
Contents
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1. The Beatific Vision 1. The Beatific Vision
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1.1 Knowledge of God 1.1 Knowledge of God
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1.2 The Nature of our Ultimate End 1.2 The Nature of our Ultimate End
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1.3 Our Resurrected Bodies 1.3 Our Resurrected Bodies
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2. Imperfect Happiness and the All-Sufficiency Thesis 2. Imperfect Happiness and the All-Sufficiency Thesis
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3. The Cost of Perfect Happiness 3. The Cost of Perfect Happiness
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3.1 Cost for Epistemology 3.1 Cost for Epistemology
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3.2 Cost for Ethics 3.2 Cost for Ethics
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3.3 Cost for Philosophical Anthropology 3.3 Cost for Philosophical Anthropology
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4. Conclusion 4. Conclusion
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12 Aquinas’s Shiny Happy People: Perfect Happiness and the Limits of Human Nature
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Published:February 2015
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Abstract
Thomas Aquinas claims that perfect happiness—the beatific vision—is a state in which human beings are joined to God in a never-ending act of contemplation of the divine essence. This state involves both the fulfillment of the human drive for knowledge and the satisfaction of our will’s search for the good. The sort of knowledge of God’s essence that would let our wills rest completely, however, is not something human beings could ever achieve on their own. God must both give us the divine essence as an object of contemplation and illuminate our intellects so they are able to grasp what they see. This chapter argues that Aquinas’s account of the beatific vision represents less a fulfillment of human nature than a transcendence of that nature—and that what’s transcended is not incidental. In particular, Aquinas’s emphasis on the radical all-sufficiency of the beatific vision leaves him without an integral role for the body to play in our final end. For those of us attracted to radical hylomorphism and its emphasis on the importance of embodiment, perfect happiness comes at a significant price.
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