Happiness and Contemplation by Josef Pieper

Author:Josef Pieper [Pieper, Josef]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Catholicism, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781890318314
Google: J25QngEACAAJ
Publisher: St. Augustines Press
Published: 1998-11-14T22:00:00+00:00

VIII

But is not all this in the end "intellectualism," an overvaluing of the part that cognition plays in the whole of existence? Has not the importance of the will and of love been suppressed or misinterpreted? To answer these questions we must "grasp the objects purely," as Goethe put it, and think the arguments through in logical order.

The kernel of willing and loving is affirmation. And there are, Thomas says,114 fundamentally only two ways in which this affirmation is expressed: in yearning and in joy. Yearning is desire, craving, striving for, seeking, motus ad finem — such is the expression of love before the beloved object has become a possession. Joy is rapture, delight, bliss, fruitio, delectation — such is the expression of love which has already obtained the beloved object. Yet obviously this obtaining does not take place in either manner, neither in desiring nor in joy. How can this be denied? We do not desire the desiring. What is ultimately sought by the will cannot itself be an act of will115 — because all motion seeks rest116 (and rest is not in willing but in knowing117). Always and necessarily, that which is sought and loved becomes present to the will and is obtained by the will through something other than an act of will and of love — so we read in the Summa Theologica.118 This "other," however — we already know the answer — this other is cognition.

To be sure, cognition itself has many modes and degrees. It is clear that we do not obtain reality, do not partake of it, merely by awareness, simply by "knowing about something"; we do not even obtain it by logically arriving at a conclusion. Reality is the prize solely of the highest form of cognition, and that is: seeing, intuition, contemplation. We shall have more to say of this later. But in any case, seeing too is "an act of the intellect." And so it remains unshakably valid that possession of what we love takes place for us through cognition.

It would seem that language has basically only one word to describe what actually happens when we "realize" the presence of another person. That word is "seeing." We have him before our eyes, we see him. All other words are either spatial metaphors (nearness, closeness) or derive from the sense of touch (tangibility, being at hand, being in contact). That is to say, they refer to externalities. A recent account of life in prisoner-of-war camps sets down a conversation between two prisoners lying on their cots who ask one another and themselves what it really is that makes men happy. Their answer is: Being happy is equivalent to being together with those we love.119 There is no doubt that for these men "being together" could mean only one thing: to see their loved ones again.

We may also recall here the Biblical phraseology in which the union of man and woman is referred to as a mutual "knowing."120 This use of the word is anything but a euphemism.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.