Common Good Eudemonism

COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.1 I. The problem of love and the problem of hope Ethical objections to Christianity in modernity have often been of two opposite (and seemingly contradictory) kinds; one kind of objection sees Christianity as being too altruistic, the other sees Christianity as too individualistic. In his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI discusses the first of these objections which he sees as arising in the Enlightenment and “grew progressively more radical” till it reaches a climax in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Nietzsche, Christianity’s ethics of selfless service to others is destructive of the drive towards power and self-assertion in which happiness consists. Christian love poisons the intoxicating drive of eros.2 But in his second encyclical, Pope Benedict discussed an opposite objection: Christian hope is too individualistic. He refers here to writers such as Jean Giono, who wrote, “The joy of Jesus can be personal. It can belong 1 Earlier versions of this paper were read at the conference The Common Good as a Common Project, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, University of Notre Dame, March 26th, 2017; the 25th Annual Roman Forum Summer Symposium, Setting Right a World Turned Upside Down: Transformation in Christ Versus a Sickness unto Death, Gardone Riviera, July 13th, 2017; at the International Theological Institute, Trumau, October 12th, 2017; and at Thomas Aquinas College, California, March 29th, 2019. My thanks to the organizers and participants on all four occasions for giving me the opportunity to present this paper, and for their insightful questions and comments. In particular, I would like to thank Rob Wyllie, John Rao, Timothy Kelly, Katherine Gardner, and Joseph Hattrup. An expanded version of this essay will be appearing in: Joshua Madden and Taylor Patrick O’Neill (eds.), She Orders All Things Sweetly: Sacra Doctrina and the Sapiential Unity of Theology (forthcoming). 2 Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est (Rome 2005), §3. 425 426 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. to a single man and he is saved. He is at peace … now and always, but he is alone. The isolation of this joy does not trouble him. On the contrary: he is the chosen one!”3 In other words, the Christian is selfish in his hope of a happiness in the next life, a hope which separates him from the hopes and fears of the society in which he lives. These two objections might be called “the problem of love” and “the problem of hope.” “The present-day crisis of faith,” Pope Benedict writes, “is essentially a crisis of Christian hope.”4 In order to overcome the present crisis it is therefore necessary to face the problem of hope straight on. Moreover, I believe that the problem of hope is intimately related the problem of love. Both problems must therefore be addressed. Pope Benedict himself gives very suggestive indications of how these problems can be solved. Other important insights have been given recently by biblical scholars such as John M.G. Barclay. Barclay shows how St. Paul’s understanding of gift-exchange can help to see the individual’s relation to corporate salvation as neither altruistic nor egotistic.5 In this essay I want to show how Thomism can make an important contribution to solving the problems of hope and of love. St. Thomas followed Aristotle in seeing ethics as eudemonistic, ordered to happiness. I will argue that St. Thomas’s eudemonism can best be understood as a “common good eudemonism.” Our happiness lies in the attainment of a common good that is infinitely greater than us, and to which we are ordered. Our happiness is, indeed, a common happiness shared with all who attain the common good. In order to show how St. Thomas’s common good eudemonism solves the problems of love and hope, I will first turn to an early and particularly clear formulation of the problem of love: that found in Martin Luther’s critique of Aristotle. I will then show how St. Thomas’s work enables us to see where Luther errs. 3 Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi (Rome 2007), §13. 4 Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, §17. 5 See: John M.G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2015). COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 427 II. Luther Against Aristotle6 In his Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation in 1520, Luther launches a violent attack on the universities of his time, because, in them “the blind, heathen teacher Aristotle rules far more than Christ.”7 The teachings of Aristotle are both false and unintelligible: [N]othing can be learned from [Aristotle] either about nature or the Spirit. Moreover, nobody has yet understood him, and many souls have been burdened with fruitless labor and study, at the cost of much precious time. … It grieves me to the quick that this damned, arrogant, villainous heathen has deluded and made fools of so many of the best Christians with his misleading writings. God has sent him as a plague upon us on account of our sins.8 Luther admits that Aristotle’s works on logic might have some utility,9 but he thinks the principal works, the Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, and Ethics, should be “completely discarded.”10 He emphasizes that he had himself studied Aristotle deeply, and understood him better than the most famous scholastic theologians: No one can accuse me of overstating the case, or of condemning what I do not understand… I know what I am talking about. I know my Aristotle as well as you or the likes of you. I have lectured on him and have been lectured at on him, and I understand him better