Happiness and Suffering

I. Introduction

How can the human desire for happiness be reconciled to the reality of suffering in the world? Our best efforts to live a good and pleasant life often seem to be frustrated by fate and hindered by our friends. This is a world of trouble, tragedy, and confusion.

The classical philosophers wanted to construct a state that would diminish the pains of life and allow people to pursue development in the direction of what is good, both ultimately, and specific to their natures as human beings. Central to this pursuit was the idea of the polis; the city-state, the best kind of community, the sphere in which man could best fulfill his humanity and live a happy and blessed life.

Christianity added another dimension to the idea of happiness, with concepts that may at times seem in conflict with classical values. The early Christians endured persecution, choosing even to be alienated from the natural bonds of the state, family, and friendship, for the sake of a greater community, a spiritual family, and a higher citizenship. They embraced even the destruction of their bodies for the sake of the Body of Christ and the mystical communion of the saints.

II. The Classical Understanding of Happiness

In the classical ideal, happiness of a city, and happiness of a person, aims at the same thing. The happiness of each person naturally tends toward the happiness of the whole group, while in an unhappy city, it is difficult for any person to pursue those things that lead to happiness. According to Aristotle, “The happy city-state is the one that is best and acts nobly” (P 1323b 30), just as the happy man is the one in whom internal virtue and virtuous action meet in a life well lived.

While for Aristotle no man, perhaps, can be blessedly happy—this would require him to possess all virtues, and all the external goods necessary to act upon those virtues, as well as a life free of trouble, the most ideal social position, and sons who bring honor to his name—yet happiness is not produced by external goods, but by internal virtues. Some of these virtues he describes. For instance, the virtuous man possesses the virtue of Truth. He does not perjure or deceive, but is honest in his dealings and character. He is just, both avoiding crime and not permitting others to commit crime (L V 730). This is an example of how virtue is expressed through action. Without living a good and leisured life, it is impossible for a man to act in accordance with justice, or to take an interest in the actions of others. Other qualities of a virtuous man include self-control, good judgment, and generosity. Plato even advocates the use of wine to develop in young men the virtues of self-control and good judgment, for in order to exercise these virtues one must know what are his natural abilities and limitations. It goes without saying that one cannot practice generosity without goods to bestow, or without people upon whom to bestow them.

The circumstances in which these virtues are most readily developed show that a long life and a prosperous one offers the best chance of allowing this kind of virtuous life. The argument for this is important: For Aristotle, a life of hardship is not conducive to the development of virtue. He says “an excellent man is the sort of man whose virtue makes unqualifiedly good things good for him” (P 1332a 22). This shows that external goods and ills are not valued in relation to their effect on virtue, but are good or evil in themselves. This is not a Pollyanna universe, in which anything at all can be for the best. An evil man may put things to evil use, but the things themselves do not become evil. Conversely, a good man may pursue good even in evil circumstances, but clearly, it would be better for evil circumstances not to exist.

Plato differs on this point in his claim that some things we regard as natural goods are not good at all if they do not tend toward virtue. He suggests that the external goods can be either helpful or harmful, depending on the man to whom they are applied. “Seeing, hearing, sensation, and simply being alive, are great evils, if in spite of having all these so-called good things a man gains immortality without justice and virtue in general” (L II 661). So the crucial point for classical political theory, and a point in which it differs greatly from liberal political theory, is that the pursuit of happiness does not simply refer to the pursuit of property. Property, to a tyrannical soul, is an inducement to evil, whereas for the just soul it can be a means of living a blessed life. Property is to be protected, not for its own sake, but so that it may be used to pursue the end of a life well lived. “The best life,” Aristotle writes, “both for individuals separately and for city-states collectively, is a life of virtue sufficiently equipped with the resources needed to take part in virtuous action” (P. 1323b 40). A man cannot be good and virtuous without the ability to act virtuously, and so the life in which a man possesses both the internal motivators and the external abilities to act virtuously, will be the most blessed life.

