,”
The Stoics therefore spent their time trying to attain virtue. This would only
be achieved if one was to dedicate their life studying Stoic logic, Stoic
physics, and Stoic ethics.
The Cyrenaics
were a school of philosophy established by Aristippus of Cyrene. The school asserted that
the only good is positive pleasure, and pain would the only evil. They posit
that all feeling is momentary so all past and future pleasure has no real
existence for an individual, and that among present pleasures there is no
distinction of kind. Claudius Aelianus, in his Historical
Miscellany, writes about Aristippus: "He recommended that one should
concrete on the present day, and indeed on the very part of it in which one is
acting and thinking. For only the present, he said, truly belongs to us, and
not what has passed by or what we are anticipating: for the one is gone and
done with, and it is uncertain whether the other will come to be “Some
immediate pleasures can create more than their equivalent of pain. The wise
person should be in control of pleasures rather than be enslaved to them,
otherwise pain will result, and this requires judgment to evaluate the
different pleasures of life.
Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus. The goal of his philosophy was to
attain a state of tranquillity and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain. Toward these ends, Epicurus
recommended an ascetic lifestyle, noble friendship, and the
avoidance of politics. One aid to achieving happiness is the tetrapharmakos or the four-fold cure: "Do not
fear god, do not worry about death; what is good is easy to get, and what is
terrible is easy to endure.
The School of the Sextii was founded
by Quintus Sextius the Elder. It
characterized itself mainly as a philosophical-medical school, blending Pythagorean,
Platonic,
Cynic, and Stoic elements
together. They argued that to achieve happiness, one ought to be vegetarian,
have nightly examinations of conscience, and avoid both consumerism
and politics,
and believe that an elusive incorporeal power pervades the body.
THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
There are several political, economic, and
religious instabilities in the world. The issues of bribery and corruption and
the attendant poverty of purse and mind have remained heart-rending. In the
most parts of the world, some countries are characterized as rich but poor
nation, no thanks to her administrators, from past to the present.
Although many interpretations have been
given to account for the numerous failures evident in the seemingly non-abating
societal problems, I wish to focus on the psycho-existential quest of man as
the root of the problem. What this means is that he understands the problem as
emanating from the deep human desire to be satisfied and to feel good.
Everybody desires the good and even when at the end what was
desired turned out to be bad, it was initially desired as an
apparent good.
Accordingly, the failed administrators are
all seeking the ways to be happy. The youths who engage in violent, immoral and
criminal activities are invariably seeking for happiness. If all these are so,
it then calls for a fresh study of the notion of happiness. This is our
contention! This is our aim!! However we do so through the perspective of St.
Augustine of Hippo.
St. Augustine of Hippo
was an early Christian theologian
and philosopher
whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity
and Western philosophy.
He deals with the concept of happiness directly in his treatises De beata
vita and Contra Academicos. In this work Augustine writes
that, “all persons want to be happy and no persons are happy who do not have
what they want”[2].
He asks whether happiness consists in having what one desires. In this paper I
am going to explain what Saint Augustine thinks regarding that question.
MAN’S
TRUE HAPPINESS ACCORDING TO SAINT AUGUSTINE
Saint Augustine argues that in order
for an individual to discover happiness, one must attain what is wanted.
However longing for tangible things can only bring happiness if there is a
guarantee that they will never be taken away. Happiness according to him is an
end for human conduct. It has to be found only in God the providential father
whose providence to men is infinite. With that in mind individuals who possess
God and live according to His will are promised happiness because such a
possession is everlasting. Augustine makes it clear that, in comparison to the
man who has already found God, the one still in search is not yet happy.
Although God perceives both groups in a positive light, the line between
fulfilment and the connection between wants and wisdom. When such wisdom is
received a man can truly say that he has found happiness. If a man continually
wants, he is considered foolish and remains unsatisfied. While the man who
possesses wisdom will experience a sense of fulfilment, as measured by his Soul.
In short happiness fruitions from gaining wisdom and wisdom can always be found
in God[3].
