QuestionsWhat is happiness?False goods and true happiness: God
What is happiness?In God

False goods and true happiness: God

The review of false goods; "God is happiness itself"

Boèce c. 480 · c. 524God sees everything in an eternal present: knowing what we will do does not force us to do it.
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What it claims

Perfect happiness is found in God, the supreme good, and one must acknowledge that God is happiness itself.

Why

Wealth, honours, power, fame and pleasure each offer only a piece of happiness, never the whole: the perfect good lies elsewhere.

The same idea through history
Aristotle330 BCNicomachean Ethics, I, 5: wealth is evidently not the good we seek, since it is merely useful, for the sake of something else. Aristotle also reviews the ways of life (pleasure, honour), but he does not conclude that happiness is God.
Thomas Aquinas1271Thomas takes up Boethius' definition and his review of false goods (wealth, honours, fame, power, pleasure) in the Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 2, but he distinguishes the God who fulfils from the happiness that is the attaining of God.
In short

"False goods and true happiness: God" is an argument by Boèce (Consolation of Philosophy, III, prose 2 to 10) on the question "What is happiness?" (answer: in god). Its claim: Perfect happiness is found in God, the supreme good, and one must acknowledge that God is happiness itself. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P7). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Consolation of Philosophy, III, prose 2 to 10
Valid with an implicit premise

Boethius, condemned to death, wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in prison. In book III, Philosophy shows him that all humans seek happiness, but by misleading paths: wealth, honours, power, fame, pleasure. Each promises something (lacking nothing, being respected, being powerful, being known, being joyful) and delivers only a fragment, often a fragile one. Yet these promises are only names of one single thing, the perfect good. And this perfect good can be found only in what is most perfect: God. Boethius' originality lies in these two ideas: happiness is one, and God does not merely have happiness, he is happiness.

P1Happiness is the perfect good: whoever has it can lack nothing further, since it gathers all goods in itself. If anything were missing, it would not be the supreme good.
P2Wealth does not make one self-sufficient: the rich still feel hunger, can be robbed, and need protection.
P3Offices do not bring true respect: they do not make anyone virtuous, they are worth only what opinion gives them, and they change with times and places.
P4Power does not bring security: kings live in fear, and their friends fall with them.
P5Fame adds nothing to the wise, and it stops at borders: a man glorious here is unknown elsewhere.
P6Bodily pleasures are followed by repentance and pain. If pleasure made happiness, the beasts would be happy.
P7 · implicit premisePerfect happiness lies either in one of these five goods or outside mortal things, in God. Boethius calls them "shadows of the true good": none can give independence, power, respect, renown and joy all together.
P8Perfect happiness exists: everything imperfect is imperfect through lacking some perfection, and nature starts from the perfect before falling away.
Therefore perfect happiness is found in God, the supreme good, and one must acknowledge that God is happiness itself.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P7, the computer finds a world where perfect happiness exists, but somewhere other than in these five goods and without being God: for instance in a life of virtue or knowledge. The other premises hold, the conclusion does not.
The argument is valid with P7. Premises P2 to P6 each say that a false good leaves something to be desired; with P1, none can be perfect happiness. P8 says a perfect happiness exists. P7 says that, if it exists, it is in one of these five goods or in God: God remains. The objections target P7 (are there other candidates?) and the meaning of "is" in the conclusion.
Analogy. Someone looks for a lost key in five rooms of the house and finds it in none; they searched everywhere, yet they know it exists. Boethius does the same: he rules out five places where people look for happiness, then says where it is.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Aristotle 330 BC · attacks the conclusion

The word "good" is said in as many ways as "being": of God and of reason, of the virtues, of what is moderate, of the useful, of the right moment. So it is not something single, common and universal. There is no one Good of which all good things would be pieces.

a defender replies
B
Boethius defender of the argument
Boethius replies that there cannot be two supreme goods differing from each other: if one lacks what the other has, neither is perfect. So partial "happinesses" are only fragments of one supreme good, which is God.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement is old and concerns the unity of the good. Aristotle admits a supreme good for human action, but not one Good across all categories. Boethius, a Platonist, holds unity to be necessary. This point is still debated.
E
Epicurus 300 BC · attacks premise 6

Pleasure is the beginning and end of the blessed life: it is our first and native good, the rule by which we judge every other good.

a defender replies
B
Boethius defender of the argument
Boethius replies that the desire for pleasure is full of uneasiness and its satisfaction followed by repentance. If bodily pleasure made happiness, the beasts would be happy.
E
Epicurus
Epicurus had already set this reading aside: he speaks neither of the pleasures of the prodigal nor of sensual enjoyment, but of the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. That pleasure leaves no repentance.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Boethius mostly criticises violent bodily pleasure, which Epicurus also sets aside. A real divergence remains: is untroubled pleasure the supreme good (Epicurus) or a fragment of the good (Boethius)? No widely accepted answer.
Thomas Aquinas 1271 · attacks the conclusion

Thomas accepts that the good which fulfils man is God, but he distinguishes two senses of the word "end". By its object, happiness is uncreated: it is God. But by its essence, it is something created in us: the attaining or enjoyment of God. So human happiness is not God himself.

a defender replies
B
Boethius defender of the argument
Boethius draws a corollary himself: men become happy by acquiring happiness, and since happiness is Godship itself, they become happy by acquiring Godship. So every happy man is a god, not by nature (God is one only), but by participation.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the difference is as much one of vocabulary as of substance. Thomas wants to separate the Creator from the state of the happy creature; Boethius wants to say happiness is not something outside God. Both agree on the object of happiness.