Regina asked:

I'm studying Science of Religions and I need to write an essay about happiness for the subject of
Philosophy of Religions. I would like to know how the quest for happiness has been treated by
philosophers over the centuries, if they think that it can be obtained and, if so, how. Any interesting
information about the role that happiness has in the work of some philosophers would help.

============

Philosophers have treated the quest for happiness over the centuries as an ethical matter. The ethical
assumptions of all classical philosophers are essentially those of Aristotle. Happiness in Greek is
eudaimonia, which is 'good for man' and absolutely reasonable as well as a reasonable absolute,
since no-one in their right mind would not want to be happy. Ancient ethics then is 'eudaimonistic' as
opposed to ethics based (like those of Rabbinics or Kant) on 'deontology' (duty or obligation).

Aristotle's position on happiness and ethics can be seen in the first book of the Nichomachean Ethics,
although the whole text deals with the extrapolation of his equation of the good with the happy.
Aristotle posited a golden mean that would lead us to happiness: neither too much nor little of
something is good for us. There can be no happiness — or ethics — without first a reasonable degree
of self-discipline.

The various schools of ancient Greek philosophy (Platonists, Epicureans, Stoics, Cynics etc.) all
sought happiness by following various ethics (life-styles, if you like) which all required self-discipline,
only of different sorts.

The Platonists held that the Good wherein our happiness lay was transcendent, in this world but not
of it. In order to apprehend this true Good, we must learn to die to this world — the so-called sense
world. In this way we will wake up to ourselves and to the divine Form of the good which we are.
Happiness for Plato was an 'ontotheological' structure of existence (to do with the logic of divine
being) and his ethics is a means of accomplishing that happiness.

Between the start of the Christian era (4th cent.) and the start of the modern era (16th cent.)
Platonism dominated. Augustine of Hippo (456-431) — the greatest Christian author of the West —
said that people are Christians and become Christians "for the sake of happiness." (Sermon 150.4).
One of his early writings is De Beata Vita (On the Happy Life).

Christianity was influenced (especially via Augustine) by Plotinus (205-270) a so-called neo-Platonist,
one who read Plato and Aristotle harmoniously as opposed to against each other, which is the
modern tendency. Plotinus said, "a person who is to possess happiness draws his good from the
Supreme, fixing his gaze on That, becoming like to That, living by That." (See First Ennead,IV
passim). Boethius (475-525) whose work, The Consolation of Philosophyis one of the most influential
and widely read books of all time in European languages, wrote "God is the essence of happiness."
And: "Supreme happiness is identical with supreme divinity" (Bk.III. pp.101-2 of the Penguin Classics
edition). This is how it was in the West in this era — the question of happiness is caught up in
philosophical theology and Biblical exegesis. For Aquinas (1225-74) eudaimoniais not the Latin
delectatio(feeling of happiness, joy) but felicitas,a happy or blessed state of being. The ultimate
happiness is bliss (beatitudo) or heaven. See a good epitome of Thomas' thought on this question in
Selected Philosophial Writings,(Oxford World Classics) passage 34.

Modern philosophy seems more concerned with certitude than happiness. What happens to
happiness is the modern era I don't know.

Matthew Del Nevo
www.sicetnon.com