than 6 For this section I am much indebted to the treatments of the Lutheran critique of eudaemonism in: Rochus Leonhardt, Glück als Vollendung des Menschseins: Die beatitudoLehre des Thomas von Aquin im Horizont des Eudämonismus-Problems (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998); and in Johannes Brachtendorf ’s Introduction to his translation of Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Happiness: Thomas von Aquin, Über das Glück – de Beatitudo, trans. Johannes Brachtendorf (Hamburg: Meiner, 2012), pp. lvii-lx. 7 Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Improvement of the Christian Estate, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, revised by James Atkinson and James M. Estes, in: The Annotated Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Reform, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 448. 8 Luther, To the Christian Nobility, p. 449. 9 Luther, To the Christian Nobility, p. 450. 10 Luther, To the Christian Nobility, p. 448-449. 428 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. St. Thomas or Duns Scotus did. I can boast about this without arrogance, and if necessary, I can prove it.11 The work of Aristotle’s that offends Luther the most is the Ethics: “[H]is Ethics is the worst of all books. It flatly opposes divine grace and all Christian virtues.”12 Where exactly does Luther see the opposition between the Ethics and Christian virtues? Two years earlier, in the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, Luther had defended a thesis contrasting human and divine love. Whereas human love comes into being through that which is pleasing to it, the Divine love is not caused by what pleases it, but rather makes that which it loves pleasing. This thesis is in itself not surprising. St. Thomas says exactly the same thing.13 But for Thomas there is nothing blameworthy about this dissimilitude between human and divine love. For human beings, as creatures, it is suitable that their love be caused by the attraction of the good. For Luther, however, this moved character of human love is blameworthy. Consider Luther’s proof of the thesis: Human love comes into being through that which is pleasing to it… for the object of love is its cause, assuming, according to Aristotle, that each power of the soul is passive and material and active only in receiving something. Thus, it is also demonstrated that Aristotle’s philosophy is contrary to theology since in all things it seeks those things that are its own and receives rather than bestows something good.14 The power of the soul in which love is principally found, namely the will, is passive and receptive in this sense: it is moved by the attractive power of the good pleasing to it. It tends, in other words, towards happiness. And for Luther 11 Luther, To the Christian Nobility, p. 449. 12 Luther, To the Christian Nobility, p. 449. 13 Summa theologiae Ia, q. 20, a. 2; the translations from the Summa throughout are based on Laurence Shapcote, O.P.’s translation, available online (https://dhspriory.org/ thomas/summa/index.html), but the translation has been modified when necessary with a view to the Latin. 14 Martin Luther, The Heidelberg Disputation, trans. Harold Grimm, revised by Dennis Dennis Bielfeldt, proof of thesis 28, in: The Roots of Reform, p. 104. COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 429 this implies that the movement of the will is self-centered. “It seeks those things which are its own”— this is for Luther the very definition of sin. Luther is not disagreeing with Aristotle about how human beings de facto act. Their wills are in fact moved by the attraction of the good. But, he thinks that Aristotle is here describing human nature as corrupted and depraved by original sin. On Luther’s view, the scholastic theologians have made the fatal error of taking Aristotle’s account of fallen nature as normative, as though it expressed nature as originally created by God. Grace, on this scholastic view, would presuppose, heal, elevate, and perfect nature. But this is to neglect the fact that fallen nature is essentially perverse. In his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, Luther had written, “Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.”15 Since everything that man does, he does in order to perfect himself, in order to receive some good perfective of the faculties of his soul, he is himself the final end of all that he seeks. In a later sermon (1521), Luther argues that if man seeks reward from God, and flees pain, then he is not really seeking God for God’s own sake: “For why a man does something— that is his God.”16 If the why, the final cause, of a man’s action is the reward of eternal happiness that he wants for himself, then his final goal is really himself— he is his own god. Therefore, Luther sees any attempt to seek salvation through meritorious works as necessarily idolatrous. Scholastic theology, insofar as it understood the grace of God as elevating, and perfecting man’s natural desire for happiness, by enabling man to hope for the beatific vision of God, falsified the Gospel. This is what Luther calls “the theology of glory,” which has learned from Aristotle that “lovable things are to be loved,” and delights in self-perfective activity, and he contrasts it with his own theology, the “theology of the Cross,” which delights in self-destructive suffering.17 15 Martin Luther, Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, proposition 17, in: Martin Luther’s Basic Theological writings, p. 14. 16 “Den warumb der menscb etwas thut, das ist sein got.” Martin Luther, Ein Sermon von dreierlei gutem Leben, das Gewissen zu unter richten, in WA 7.801; cf. Leonhardt, Glück als Vollendung des Menschseins, p. 27. 