Augustine continues arguing that,
the rational creative has been so made that it cannot itself be the good by
which it is made happy. The human being is mutable and insufficient to itself;
it can find its happiness only in the possession of what is more than itself,
in the possession of an immutable object. He stresses that it is not the virtue of thy soul that maketh thee happy, but He who
hath given thee the power to do[4].
God himself can bring happiness; the striving after God is therefore, the
desire of beatitude, the attainment of God is beatitude itself. That the human
being strives after beatitude or happiness, and that beatitude means the
attainment of an object. This object is God. Happiness thus, is to be found in
the attainment and possession of eternal and immutable object, God.
The answer therefore to the above
question in the introduction is that, happiness constitutes something that can
be had when it is wanted[5]. With the availability
these days of instant credit most people are in position of having materially
what they want when it is wanted. Does this then provide us with the answer of
happiness? The answer is inevitably no for material wealth no matter how
achieved is perpetually subject to the fear of loss. Augustine argues that it
is in our love of God we find permanent and enduring happiness without the fear
of loss that erodes our happiness[6].
The main theme of Augustine’s
thought on happiness concerns our vulnerability to the material things of this
world “it is beyond doubt that one cause of fear is either that we will lose
what we love after attaining it or that, despite all our hopes, we will never
attain it at all”[7].
Saint Augustine argues and advocates that, happiness is the purpose of human
life and actions. Put differently, he submits that happiness is the essence of
human existence. Following this Augustinian trend of thesis would be that Man;
by virtue of his personhood has a natural inclination to happiness.
Only in God can one find happiness,
as He is source of happiness. Since humanity was brought forth from God, but
has since fallen, one’s soul divinely remembers the happiness from when one was
with God. Thus, if one orients themselves toward the love of God, all other
loves will become properly ordered.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
teaches that, the beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This
desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to
draw man to the one who can fulfil it[8]: In this regard Augustine
holds that, we all want to be happy; in the whole of human race there is no one
who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated[9]. “How is it then I seek
you, Lord? Since in seeking you my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so
that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul and my soul draws
life from you[10]”.
And so Augustine also wonders of the
godless, “why are they not happy? Because they are more immediately engrossed
in other things which more surely make them miserable than that other reality,
so faintly remembered, can make them happy”. That “faintly remembered” reality
is the divine being corresponding to the God-shaped hole at the centre of the
fallen human being. This entire conception structure is built upon Augustine’s
distinction between “use” and “enjoyment” or uti and frui. Here is how
he says out: “So then, there are some things which are meant to be enjoyed,
others which are meant to be used, yet others which do both the enjoying and
the using. Things that are to be enjoyed make us happy; things which are to be
used help us on our way to happiness, providing us, so to say, with crutches
and pops for reaching the things that will make us happy, and enabling us to
keep them[11]”.
Happiness
as a Gift of God It will be seen that what view a philosopher takes of the
nature of happiness makes a great difference to whether he thinks it easy or
difficult to achieve, Aristotle, having defined happiness to his own
satisfaction had gone on to ask the question: how is it acquired? He had
offered a number of candidate answers, derived from the reflections of previous
philosophers. Does it come about, he asked, by nature, by training, by learning,
by luck, or by divine favour?. In the course of his treatise he tried to show
that each of these elements has a part in the acquisition of happiness. There
is no need to follow how he spells this out, because the importance of his list
is that each item on it has been seized upon by one or other later thinker as
crucial. Some have claimed that happiness is in our genes, others have written
how-to manuals setting out regimes to be followed for its acquisition. Some
have believed that there is a secret science whose mastery will bring happiness
to the initiate. Others have thought that happiness is owed above all to a
fortunate environment. Finally, for many centuries the dominant account was
that supreme happiness was a gift of God, obtainable only through divine grace.
