Pints With Aquinas - SPOT THE DIFFERENCE: Pleasure, Joy, and Happiness! | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

A lot of people differentiate between Joy, Happiness, and Beatitude. So it can be helpful to define and understand these terms. Father, talks about how each of those realities correspond to our salvation and holiness. Support The Show: https://mattfradd.locals.com 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I am a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Ponce of the Aquinas. So a lot of folks will make distinctions between joy, happiness, pleasure, beatitude, delight, and other things besides. And it can be difficult to determine what each term means and how each of those realities correspond to our human flourishing and ultimately our human salvation.

So I thought that I would set before you some of the terminology and some of the concepts of St. Thomas Aquinas so that way we could make better sense of our pursuit of God and our pursuit of happiness. Here we go. Okay, so for St. Thomas, whenever we talk about some kind of realization or some kind of fulfillment, we're talking about something that follows upon human love. Okay, so you recognize something, you love love that something you go out towards that something and then you possess That something and when you possess that something it's going to cause some kind of enjoyment or some kind of fulfillment

But the quality of the enjoyment or the fulfillment will be proportionate to the type of love on which it follows Okay, so if you're like somewhat abstract clear it up for me Here we go. We as human beings our Body soul composites that is to say that we are made up of both body and soul We're not like a body with a soul or a soul with a body or an in sold bodies or embodied souls We're just one thing. All right But as this one thing we we engage with our environment, or we engage with our reality in various ways.

All right, so the kind of most basic way in which we engage is by sense appetite. All right, so something comes in through your senses, or you can think of your five external senses. So sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and then your four internal senses. Common sense, imagination, memorative sense, and cogitative sense. You don't have to go into all that. But like basically sense cognition is the way that we

register reality and then sense appitition is how we go out towards reality. And we talk about sense love, we're just talking about a basic recognition or a basic appreciation that something out there in the sensible world corresponds to me, or that something out there in the sensible world perfects me. And so sense appetite is what goes out to assimilate or to take hold of that sense good. And so when we do that, like let's say that you're looking around and you see Chex Muddy Buddies and you're like, holy smokes, that looks delicious because there are Chex and then you have like a sweet mixture

of chocolate and peanut butter that you heat up and then coat those Chex in and then you powder it all in powdered sugar and it's just exotically delicious and the only way in which to stop eating Chex Muddy Buddies is by passing out. So you look out there in the world, you see Chex Muddy Buddies and it causes in you a certain love because you're like, wow. So St. Thomas says that love is just a kind of recognition of what corresponds to me or

what perfects me and then it might be desire as you move towards the thing and then when you take the thing in and enjoy the thing, or are satisfied, fulfilled by the thing, we call that pleasure. All right, so the word that St. Thomas uses is delectation, delectatio, but we can think about that as basically pleasure. So pleasure is the delight that we experience

when we engage with some sense good that corresponds to us or that perfects us. Okay, so in this world, we shouldn't think about pleasure as negative or we shouldn't think about pleasure as culpable, right, because it's just part of living. It's just part of living as a bodily being. All right, so pleasure's built in, it's baked in. God made us such, He gave us a nature such that when we engage with various sense goods which correspond to us, which perfect us, that we would derive pleasure from it. Okay? So that's the most kind

of basic. Now, St. Thomas will say that in this kind of category of delights, we've also got higher delights, which we would call joys. All right? And he has a different word for that, gaudium. The idea here is that we're not just bodies, we're also souls. So in addition to sense cognition from which follows sense appetite, we also have intellectual cognition from which follows intellectual appetite. And in St. Thomas' estimation, this is largely a matter of choice. Okay, so in addition to these various things that we recognize immediately is good for us at a sense level, like, I want to keep existing, or, you know, like food, drink, sexual intercourse, those are things that appeal kind of immediately.

There are also higher order goods that take us some thinking through in order to appreciate fully. So that'd be like knowing the truth about God, or living peaceably in society, or, I don't know, shunning ignorance, avoiding offending those with whom you live. These are types of things that St. Thomas lists. All right, so those things, they register intellectually, but then we go out towards them volitionally. All right, that is to say, we make choices for them.