Even if the external goods are in fact “unqualifiedly” good in themselves, they are not the ultimate good at which human life aims, and so they are not sought as ends, but as means to an end, which end (for Aristotle) is virtue fully realized. As a result, a virtuous man is one who acquires goods in moderation. “A happy life for human beings,” he writes, “whether it consists in pleasure or virtue or both, is possessed more often by those who have cultivated their characters and minds to an excessive degree,[1]but have been moderate in their acquisition of external goods” (P 1323a 39). The virtuous man experiences both pleasures and pains in moderation, where the man of appetite experiences both in excess. The concept of moderation is of course central to Aristotle’s ethics.

III. Happiness in the Iliad

Reading the Iliad with a view to comparing the virtues of Achilles and Hector will reveal some of the differences between the best kind of soul and an inferior type. Achilles’ virtues blaze in combat, but his character off the field of battle is petulant and mercurial. He hungers after honor and glory, choosing them over the best kind of life, and in the end is glorious, but dishonorable. Hector, by contrast to Achilles, appears as blessed as a god, notwithstanding his fall.[2]

Achilles the warrior cannot be blessedly happy because his virtues are displayed best only in the context of war. War brings out manly courage, a sense of justice, and temperance dictated by survival (P 1334a 18). But it is most virtuous to hold these same virtues in peacetime, for leisured virtue is the most difficult to achieve. War is an unnatural state. It is against the way things ought to be in a good world, the kind of world the classical philosophers hope to establish. If a blessedly happy state is without war, and the end of a blessed state and of a blessed man is the same, it follows that the perfect man would not require war to display his excellence. This is why Hector is far superior in virtue to Achilles, and so, happier in the sense that matters.

Is Hector happy, though? Possibly not by the classical measure. Is any character in the Iliad happy? The Iliad is a tragedy. It is the tragedy of Troy, personified in King Priam, who must with his aged eyes witness the fateful folly of his son Paris, the death of his noble son Hector, and the doom of his city and himself, who even in life is reduced to less than nothing, being forced to beg Hector’s body at the knees of cruel Achilles. Aristotle says no one would claim that Priam is blessedly happy (NE 1100a 9). The Iliad is also and even more prominently the tragedy of Achilles himself, who desires happiness but knows he will never see it, and that all he can expect is glory and an early death. Moreover, he forfeits all honor for his glorious deeds by his shameful treatment of Hector’s body. While the Trojans are not aware of their doom, Achilles knows his fate. The Iliad uses this dramatic irony repeatedly. The reader knows that Troy is fated to fall, but the Trojans and Hector do not. They may experience premonitions or doubts, but they do not know the will of the gods. Is it possible that because of their lack of knowledge Hector and the Trojans are able to pursue virtue and protect the city?

These speculations aside, Aristotle is clear that a life well lived is one not disturbed by calamity—one in which pain does not outweigh pleasure. It is possible for a person at one time in his life to think himself happy, but is he so? Aristotle argues that one’s entire life must be reviewed in order to determine whether he is happy or not. He writes, “But we must add ‘in a complete life.’ For one swallow does not make a spring, nor does one sunny day; similarly, one day or a short time does not make a man blessed and happy” (NE 1098a 18). Translator Martin Ostwald’s gloss on this passage suggests a difference “between makarios, ‘blessed’ or ‘supremely happy,’ and eudaimōn, ‘happy.’ He characterizes makarios as “happiness insofar as it is god-given,” but eudaimōn is “happiness as attained by man through his own efforts” (NE 1098a 19 footnote). This eudaimōn, then, is the end to which a man ought to develop virtue, for he cannot very well expect the blessings of the gods, at least, not such capricious gods as Homer describes. So perhaps we cannot call Hector happy after all, for although has been given many good things, and developed in himself the virtues tending toward happiness (in spades), he meets an untimely end at the point of Achilles’ lance.

IV. A Christian Appreciation of Suffering

Contrary to the Greek belief, even if external goods must be present in order to live a virtuous and happy life, these goods need not always comprise peace, long life, or safety. It is possible for hardship to be an opportunity to exercise or even to develop internal virtues that were never apparent until the hardship. [3] This concept feeds into the Christian belief in the value of suffering. Suffering for the Christian is not evil and does not corrupt virtue but rather refines and purifies it. Like prosperity, it is good for the virtuous man and evil for the man whose only desire is the pursuit of pleasure. More significantly, though, suffering has a sacramental aspect, in that Christians can embrace suffering for the sake of Christ just as he humbled himself for our sake.