17 Theodor Dieter, Der junge Luther und Aristoteles: Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), p. 64. 430 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. What is true of the will is also true, mutatis mutandis, of the other powers of the soul. Thus, the intellect insofar as it is passive with regard to its object, and can only know what actually exists, is perverse and sinful: [F]or the object of the intellect cannot by nature be that which is nothing (that is, the poor and needy person) but only that of a true and good being. Therefore it judges according to appearances, is a respecter of persons, and judges according to that which can be seen, etc.18 As the Lutheran theologian Rochus Leonhardt summarizes the Lutheran position, “God’s grace […] does not correct the direction of our striving for perfection; it unmasks the sinfulness of that striving.”19 I want to point out one more aspect of the young Luther’s position, that comes out particularly strongly in his lectures on Romans (1515-1516), delivered before the start of the Reformation. Here Luther interprets St. Paul’s saying that he could have wished even to be cut off from Christ himself for the sake of his brothers (Romans 9:3) to mean that the true love of God implies “utter selfhatred” with no thought of one’s own advantage “neither here nor in the life to come.”20 In explicating Paul’s contrast between the prudence of the flesh and the prudence of the spirit (Romans 8:6), he explains this opposition by a reference to the common good. The prudence of the flesh seeks its own happiness, its private good, but the prudence of the spirit seeks the common good: The ‘prudence of the flesh’ chooses what is to selfish advantage and it avoids what is harmful to the self. Moreover, it rejects the common good and chooses what harms the common spirit… It enjoys only itself and uses everyone else, even God; it seeks itself and its own interests in everything: it brings it about that man is finally and ultimately concerned only for himself. This is the idolatry that determines all he does, feels, 18 Luther, The Heidelberg Disputation, proof of thesis 28, p. 105. 19 Leonhardt, Glück als Vollendung, p. 38. Leonhardt is summarizing Jörg Baur’s Lutheran critique of Thomas Aquinas. 20 Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. William Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), pp. 261-262. COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 431 undertakes, thinks, and speaks. Good is only what is good for him and bad only what is bad for him… The ‘prudence of the spirit’ chooses the common good and seeks to avoid what can harm the common life. It rejects self-interest and chooses what is disadvantageous to the self. For it directs the love that ‘seeks not its own’ (1 Cor 13:5) but that which belongs to God and all his creatures. It regards as good only what is good to God and everyone and as evil what is evil to God and everyone.21 Luther, in other words, sees a strong opposition between seeking one’s own good, and seeking the common good. And to seek happiness is to seek one’s own good, and subordinate the common good, and even God Himself, to oneself. To sum up, Luther rejects Aristotle’s teleological understanding of the soul and its powers, and the ethics based on that teleological understanding, because he sees such an understanding as essentially self-directed.22 III. Reply to Luther’s Objection: Participation and the Good23 I now want turn to St. Thomas’s common good eudemonism, to show how it can give us a way of responding to Luther’s objection to scholastic Aristotelianism. I will do this by considering three Aristotelian principles, which St. Thomas affirms and deepens, and which show that Aristotle’s philosophy is not self-centered in Luther’s sense: A. The Good is in Things. B. An honorable good is naturally loved more than the act whereby we attain to it. C. The common good is naturally more loved than the private good. 21 Luther, Lectures on Romans, pp. 225-226. 22 Cf. Dieter, Der junge Luther und Aristoteles, p. 48. 23 Parts of this section are adapted from my papers “The Good, the Highest Good, the Common Good,” in: The Josias, February 3, 2015: https://thejosias.com/2015/02/03/ the-good-the-highest-good-and-the-common-good (accessed March 23, 2017); and “Thomism, Happiness, and Selfishness,” in: Sancrucensis (blog), September 21, 2012: https:// sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/thomism-happiness-and-selfishness (accessed March 23, 2017). 432 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. A. The good is in things. Our first notion of the good is “that which all things desire.” The late Thomist Duane Berquist manifests this definition by having us imagine asking a little boy “What is good?” The boy answers: “ice cream is good, pizza is good, movies are good, football is good, vacation is good.”24 What do food, movies, sports, free time etc. have in common? They are all things that a little boy wants or desires. We can now ask: Is this a definition of good from its cause or from its effect? That is, is it desire that makes something good, or do we desire things because they are good? The first possibility has a great initial plausibility: it seems that if someone wants something, then it is good for them. If so-and-so wants to live in Los Angeles, then it seems that it is good for him to live there. But there are also reasons to doubt the idea that it is wanting something that makes it good. Haven’t we all had the experience of wanting something which we ourselves then admitted was not good? I wanted that last drink at the party, but afterwards I admit that it was not good for me. I wanted to drive 100 mph down the winding