Josef Pieper - Happiness and Contemplation

JOSEF PIEPER

Happiness and Contemplation

Translated by
Richard and Clara Winston

"The ultimate of human happiness is to be found in contemplation."

In offering this proposition of Thomas Aquinas to our thought, Josef Pieper uses traditional wisdom in order to throw light on present-day reality and present-day psychological problems. What, in fact, does one pursue in pursuing happiness? What, in the consensus of the wisdom of the early Greeks, of Plato and Aristotle, of the New Testament, of Augustine and Aquinas, is that condition of perfect bliss toward which all life and effort tend by nature?

In this profound and illuminating inquiry, Dr. Pieper considers the nature of contemplation, and the meaning and goal of life.

T . S . E LIOT onJ OSEF P IEPER

"His sentences are admirably constructed, his ideas expressed with the maximum clarity. But his mind is submissive to what he believes to be the great, the main tradition of European thought.... He restores to their position in philosophy what common sense obstinately tells us ought to be found there: insight and wisdom."

Printed in U.S.A.

HAPPINESS AND CONTEMPLATION

Contemplation does not rest until it has found the object which dazzles it.

KONRAD WEISS

CONTENTS

I

The ultimate of human happiness is to be found in contemplation. We use "happiness" to denote what men ordinarily mean by this term. To be sure, in all languages the term tends toward banality. Nevertheless, we can always detect the relationship which links all gratification of any thirst with ultimate beatitude.

II

Man desires happiness by nature, that is, in the same manner as the falling stone "seeks" the depths. "By nature" means: by virtue of his creation. Freedom and unfreedom in the craving for happiness. The locus of this craving is the realm of the mind. No one can make himself happy. Happiness is a gift. One cannot imagine the perfectly happy man.

III

God and happiness are the same. The staggering conclusion: God's beatitude is not troubled by evil in the historical world. But salvation would be inconceivable if there were not, at the source of reality, this infinitely unimpaired divine Being. "The great divine joy the only reality."

IV

The whole energy of human nature: hunger and thirst. Happiness as a drink, happiness as drinking. Satiation is expected from "somewhere else." The "whole good." The finite spirit is by virtue of his nature insatiable unless he partake of God Himself.

V

Happiness and joy are two different things. Joy is essentially secondary, the response to happiness. The goods which we seek even at the cost of joy. Nevertheless joy has no purpose beyond itself.

VI

Happiness means: attaining "the whole good." But what is meant by "attaining"? Happiness as a result of acting and doing. Three fundamental propositions: happiness means perfection; perfection means realization; realization comes by acting. Acting that remains within. The work does not absorb the creator.

VII

The wholly happy man is one who sees. The opposing argument: Do we love in order to know? Knowing as the "noblest form of possession." Augustine, too, says, "Our whole reward is seeing." Possession of the beloved object is knowing it. "This is the Eternal Life."

VIII

The two modes of the act of love: longing and joy. "To know" in the Biblical sense: closest presence. Happy is the man who sees what he loves. "Where love is, there is the eye too." Contemplation as awareness of the beloved object.

IX

What constitutes contemplation? First: silent perception of reality. Second: not thinking, but intuition; intuition is knowledge of what is present. Third: knowing accompanied by amazement. Only one who does not see the whole can be amazed.

X

Earthly contemplation based on the premise that "intuition" is possible for physical man also, and that he can somehow comprehend the "drink called happiness." There is no nonreligious contemplation. But awareness of the divine element can be kindled by virtually anything encountered. The obscure and simultaneously commonplace forms of contemplation and the need that they be recognized for what they are. Gerard Manley Hopkins. The message experienced by intuition isnot communicable.

XI

Reply to the counterarguments of the practical man: In what does life itself consist once the means of livelihood have been won? Morality points beyond itself. Loving means: to desire the beloved to be happy; and happiness is intuition. It is not possible to rest ultimately content in the felicity of the active life. Contemplation as the goal of politics. Practice becomes meaningless as soon as it is thought to be an end in itself. The "practice" of the artist: "When something is finished, it must be perfect but what then?" Is desiring-to-possess more than possession? Is joy more important than its reason? Anaxagoras: We are born for seeing.

XII

The same characteristics are to be found in the intuitive and the happy man. Simplicity. The step out of time. Seeing in itself makes for happiness. The closed sphere. Freedom from fetters. George Santayana: crowning in intuition.

XIII

Ought the high-minded person renounce the "escape of happiness"? Refusal of consent to the world. It is not our merit that the possibility of happiness exists. The "dark night" on the way of contemplation. The sight of the "historical Gethsemane." Happiness founded on sorrow. Its blessing and dazzling light.

I

With what a multitude of meanings do people speak of happiness. They wish it to one another on weddings and birthdays, at partings, on the first day of the year. The entertainment industry purveys to its "consumers," readers, spectators, and listeners, innumerable stories of happiness threatened, crossed, and at last achieved. Popular songs authoritatively inform every girl what it means to makeaman happy. The word crops up in the already somewhat old-fashioned formula of the "greatest happiness for the greatest number," and in manifestoes proclaiming everyone's right to happiness.Anyone cognizant of this welter of possibilities may be extremely surprised to come upon the bald statement that man's ultimate happiness consists in contemplation.

This statement precisely is what we are here concerned with.

It contains a whole philosophy of life, a basic conception of the nature of man and the meaning of human existence.

It is of no special importance that the statement derives from a book by St. Thomas, his Summa against the pagans. Of far greater importance is the fact that this idea belongs to a store of traditional wisdom whose root goes deeper than historical time, and perhaps further than the human domain. If in these pages we frequently cite Thomas Aquinas, we do not mean him to speak primarily for himself. He is intended as the witness for that tradition though, to be sure, a witness of extraordinary rank. Nor is our study in the main concerned with historical aspects. Rather, our concern is with the light that statement casts upon the reality we encounter, and upon the reality which we are ourselves.

We ought not too soon discard our surprise at the proposition that contemplation is man's ultimate happiness ought not dismiss it, say, by deciding that happiness is meant here in some special sense which has nothing in common with everyday language. For those words were written with a view to all, even the most trivial meanings of happiness. Ambiguity, and even a tendency to banality, are, it would seem, inherent in the subject itself. These equivocations are to be found in all the languages of men.