That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more just. [4]

The presence of evil in the world reveals imperfection. The difference between the Christian understanding of evil and Aristotle’s concept is that while both agree that in a perfect world suffering would not exist, Christians understand that the world cannot be completely rid of it. It is likely that we would not want to. The mystery of the Gospel involves God Himself taking on human flesh and experiencing suffering on behalf of men. This concept would have horrified the ancients (or, who knows, perhaps they would have been amazed and delighted!). In any case, the Incarnation alters our presuppositions about the perfectibility of the present world, and especially about the inherent evil of suffering. For surely, if God, who is perfect, and most deserves to be called “blessedly happy,” actually gave himself up and suffered as one of us, for us, then suffering cannot be evil in itself; if it is an evil, there must be a greater evil behind it. This evil is sin. It proceeds not from God at all, but from ourselves, and is the cause of all subsequent evils. But can anything but evil arise from such a great evil as sin? The question is well founded. Shall we “do evil, that good may come?” God forbid. But the beauty of Christ’s sacrifice is that it takes evil and turns it into good. At Creation God made good things out of nothing, but at the Cross He made good things out of evil things. This act of redemptive suffering has given hope for the renewal of all things in the world to come.

V. Coda

At this point we must leave Aristotle behind. He has directed us toward wisdom so far, but, like Dante’s Virgil, there is a level to which he cannot ascend, though his reasoning still guides our minds. The Incarnation raises a new question we must answer. If suffering is no longer evil, but, given a fallen world and our current imperfect state, a good and a necessary element of human existence, then what is it that we are to avoid? And if pain is no longer naturally evil, can pleasure be naturally good? Plato holds that “you oblige your poets to say that the good man, because he is temperate and just, enjoys good fortune and is happy, no matter whether he is big and strong, or small and weak, or rich, or poor” (L II 660). Surely, there cannot be an infallible connection between justice and good fortune when Christ the All-Good, All-Just came into the world for the purpose of not enjoying good fortune? And when Plato says that “the noblest life…excels in providing what we all seek: a predominance of pleasure over pain throughout our lives” (LV 732-3), he cannot see the one who was “despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” To accept his argument would be to despise “the noble army of martyrs,” and the sufferings of the people of God from the beginning of time, “from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zechariah son of Barachias” (Matt. 23:35).

Rachel Bespaloff wrote, “The Bible and the Iliad always encompass our experience at its richest and most contradictory” (War and the Iliad, 87). It is the contradiction between Hector’s justice and Hector’s suffering that we find most appealing in the Iliad. Achilles arouses our pity because we understand that he is like us in his frustration and inner conflict, his feeble struggles against fate. But we admire Hector because he is what we want to become. We embrace the contradiction of Hector’s greatness and suffering because we know that it is real. It is not imagined or ideal; we have seen it happen.

It is true, as Plato says, that “the argument that does not drive a wedge between ‘pleasant’ on the one hand and ‘just’ and ‘fine’ and ‘good’ on the other, even if it achieves nothing else, will do something to persuade a man to live a just and pious life” (Laws II.663). But is this kind of argument honest, considering that Jesus promised his followers trouble in the world?The Christian does not seek a blessed life in this world. He seeks the blessedness of the world to come, a city whose foundation is Christ.

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[1] It seems out of character for Aristotle to refer to an excess of virtue—this must be hyperbole. If virtue is the good at which a man aims, then it should be impossible to extend virtue beyond the bounds of wisdom. So this ought to be read, “To a very high degree.”

 

[2] It is quite possible that Aristotle would not regard Hector as blessed because of his eventual downfall. However, he was courageous and honorable, expressing proper kinds of virtue even in death. It is significant that Aristotle singles out Priam, not Hector, when in the Ethics he gives an example of a person who could never be called happy.

 

[3] Perhaps a similar principle of testing underlies Plato’s use of wine to develop self-control and temperance.

 

[4] George Herbert, “Easter” from The Temple.