The foremost exponent of this last view was St Augustine. Like everyone in the
ancient world, Augustine starts from the premise that everyone wants to be
happy, and accepts that it is the task of philosophy to define what this
supreme good is and how it is to be achieved. If you ask two people whether
they want to join the army, Augustine says in the Confessions, one may say yes
and the other no. But if you ask them whether they want to be happy, they will
both say yes without any hesitation. The only reason they differ about serving
in the army is that one believes, while the other does not, that that will make
him happy. In another work, Augustine tells the story of a stage player who
promised to tell his audience, at his next appearance, what was in each of
their minds. When they returned he told them ‘Each of you wants to buy cheap
and sell dear’. This was smart, Augustine says, but not really correct—and he
gives a list of possible counterexamples. But if the actor had said ‘Each of you
wants to be happy, and none of you wants to be miserable’ then he would have
hit the mark perfectly. Again like Aristotle, Augustine defines happiness as
the supreme good. This is the good which provides the standard for all our
actions: it is sought for its own sake, not as a means to an end, and once we
attain it we lack nothing that is necessary for happiness[12]. Then Augustine goes on
to take a step beyond Aristotle and all his pagan predecessors. He claims that
happiness is truly possible only in an afterlife, in the vision of God. First,
he argues that anyone who wants to be happy must want to be immortal. How can
we hold that a happy life is to come to an end at death? If a man is unwilling
to lose his life, how can he be happy with this prospect before him? On the
other hand, if his life is something he is willing to part with, how can it
have been truly happy? But if immortality is necessary for happiness, it is not
sufficient. Pagan philosophers who have claimed to prove that the soul is
immortal have also held out the prospect of a miserable cycle of reincarnation.
Only the Christian faith promises everlasting happiness for the entire human being,
soul and body alike[13]. The supreme good of the
City of God is eternal and perfect peace, not our mortal transit from birth to
death, but in our immortal freedom from all adversity. This is the happiest
life—who can deny it?—and in comparison with it our life on earth, however
blessed with external prosperity or goods of soul and body, is utterly
miserable. None the less, whoever accepts it and makes use of it as a means to
that other life that he longs for and hopes for, may not unreasonably be called
22 Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Utility happy even now—happy in hope
rather than in reality[14]. Virtue in the present
life, Augustine says, is not equivalent to happiness: it is merely a necessary
means to an end that is ultimately other-worldly. Moreover, however hard we
try, we are unable to avoid vice without grace, that is to say without special
divine assistance that is given only to those selected for salvation through
Christ. The virtues of the great heroes of Roman history were really only
splendid vices. They received their reward in Rome’s imperial glory, but did
not qualify for the one true happiness of heaven. The treatment of happiness by
Thomas Aquinas, like his treatment of many topics, combines elements from
Aristotle and Augustine. He agrees with both of them that everyone necessarily
desires happiness, and he agrees with Augustine that happiness is truly to be
found only in the beatific vision of God after death. But he raises a different
question with a new urgency. How can the necessary desire for happiness, he
asks, be reconciled with that freedom of the will that is an essential
attribute of human beings? If I cannot help but desire happiness, and if
happiness is only to be found in God, how can I ever turn away from God and
commit sin? He gives his answer: There are some particular goods that have no
connection with happiness because a human being can be happy without them;
nothing necessitates the will to want these. There are other things which do
have a necessary connection with happiness, the things that unite men to God in
whom alone true happiness is to be found. But until the necessity of this link
is established by a vision of God, the will is not necessitated either to want
God or the things of God. Aquinas’ attempt to reconcile a belief in freedom
with the postulate that humans cannot help but pursue happiness, though neat
and clear, is not really satisfactory. On the one hand, the mere fact that a
particular good is not necessarily connected with happiness is not sufficient
to establish my freedom not to choose it. If I am a chain-smoker who gets
through 200 cigarettes a day, am I free at any moment to stop smoking? To
establish that I am, something more is needed than the that of human beings can
be happy without smoking. On the other hand, there seems to be something wrong
with the fundamental premise that Aquinas shares with both Aristotle and
Augustine, namely, that one cannot help but pursue whatever one regards as
necessary for one’s happiness. A wife may be convinced that she will never be
happy unless she leaves her husband, and yet stay with him for the sake of the
children. This example brings out the fundamental weakness of the eudaimonism
that is common to the ethical systems of all the thinkers we have considered:
namely, that they place morality on a basis that is ultimately self-centred.
