Beatitude as Contemplation of the Divine in Aristotle and Aquinas: A Cathedral Built Upon Firm Foundations
Thomas Aquinas not only used the philosophy of Aristotle to think in a revolutionarily systematic way about Theology, but completed the thought of the great philosopher of antiquity by applying his understanding of man and the world to the truths of revelation. Because Aquinas worked from both human and divine truths, he was able to understand God’s plan to fulfill man’s deepest desires and needs more fully than Aristotle ever could. While Aristotle laid a foundation for understanding man’s desires and destiny, Aquinas used his foundation to construct a grander cathedral of understanding than the great philosopher of old could have imagined. While Aquinas and Aristotle are fundamentally in agreement concerning the nature of beatitude, Aquinas was able to come to conclusions about the nature of beatitude which Aristotle could not have. Aquinas knew the divinely revealed truth that ultimate happiness is only found and possessed by the blessed in heaven, while Aristotle could only discuss and try to understand the kind of happiness found in this life. Thus, he also knew that beatitude cannot be taken away from one who has achieved it. Aristotle, however, believed that a man could be kept from attaining a blessed life by external circumstances.
Aristotle and Aquinas both speak of the “blessed” man as one who has his human desires fulfilled to the greatest extent possible. According to Aquinas “beatitude is a perfect good that puts the appetite totally to rest,” and for Aristotle contemplation, that is, the intellectual consideration of truth for its own sake, is happiness “since intellect more than anything else is man.” Aquinas agree that that beatitude is a contemplative act. However, since he was informed by Christian revelation, Aquinas wrote that the final end of man’s intellect is to be “united to God as its object.” Aristotle only knew of God through reasoning based off of the observation of material things, and thus would have called his imperfect knowledge by the names of “happiness” and contemplation. Thus term “blessed, for both Aristotle and Aquinas, means “truly happy,” or “fully happy,” and refers to the state of contemplation. However, “blessedness” and “happiness” clearly refers to something greater for Aquinas for Aristotle. While Aristotle could see what would make a human truly happy in a human way, Aquinas had the benefit of knowing God’s ultimate plan for men.
Aquinas’ claim that “man’s happiness consists in God alone,” while it may seem commonplace to the average Christian, is in fact one both profound and rich in meaning. By happiness, Aquinas means beatitude as defined above (i.e. man is made happy by being united with God because this unity satisfies his every desire). By “God,” he means the creator and “first mover” of the universe who Aristotle knew, the same God who has revealed himself to us as the Most Holy Trinity through Jesus Christ. In God himself is found both the “universal good” which alone can satisfy the human will, and the fundamental explanation and reason behind all things which alone can satisfy man’s intellect. By the word “alone,” Aquinas indicates that nothing other than God, (i.e. no “created good”) can fulfill man’s desires, and that if one possesses God, all of his desires will be fulfilled.
Aquinas’ fundamental argument for this claim is based on his understanding of beatitude as a state in which man’s every desire is satisfied. He argues that, since “nothing can put the will to rest save universal good,” man’s desire for goodness can never be satisfied except by his being united to God himself. Furthermore, since the intellect seeks the first causes and principles of things, man’s desire for knowledge can never be put to rest except by knowing God in himself. This “knowing-God-in-himself” is an activity proper to only the blessed in heaven, for while some mystics (including Thomas Aquinas himself,) have been given a kind of direct understanding of God in prayer, God can only be known indirectly in this life, and our understanding of him here below will always be mediated and limited by our senses, and by our human and dialectical understanding of the world.
While Aristotle recognized that a truly blessed man would spend his happiest hours in the contemplative “activity of God,” he could not have imagined that man’s ultimate fulfillment would be found in nothing other than “seeing God’s essence.” However, it seems as if Aristotle was reaching for this truth, or that he wanted this to be so. For in book ten of the ethics, he spoke of how the life of contemplation is “too high for man” and that such a life is lived by man only “in so far as something divine is present in him.” He also wrote in the ethics that “the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative.” Thus, while he was not able to soar to the heights which would be reached by Aquinas, Aristotle grasped the fundamental fact that there is something in contemplation by which we tend toward the knowledge and experience of God. He even understood that there is something supernatural about the life of contemplation, and that it brings man beyond what he is capable of as a mere mortal.
From Aristotle’s ancient perspective however, this “blessedness” and “contemplation” is attained through the exercise of intellectual virtue, which “owes both its birth and its growth to teaching.” Thus contemplation and blessedness is, for Aristotle, something both learned and earned. While Aquinas would have agreed that the intellectual virtues are important for one to live a good life here below, he also understood that, in heaven, our minds are to be “united to God,” not through our efforts and reasoning, but by God’s gift. Thus, since Aristotle only knew the imperfect sort of contemplation which can be experienced in this life, he could not have known that human beatitude is, ultimately, a gift of God.
Aquinas claimed that man’s happiness is found in “God alone,” and thus that if man possesses God, he possesses complete happiness. Aristotle, since he did not know of the happiness promised the blessed in heaven, included, as an integral part of his definition of “blessedness,” that the blessed man must be “allowed a complete term of life” By this he meant that a man, in order to be free to pursue blessedness, must possess adequate material goods and human relationships, and that the lack of these things could prevent a man from becoming happy. For Aquinas however, since blessedness is ultimately something proper to those in heaven, rather than to those on earth, blessedness, once achieved, cannot be taken away or lessened. His claim that “man’s happiness consists in God alone: is also revolutionary in this sense—for by it he takes happiness out of the hands of the Fates and makes it something given to man by God, who himself is ultimate goodness and truth.
Thus, because Aquinas knew of the happiness of heaven, his understanding of beatitude surpasses that of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the most compete happiness that can be attained by a human can be found in the natural act of “contemplation,” while for Aquinas, man is made to be directly united with God. “Intellectual virtue,” for both Aquinas and Aristotle, is the way to a kind of natural contemplation. But for Aquinas, there is something more—for by prayer we unite our wills to God’s in this life, and in heaven, we will be perfectly conformed to God in both mind and will. Finally, for Aristotle, happiness is something which can only be achieved by the lucky few who are favored by fate, while for Aquinas, beatitude in heaven is something which cannot be taken away.