One of the perennial questions of human nature is the question of purpose, and finding and fulfilling that purpose is often believed to be essential to happiness and contentment.
While the personalization of finding one’s purpose may be a more recent phenomenon, the ancient writings of the philosopher Aristotle and his insights into human nature, human action, and human happiness may help shed light on this issue.
Everything Has a Purpose (Final Cause)
Aristotle saw in everything the presence of four causes, or the four reasons why something exists. These reasons consist of the material, formal, efficient, and final cause.
The material cause refers to the matter from which an object is made.
The formal cause is the form or structure that makes an object what it is. This includes both its physical shape and its defining features. Forms may be simple or complex, but they must consistently capture the object’s essential characteristics.
The efficient cause is the agent or process that brings the material and formal causes together.
The final cause is the end or purpose toward which an object is directed. It is discerned through observing how things typically and consistently behave. The study of final causes is called teleology.
Teleology plays a foundational role in scientific reasoning. Forming hypotheses depend on expectations about how objects will behave under certain conditions, and such expectations presuppose that natural things tend toward characteristic outcomes. For instance, one expects a flower to grow toward light because that is how flowers normally act. Even when the language of purpose is avoided, scientific conclusions routinely assume that objects behave in determinate ways under normal conditions – an implicit appeal to final causality.
Eudemonia (Happiness)
After establishing that every substance has a final cause, or purpose, Aristotle would then apply this logic to the substance of humanity. If humanity is a distinct substance in reality, then it must have a final cause. Aristotle recognizes this final cause of humanity as happiness, or eudemonia, in his “Nicomachean Ethics.” However, he also acknowledges that “happiness” must be further defined in order to provide concrete instruction.
Aristotle shows that eudemonia cannot consist merely of pleasure, wealth, or honor, but must be found in something that exists beyond the physical body. The happiness of eudemonia is found in the immaterial reality of goodness, of which happiness participates. Humans realize this goodness through their participation in good actions, which are called virtues. When a virtuous action is completed, i.e. making a wise decision, then that action participates in the virtue of prudence. This is where the virtue ethics system is derived.
Contemplation
Though Aristotle considered happiness as more than bodily pleasure, he did see happiness as consistent with that which is pleasing to the soul. Because the soul was considered greater than the body, the pleasure of the soul was also considered greater than the pleasure of the body. The act of virtue, Aristotle believed, is the greatest pleasurable activity for the soul, and the greatest virtue that the soul could participate in is the one that considered all of the virtues in their essence, namely, contemplation.
This provides a lot of freedom to each of us individually. While the contemplation of virtue is the universal final cause of humanity, every individual person will contemplate these virtues uniquely, which allows everyone to recognize and realize his or her own purpose and fulfill it to the best of his or her ability.
Christian Purpose
One’s purpose is to “know, love, and serve God,” which will enable us to “gain the happiness of heaven,” a classic Christian definition in the Baltimore Catechism says. Happiness in this definition means the same thing as eudemonia means in Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.” It is also the same meaning used in the famous instructions for Christian happiness, the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5:3-11.
Aristotle’s other action to which humans are called, contemplation, is realized when one seeks to know, love, and serve God. Contemplation is a deeper meditation on what and who God is, which comes from knowing what God has revealed. Christians see this revelation in Jesus, the Bible, and the Church. Love and service, for the Christian, are participations in God’s nature and will (see 1 John 4:8, 20).
Though Aristotle could never have realized the intimacy of relationship offered in Christianity nor the heights of contemplation and happiness possible, his natural abilities to reason till the soil for the seeds of the Gospel to take root. He recognized that everything, including humans, has a final cause of purpose. That purpose, because our soul is made to know and choose, is perfected in truth and goodness itself. The human person fulfills its purpose and finds happiness to the degree he contemplates, with his heart, soul, and strength, God’s perfect truth and goodness.
Mike Schramm is a husband and father of seven children. He teaches theology and philosophy at Aquinas High School and Viterbo University. You can find his writing at Busted Halo, Mere Orthodoxy, and the Voyage Comics Blog. He is also the managing editor of the Voyage Compass, an imprint of Voyage Comics and Publishing.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected].