Compared with this feature common to both the pagan and the Christian forms of
eudaimonism, it is less important whether the ultimate satisfaction that is
held out is envisaged as being realised in this world or in the next. To be
sure, Aristotle admitted that a happy man would need friends, and that even a
philosopher could philosophise better in company. Again, Augustine and Aquinas
taught that we must love our neighbour, as we are commanded to do by the God
whose vision we seek. But in each case the concern for the welfare of others is
presented as a means to an ultimate goal of self-fulfilment.
It would seem that most people know naturally what
makes them happy or not. Given this, why would someone who is already
happy inquire about happiness any further, and if someone is unhappy isn’t he
actually happy about having freely chosen what makes him unhappy?
Augustine, in gives a very biographical sketch of his search for
happiness, and his successful discovery of it, in God[15].
Augustine begins with the quest for God, man’s search
for ultimate meaning. He says, “Men go out to wonder at mountain heights,
at immense sea surges, the sweep of wide rivers, the ocean’s range, ‘the stars’
revolving’s’- and neglect [the spectacle of] themselves.” Augustine points out
here that we are always searching the exterior world to find happiness, to find
God, when God is within us. He asks himself, “But how, Lord, do I
look for you?” this is such a good and simple question from Augustine. In
one sense, it is a prayer, a cause for contemplation. How do we look for
God? In what do we seek God? Where do we find God? In one
sense, whether directly or indirectly, we are all seeking God in all things
throughout life. Our soul has an infinite capacity and infinite desiring; God
is infinite. All of our human pursuits are finite, they have an ending
point, especially our own personal bodily death. Our soul however,
with its infinite capacity, actually yearns for the fulfillment of this
infinitude with great pining, unending longing, which only God is big enough to
fill. Augustine says, “In looking for you, I seek the happy
life.” La dolce vita! We all want the good life, and
the good life is the happy-life. But what makes us happy? Augustine
says, “It is ‘life for my soul I look for,’ since you vivify the soul as the
soul vivifies the body.”[16]
All that we know is our experience of life, but we do know changes in our
levels of happiness from our experience. So what is this “life for my
soul” that Augustine says? The Greeks had a term, eudaimonia,
roughly defined as “happiness of soul.” This is the happiness that lasts
forever, we can say, when our soul is happy, then we are truly happy.
This is the intimate contentment that we experience when we are happy because
we know we are doing the will of God, not necessarily what we want.
Augustine says, “How shall I look for this life of happiness? I do not
yet have it, or I could say: This is all I need.” Truly, a happy soul is all we
need, conversely, if we had a sad soul, or no happiness, all that we would desire
is the fulfillment of that desire for happiness. But how? Augustine
very honestly and bravely approaches happiness as an epistemological question,
“Or is it an unknown thing some instinct for knowledge prompts me to discover—a
thing unknown entirely, or unknown in the sense that I no longer remember
having forgotten it?” Is our desire for happiness merely an instinctual
desire for more knowledge? Augustine implies that this is possible because,
truth, happiness and God are all linked together. We need them all.
He says, “What is a life of happiness but what all men want, what man can not want?”
In one sense, nobody wants unhappiness. Nobody actually wants to be
unhappy. Then, like Socrates, he humbly admits he doesn’t know but says,
“Somehow, I know not how, we do want it.” This sort of vague knowing,
moving forward, pursuing happiness, seems to be part of who we are, our
character, part of our development over the life course.
Interestingly, Augustine ties happiness to
memory. He says, “…I am what I am remembering, my own mind.” In other
words, we could say, it’s not that I need only joyful experiences of life so
that I can be happy by remembering my life as full of joyful memories.
Rather, he says that our memory is like a “kind of mental belly” just as
we can no longer taste food in our stomach, so too, we cannot really be happy
or sorrowful about memories of our past, rather they simply exist, they are
there in our memory, but part of our life experience but out of reach, no
longer “taste-able.” He says, “All have the concept of happiness, and all would
answer yes if asked whether they want it—which could not happen if happiness
and not merely the word for it, were not remembered.” This is a good point, in
our pursuit of happiness, we can lack clarity about what exactly we want or
what we are calling “happiness,” our identifying it, remembering what it looks
like, so to speak, but everyone wants it, everyone has an idea of what it is,
and everyone has a word for that phenomenological experience they term
“happiness” or “being happy” when they glimpse it. Augustine smartly
points out that we may be trying to retrieve a whole time period in our life,
where we were “happy,” a time we remember. Well, it is likely that this
time is in childhood, in our youth, feeling lucky and care free. But
again, Augustine, ever wise points out that though we may have been joyful in
our past, happiness comes from God. He says, “Let me not, Lord, in this my
heartfelt testimony to you, accept as happiness every joy that I encounter.”
