Thomas Aquinas
What is humankind's purpose in life? What does it mean to be happy? What is happiness, and where do we find it? These are some of the questions I have had in mind for the past few years, and ones which are very hard to fathom, much less answer. However, these are the questions which Thomas Aquinas attempts to address and even answer in his book Summa Theoligiae: Purpose and Happiness, Volume 16, Questions 1-5. In these five sections, Aquinas (henceforth known as "A") practically spells out-in his opinion-what our purpose on earth is, what makes us happy, what happiness is, and how to gain and keep it. If a person totally and completely believes in what A spells out in these sections, they would gain a philosophical roadmap to steer by for the rest of their life. Although A makes it very easy to follow his ideas, there is a lot of superfluous information which served only to confuse me a little. So in writing the paper I will attempt to boil down the ideas presented by A and perhaps make them a little more accessible to the common reader. In this volume of the Summa Theologiae, A lays his ideas out in a very simple format. His five main points are divided into five "questions" in the volume. Furthermore, each of the fi
In the final point I would like to mention, A looks at whether happiness lies in the pleasures of the sense. The almighty billionaire knows why he is on the planet: to make money and have control over other people! The point is, everyone contemplates the reason for their existence at some time in their life. So happiness does not lie in wealth, because ". All people at some point in their life contemplate the reason they were put on earth in the first place, from the lowest bum laying on a sewer grate to the highest billionaire in his multimillion dollar mansion. Though A proves that we can find a measure of happiness in God in this life, he next asks the question, "Does every human being desire happiness?" (141) This does not seen to be true at first, because different human beings desire different things. During these times, we are very unhappy to be alive. Firstly, he thinks "Happiness is a state made complete by the accumulation of all good things" (31). After the first question, A presents his next point in the second question, entitled "Objective Beatitude. an act of the mind forms the essence of happiness, while for the will is the delight that follows" (71). This is true, because men and women in seats of power are revered and even seen as god-like given certain circumstances. they are commonly experienced, whereas in point of fact there are other delights more potent" (47). After establishing whether or not happiness is created, his next point I want to mention is the question of if ".
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