Reading Group
1:00pm – 2:00pm, January 30; February 6, 20, & 27; March 6
All undergraduate and graduate students are warmly welcome.
Aquinas on Happiness
Inevitably, inescapably, all of us seek happiness. But, alas, we often seek it in all the wrong places: material success, the acclaim of others, pleasure… And yet, in our age we tend to think that the question of happiness is ultimately subjective: “to each his own,” and we leave it at that. This reading group will explore St. Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical claims and arguments on these and related issues. Happiness, it turns out, is something you can be wrong about, claims Thomas: you can think you’re happy and be wrong. So what makes for enduring happiness? Can we be happy in this life? “Yes and no,” Aquinas will argue. Join us as we read through selections from Aquinas’ treatise on happiness from the Summa Theologiae. No advance preparation required.
Led by Dr. Victor Saenz