In other words, as we seek happiness in this life, we may have joyful
experiences, which are good, but we should remember in those moments that this
joy is not the total fulfillment that we seek with God in Eternity. He
says, “This is true happiness in life, to take joy in you, for you, because of
you—this, nothing else, is happiness. Those who do not know this
pursue their joy elsewhere, and though it is no true one, yet they cannot
wrench their desire entirely free from some representation of that joy.” In one
sense, Augustine is saying that we should exhaust all of our energies in the
pursuit of God, because this pursuit is really the only pursuit in life that is
worthwhile. It is the only goal we can set for ourselves that will fulfill our
infinite desires and never leave us empty or with that fleeting sense of joy,
because everything else that is not God, is less than God, more finite, a mere
representation, a copy, and therefore incapable of our satisfaction, thus
leaving us unhappy.
Augustine shows the connection between truth,
happiness and God. He straightforwardly explains, “Yet when I ask anyone
if he prefers to find true joy or false, he is as quick to say he wants the
true one as he is to say he wants happiness—yet happiness is itself a joy in
the truth, and that is a joy in you, God, who are the truth…” Everyone
wants to know the truth and everyone wants to be happy, just as no one wants to
be lied to and no one wants to be unhappy. Augustine takes this a step
further saying, “…happiness is itself a joy in the truth…,” meaning that the
truth is good to know by itself and the truth makes you happy to know it.
He continues on the importance with which we all naturally treat the truth, but
points out the shortcomings of people who deceive that, “They love a supporting
but not ‘a rebuking truth.’ Because they hate to be lied to, but like to
lie, they love to find things with the help of truth, but hate to be found out
by it.” In other words, because a person who lies still wants to be happy
and still wants to know the truth in spite of his lies, hates the experience of
being corrected for his lies and runs from his discovery and the consequences
of it. So, Augustine concludes that the liar cannot be happy saying, “To
this, even this, is the human mind reduced, to this blind, weak state, that it
wants to hide its foul vileness from others, but wants nothing hidden from
it. But truth turns this upside down—so that the mind does not hide the
truth, but the truth is hidden from it.” Augustine says that the mind of the
person who lies or lives a lie has the truth hidden from his mind because he
refuses to discontinue his love for what is not truth and what is not God, and
therefore he remains devastatingly unhappy. Instead, Augustine affirms
what took him so long to discover, “You are the happiness that everyone desires,
the only happiness”. The saint, who spent a good part of his life running
from God, famously said, “Late have I loved you Lord,” was grateful to discover
God later in life, rather than not at all.
CONCLUSION
For Saint Augustine, all human
actions revolve around love, and the primary problem of human race is the
misplacing of love. Only in God can one find happiness, as He is the source of
happiness. Since humanity was brought forth from God, but has since fallen,
one’s soul dimly remembers the happiness from when one was with God. Thus, if
one orients themselves toward the love of God, all other loves will become
properly centered. In this manner, St. Augustine follows the Neo-Platonism
tradition in asserting that happiness lies in the contemplation of purely
intelligible realm.
REFERENCES
Edward,
Fenech. Augustine’s De Beata Vita. Budapest: 1986.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The
New Catholic Encyclopedia
Fredrick
Copleston, S.J. A History of Philosophy: Vol II, Medieval Philosophy from
Augustine to Duns Scotus. New York: 1987.
Confessions.Trans.
Garry Wills. NY: Penguin Books. 2002.
[3] Fredrick Copleston, S.J. A
History of Philosophy: Vol II,
Medieval Philosophy from Augustine to Duns Scotus. New York: 1987.
[11]De Doctrina Christiana
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