We try to build our lives or construct our lives on the basis of them. All right, so there's some kind of intellectual love that we might refer to as delexio. All right, so there's some kind of intellectual love that we might refer to as delexio. All right, so there's some kind of intellectual love whereby we recognize things and we kind of cognize things as good for us. All right, and that begets a certain desire and that desire kind of crystallizes in what we would call joy. All right, so with this desire I then choose for the thing, I build my life on the basis of the thing, and then I experience a modicum of joy. All right, so with this desire, I then choose for the thing, I build my life on the basis of the

thing, and then I experience a modicum of joy. All right, so then let's move beyond the example of Czech's Muddy Buddies, and then let's talk about worship. Okay, so maybe you converted to the faith, and let's say previously you lived a life of kind of whatever atheism or agnosticism, and that was profoundly lonely and anxious and sad or whatever else. But then you felt yourself drawn in by a community or by the promise of a welcoming space or worshipful space, and then you found yourself posing your questions to the Most High God, and you found that while he might not have answered in kind of clear and unambiguous terms, yet you felt like

those answers were being supplied in a deeper way or in a richer way, and then you found yourself like kind of distancing yourself from various habits or tendencies which might have been destructive and drawing closer to the worship of God. And so it's like you see in this conversation with God, this worship of God, a good for you, but it's something that, you know, it goes beyond animal recognition, it goes beyond animal appreciation, it's something that's peculiar to us as human beings as, you know, like as informed by souls of an intellectual nature, of an immortal and immaterial nature. And so, we're capable of knowing and of loving, we're made to the image and likeness of God, all right, but that affords a higher joy. And St. Gregory the Great in one of

his homilies, he makes a distinction between like material goods and spiritual or immaterial goods. We could say like bodily goods and spiritual goods in this way. He says with bodily goods, you know, they pay out quite significantly at the outset, but then they tend to depreciate, you know. So when you eat Czechs muddy buddies like an absolute monster, you feel great about it for a while, but then gradually you find it to be a little cloying, even overwhelming, you know, saddening. And so you'll distance yourself from overconsumption and you regulate your intake and you might even give it up at various times like

liturgical seasons. Whereas with spiritual goods, he says, at the outset they're kind of forbidding, they're super difficult, but we find that when we engage with them over the course of a life and become habituated to them, that they become more delightful, that they actually have a richer payout in latter times by comparison to former times. Does that make us like spiritual hedonists? We're just here for the payout? No. We seek to be engrossed by the goods themselves and then we come to discover that there's a delight, a tendon thereupon, or that there's a delight which follows from our engagement with them. So it's like you get so engrossed with God and you find there's a delight attendant thereupon or that there's a delight which follows from our engagement

with them. So it's like you get so engrossed with God and you find that it's wonderful, right? It's delightful. Now, you might in part be motivated by that wonder and delight, but you know that oughtn't lead and I think that we need not worry about that leading because God made us this way and he understands fully and entirely that we're going to be partially motivated by enjoyment. Okay so we've got this sense cognition, sense appetition, which gives rise to a kind of sense pleasure which we called pleasure. And then we've got this intellectual cognition and this intellectual appetition or that is to say we've got this understanding and choice which gives rise to a kind of delight that we've

called joy. Okay, so pleasure and joy. But we recognize that these are kind of discrete instances or particular instances and what we want is ultimately something that that holy and entirely is enjoyable, that is holy and entirely enjoyable, or that satisfies, fulfills us in a perfect way. And this, like the language that St. Thomas reserves for this thing is beatitude. Okay, so he'll talk about objective and subject to beatitude. That is to say, what we ultimately want in beatitude is we want God. Because we are this type of thing, body and soul, because we are capable of knowing and loving, we'll never be

satisfied with this sense good or with this intelligible good until such time as we arrive at the ultimate horizon as the fullness of goodness. That is to say, at goodness itself, who is God? All right? So we want to know the truth, we want to love the good, all right? And we find them in God. All right? So we are broken open to a kind of infinite truth, the kind of infinite goodness which we experience or which we ultimately embrace, please God, in the vision of heaven which we refer to as beatitude. So God is object to beatitude and then we, in our enjoyment of it, come to an experience of subject to beatitude. Alright, so that'd be like our kind of participation in God or our kind of

