Gordon Clark: Happiness (Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics)

1973. In Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Carl F.H. Henry, ed. Washington D.C.: Canon Press. [Reprinted in 1988 by Baker Book House.] Happiness

HAPPINESS. See also Blessedness; Pleasure. “Happiness” (eudamonia, from which we derive eudaemonism) is the term Aristotle used to designate the goal of life. It is an end in itself, never a means to anything else. “Honor, pleasure, intelligence, and all forms of virtue, we choose both for their own sakes,… and we also choose them for the sake of happiness… But no one chooses happiness for the sake of honor or pleasure, nor as a means to anything else at all (Nic. Ethics, I, vii, 1097 b1-6).

Though the one term “happiness” seems to designate a single end, it actually consists of several parts, all necessary. Two factors to be chosen voluntarily are virtuous and rational activity. The virtues are courage, temperance, liberality, and so on. Rational activity is a matter of studying physics, metaphysics, etc. The reason is that these are the natural functions of man as man. The purpose of a flute is to produce music; the purpose of a fish is to produce fish; the purpose of a shoemaker is to produce shows; but the purpose of man as man is to live virtuously and rationally.

There are also some involuntary factors in happiness. A life of tragedy or disgrace (even unmerited) is not a happy life. Nor can a man be called happy if his children suffer tragedy. Therefore it is impossible to know whether a man is happy until after he is dead.

Augustine’s ethics was also eudaemonism. The good life is one of happiness (beatitude, beatitas; both terms coined by Cicero). All men desire happiness (De Trin. X, v, 7). “No one lives as he wishes unless he is happy” (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 25). Now Augustine would not disparage virtues such as courage and temperance; nor would he belittle rational thought. In fact, no one can be happy without knowledge of the truth. In this there is similarity to Aristotle. But Augustine replaces Aristotle’s secularism with Christian content. God is truth and to know God is wisdom. Therefore the happiness Augustine recommends becomes blessedness or beatitude.

More explicitly: wisdom (q.v.) is not the knowledge of some heathen god, nor even of, say, Spinoza’s first principle. To have wisdom is to have Christ. Christ is the truth (q.v.); Christ is the wisdom of God.

One reason for making truth the aim of our endeavors is that if we love what can be lost, we cannot be happy. But God, Christ, and truth are immutable, and if we have this, our blessedness is permanent.

Eudaemonism therefore should not be confused with Hedonism (q.v.), as is sometimes ignorantly done; the two form a contrast.

Gordon H. Clark