Happiness from Virtue or Indulgence? Part 3


Now let us consider virtue more directly. Virtue perhaps is what most modernists would consider the opposite of fun. However, this is only true when nihilism is one's worldview. In a nihilistic worldview, our lives lose meaning to ourselves, and this causes countless problems on the purely moral level alone, let alone the psychological level. Our motives are based on survival instincts; however, their definition can be widened to include the things which human life now consists of such as having a job, fixing and one's car. Nihilism, though, removes these things in a pseudo-pursuit of stoicism, but rather removes from us the means we once had to joy. Virtue is the broadest acquisition of meaning, and therefore, is the foremost objective path toward not only arbitrary joy but authentic human flourishing.

Virtue, as it is meant above, is the “disposition of the soul, in so far as, to wit, the powers of the soul are in some way ordered to one another, and to that which is outside.”[1] This is unsurprisingly related to what is meant by chastity. However, virtue also produces joy, since what once caused man to be in interior conflict is no longer present but is replaced by a multi-layer harmony. This is what virtue offers once it is formed, but to achieve this state there is a shift from immediate pleasures being sufficient to more enduring, long-term, and/or distant achievements. An article that summarizes five studies on whether the latter or the former better constitutes a psychological state of happiness, determined that moral character heavily influences one’s concept of happiness.[2] Therefore, happiness itself seems to bear something of the virtue definition above, in the sense that it is a stable disposition, not so much something to be achieved. This would be consistent with the Catholic definition since “desire for true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of God.”[3] After coming to this determination, we must analyze what “stable disposition” psychologically is or is related to. If one is to hold onto joy in this way one must be resilient against forces that seek to steal it, decrease it, or trick one into trading it for something else. Resilience is “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”[4] This phenomenon is essential to both virtue and joy since joy is what makes virtue appealing (without reference to religiosity), and joy is what would be consistently undermined by one’s ignorance, regrets, living environment, etc. It would seem that without resilience, joy is not possible. Without resilience, the psychological disposition that makes what Christians call fortitude possible, one is not able to live morally, and thus with invincible joy.[5] Resilience “emerges when the individual adapts to the negativities caused by the risk situation and achieves positive results when the individual activates protective factors in the face of traumatic events.”[6] Therefore, virtue and joy are interdependent and stable, and momentary happiness/pleasure/ fleeting favorable realities are not what is psychologically meant by happiness or joy, but in fact, undermine it.

In conclusion, if we wish to be happy, we ought to pursue virtue, since we cannot always have the immediate kind of fleeting euphoria/mania. Often, what culture recommends is indulgence and not virtue. If we only seek out the fulfillment of our desires, fleeting realities, etc. to satisfy ourselves we will find ourselves not only unsatisfied but also likely unsatisfied with ourselves/who we have become. Popular sources claim to be credible and try to make us believe that they have the answers to our desires, however, they tend to be at odds with unbiased, peer-reviewed academic literature. Academic, peer-reviewed psychological research seems to affirm what society willfully disbelieves about virtue i.e., the Catholic magisterium’s, ancient philosophers', and medieval philosophers’ proposed way of life. This is especially true with regard to sexuality. Our joy does not come from what a company can offer or the indulgence of our immediate desires, but rather through enduring them as unsatisfied until we form ourselves in virtue. The ultimate good we desire ought to be attained, not traded for a lesser, fleeting good. Psychologically our happiness is not a proximate but a long-term matter, formed through resiliency to the misfortunes, evils, etc. of this life.


FN:

  1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 55, a. 2, at New Advent, www.newadvent.org.
  2. Fan Yang, Joshua Knobe and Yarrow Dunham, “Happiness Is From the Soul: The Nature and Origins of Our Happiness Concept,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 150, no. 2 (2021), 276.
  3. CCC, 2548.
  4. American Psychological Association, “Dictionary of Psychology: Resilience.” at American Psychological Association, 1 January 2020, at https://dictionary.apa.org
  5. CCC, 1808.
  6. Hasan Ulukan, and Mahmut Ulukan, “Investigation of the Relationship between Psychological Resilience, Patience and Happiness Levels of Physical Education Teachers,” International Journal of Educational Methodology 7, no. 2 (2021), 336.

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