sharing in God. And so when we talk about pleasure and when we talk about joy we want to situate them against the backdrop of beatitude. Like what types of pleasures are we engaging with? What types of joys are we entertaining? And how do they ultimately contribute to this plenary abundant fulfillment and satisfaction of our knowledge and love of God which we can never lose, which can never be diminished in heaven but which we have already begun to experience here on earth so I think about beatitudes like the backstop against which we are judging particular pleasures and particular delights and so like this

love of charity which God pours into our hearts, gives us a new horizon whereby we are able to perceive and move towards this supernatural beatitude, which is the ultimate fulfillment of all human beings, to which we are all called because we read, God desires that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. And so then I think that what we mean by happiness is the type of like sense that we have or appreciation perception of our relative state. So we're engaging with pleasures, we're engaging with joys, we're doing so with an eye towards beatitude, and I think that we're happy when our pleasures and joys are proportioned to, are adjusted to, that ultimate pursuit and that ultimate embrace. That sounds kind of technical or perhaps overly complicated, overly complex, maybe that's just something that I do with all

concepts or with all terms. Lord save me from my own convoluted descriptions. Nevertheless, what I think that I mean by happiness is something along the lines of fit. Like who am I and what am I for? Well, I have the conviction, right? I have the certainty, the confidence that I am where I need to be, that I'm doing what I need to do. not just at the level of like duty, obligation, responsibility, but in the sense of like my life is characterized by love, my life is trained on a delight, you know, a pleasure, a joy, and ultimately a beatitude. And it's against that beatitude, against the backdrop of that beatitude that I reason, that I judge, that my particular pursuits are proportioned,

they're well adjusted, that I am where I ought to be, that I'm doing what I ought to do. And so I think that we can describe happiness largely in terms of fit. So you'll see here that this kind of helps us to situate positive emotions and negative emotions. Alright, like positive emotions are going to come and go, negative emotions are going to come and go. Maybe over the course of our life we get more emotionally and psychologically balanced or we get more emotionally and psychologically proportioned adjusted to the love that lies in store. But I think that like, yeah, there's going to be some ups and downs. And I don't

think that we need to attribute too terribly much importance to that, provided that we're attaining to those sense pleasures, to those intelligible joys, all with an eye towards the Beatitude, which lies in store, with a real sense and conviction that we are where we need to be, that we're doing what we need to do, that we ultimately fit. Because, you know, it's been said or it's been quoted that man can put up with any how provided that he has a why for his actions. And so when we think about pleasures and joys, beatitudes and ultimately happiness, or maybe not ultimately happy, when we think about happiness, we're trying to really

think of our how in light of our why. And as we get purchase on the meaning of our lives, the purpose of our lives, we also get purchase on the daily comings and goings, the kind of means or methods that we adopt for living our lives well and happily. So what I mean by pleasure is the experience of some sense good. What I mean by joy is the experience of some intelligible good. What I mean by beatitude is God and our enjoyment of God, which ultimately, you know, is satisfied or fulfilled in heaven, but which we can begin to experience here on earth. And what I mean by happiness is how everything fits together. You know, the pursuit of pleasures, the pursuit of joys.

I mean, like the pursuit of loves, both sensible and intelligible, against the backdrop of a beatitude whereby I have a sense that I am where I need to be, that I'm doing what I need to do, more or less all with like a kind of trust that God will make it more so, provided only that we consent to and cooperate with His offer of Himself, with his offer of grace. So I hope that that's helpful for you in thinking about your own life and conceiving of your own pursuits. This is Pons of the Quinness.

If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, get sweet email updates when other things come out. Also I contribute to a podcast called God's Planting where you have lots of conversations with four other Dominican friars about themes just like these. And then I wrote a book, it's called Prudence, Choose Confidently, Live Boldly, and the first chapter is called Am I Happy? And it treats of just these things. So maybe you can find like a sweet Google preview and then consider acquiring it for

your voluminous library. Alright squad, know my prayers for you, please pray for me, I look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines of the Quinas.