Personal Thoughts on Developing a Value Framework and Living a Life of Meaning

Stephen Alexander Beach

(1378 Words) 

Here is the second to last post in the series on happiness in Aquinas. I have written about pleasure, money, power, and honor previously. All of these, while not being bad in and of themselves, are not the chief good for which human being seek. Rather, Aquinas will make the case that we seek the divine essence above all. And yet, the lower goods should not be shunned altogether, but rather if we develop a framework of values can be experienced in the right proportion to the chief good. As Aristotle says: "Thus it is possible to go too far, or not to go far enough, with respect to fear, courage, desire, anger, pity, and pleasure and pain generally, and the excess and the deficiency are both wrong. But to experience these emotions at the right times and on the right occasions and towards the right persons and for the right causes and in the right manner is the mean or the supreme good, which is characteristic of virtue." 1

An important point to begin with is that when we act we act for a twofold end. There is the good thing itself, and then there is the effect of obtaining the good thing, resulting in some level of happiness. And not all goods are equal. Some are more perfect in themselves, and thus will consequently bring about a happier effect when we obtain them. Now Aquinas holds that God is the chief good above all, and by which we will obtain the chief happiness. There is a technical reason behind him saying this. One of the immutable laws of the universe is that "nemo dat quod non habet" or "something cannot give what it doesn't have." In other words, every effect must preexist in its cause, meaning that all the goods of this world most come from God as their source and creator. This likewise means that God is the supreme Good and author of all that is good. Every good thing exists in God in an infinitely elevated way. 2

Now one might object that one does not feel supreme happiness when they go to Mass or go to pray. And this is because, as Aquinas points out, we do not just desire to know that God Exists, but we desire to know God in his very essence. This, though, is impossible in this life as there is a barrier or veil between us and God. Rather, we are offered glimpses of God. We are offered an invitation to seek him as a lover pursuing their beloved, calling us to go father in our love. And so supreme happiness is not possible in this life. It is only possible once the veil has been torn back in death and we see God face to face. 3

And so it is still valid to properly enjoy the earthly pleasures has created since we are both body and soul. The key to this, though is Aristotle's notion of "eudaimonia". Literally meaning "good spirit", Aristotle coined this term to mean happiness in the sense of having the right balance of all the goods of life (similar to his teaching on virtue as the golden mean). One way to think about the correct proportion of goods in one's life is to build a value framework. Imagine something like a dart board which has a set of concentric circles, each one getting larger than the last and moving out from the bullseye. These circles represent the layers of one's personal identity. The very center would contain the core of our identity, or that which we value the most in life. The second ring, that which we value second most, and so on to the outer rings, which are goods things, but not essential to our identity. Now, if one imagined that these rings were made 3D and turned into a cone or pyramid, the top of the pyramid would be the center ring, and then down the pyramid for each successive ring. 

It could look something like this: 

                                                                God 

                                                        Family 

                                             Honor/Virtue

                                      Friends

                               Career/Success

                       Health/Money

               Fun/Recreation

Here we have created a value framework for ourselves in which we can see what we have identified as the chief good, and then from there the ordering of all other goods. This also helps us to see the proportion which should belong between them. Why is this necessary, one might ask? Well reality presents us with more information and more choices than we can ever possible process at any given second. Therefore, we must prioritize this information, ignoring most of it, and ordering that which is important to us so that we can make a choice and act in the world. 

Given that intrinsically evil acts contain no goodness, there is no proportion for them to be a part of our lives. From there we should order all things in pursuit of the chief good so that everything lower is done for the sake of the higher. When this proportion or balance is correctly achieved, one experiences eudaimonia. When we act out of line with out value framework, we sin and cause harm to ourselves and others. For example, while going on a vacation with friends is not a bad thing, what if someone neglected helping their mother recover from cancer surgery in order to go? That would be a disproportion of values, as family is higher than recreation, and yet we acted in the opposite order. 

And so by living through the lens of a clear framework of values, we live a life in which all of our actions take on meaning because each of them is ordered to something higher than itself. One key point to remember is that when it comes to morality is that Aquinas points out that individual human actions have a "species" to them. They are entities, so to speak. This is due to the fact that the person conceives of their action as having an essence or type to it. And so it is possible to classify and speak about our actions as categorizable things. For example, me typing right on my computer ... what is this act? Is it atoms interacting on that microscopic level of existence? Is the action a set of pixels on a computer screen being arranged in a particular order? Or is it the muscles of my fingers twitching? Or is it a blogger sharing his thoughts? In a certain sense it is all of these at once, but when it comes to how I am moving my way through the world, it is important that I conceive of my action at a certain level of abstraction. If I focus on the atoms moving around, then even the simplest act exceeds my mental capacity to comprehend, rendering my immobile. But if I conceive of this act as a blogger sharing his thoughts, then I can not only complete the action but I can also find meaning in this very human act of communication. 4

And so having a value framework which gives the proper species to our actions allows us to imbue them with meaning in a way that otherwise we could not. For example, if I work on a factory line making widgets, and I chose to conceive of my work as simply putting pieces together of widgets, I may be overwhelmed by its meaninglessness and monotony. Yet, if I conceive of this work as me providing for my wife and son and I choose to complete the work with them in mind, then the act takes on a new level of meaning. 

Now, it may be a bit of a complicated question regarding how some aspects of the hierarchy will, at times, need to be sacrificed for the sake of higher callings. For example, giving up sleep in order to achieve high grades in college. But this will have to be for another post. 

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1 - Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Bk II, Ch VI.

2 - Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. I-II Q2 - Whether Happiness is something uncreated? 

3 - Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. I-II Q3 - Whether Happiness Consists in the Vision of the Divine Essence?

4 - Jordan Peterson and Bishop Robert Barron discuss whether all people are drawn toward the good.