road, but later, on my hospital bed, I admit that it was not good. If wanting something made it good, then my wanting the last drink would have made it good for me.25 Aristotle identifies the good with a cause: the final cause.26 The end and the good are the same thing, but considered differently. The end is “that for the sake of which,” while the good is “that which all desire.” The more fundamental notion is “good”; the causality of the end is derived from the attractive power of the good, which moves desire. That is to say, when I define the good as “that which all desire,” I am defining it by an effect of its goodness. The intrinsic goodness of a thing causes desire; desire is not the cause of a thing’s goodness. This is the Aristotelian teaching to which Luther is referring when he writes “Human love comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.” But Luther 24 Duane Berquist, Lectures on Ethics: https://archive.org/details/duaneberquistonethics (accessed March 23, 2017). 25 Berquist, Lectures on Ethics. 26 See, for example: Physics II,3 1095a; Parts of Animals I,1 639a-640a; Metaphysics I,2 982a-b. COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 433 is mistaken about the implications of this teaching. In fact, the implication is really the reverse of what he thinks. If things were in themselves neutral, and were only called good because of our desire, then to desire a thing would really be to make it a means to one’s own activity or pleasure. That would be self-centered. We can see that self-centeredness in the subjectivist philosophy of our own day, which is founded on precisely such a relativistic understanding of good. But since the good is in things, (cf. Metaphysics 1027b), arousing our desire, it follows that in desiring something27 we are really ordering ourselves to the good, not visa-versa. B. An honorable good is naturally loved more than the act whereby we attain to it. That we order ourselves to the good, and not visa-versa is strictly speaking true not of useful and pleasant goods, but only of good in the full sense, what Aristotle calls the “noble” good (to kalon), and St. Thomas calls the “honorable good” (bonum honestum): goods such as friendship, wisdom, justice that are willed for their own sake. Aristotle uses this distinction to distinguish different kinds of goods, but St. Thomas shows that in every desire for the good all three kinds are involved. When we consider a desired good, we can distinguish three objects of desire: the means used for attaining the thing, the thing itself, and the pleasure or delight that arises from the attainment of the thing.28 If the good being sought is really a good in the full sense, then it is the primary object of desire among the three. The means are chosen only for its sake, and the pleasure that follows from it is entirely secondary with respect to the real end that is the good itself. In another place St. Thomas distinguishes a fourth object of desire. Looking at the good itself, he distinguishes between that good, and the activity whereby I attain to that good.29 For example, he would distinguish between a truth known 27 Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, “Phenomenology and the Common Good,” Lecture, Notre Dame, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBNdOJGWoQI (accessed February 12, 2021). 28 Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 5, a. 6. 29 Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 1, a. 3, c. 434 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. and my activity of knowing that truth; between a friend and the activities of friendship with a friend. In the movement of our will these are not to separate objects; they are willed by a single act. But in thought we can distinguish them. Here again, since the good is in things, the primary object of desire and love is the good object itself, and only secondarily the activity of attaining to that object. The real end is the object. Nevertheless, the attainment of the end can (analogously) be called the end. Thus Thomas writes, “happiness is called man’s supreme good, because it is the attainment or enjoyment of the supreme good.”30 Still, a doubt might remain. Luther could respond: This shows only it is natural to love the Supreme Good more than one’s own attainment of it in the order of concupiscence, the love of a desirable thing. But more important than the love of concupiscence is the love of friendship or benevolence. That is, the love of the person for whom one desires some good. For whom does one desire the God as the Supreme Good? Is it not for oneself? That is, Luther could say: maybe you do love God more than anything else, even your attainment of him, by a love of concupiscence. But by love of friendship you really love only yourself. It is for yourself that you want the good that God is. This brings us to the third principle: C. The common good is naturally more loved than the private good. In a question on whether man is bound to love God more than himself, Thomas raises an objection that reads like an anticipation of Luther: One loves a thing in so far as it is one’s own good. Now the reason for loving a thing is more loved than the thing itself which is loved for that reason… Therefore man loves himself more than any other good loved by him. Therefore he does not love God more than himself.31 In his reply to the objection Thomas refers to the relation of part and whole: 30 Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 3, a. 1, ad 2; cf. Ia, q. 26. a. 3, ad 1. 31 IIa-IIae q. 26, a. 3, arg. 2. COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 435 The part does indeed love the good of the whole, as becomes a part, not however so as to order the good of the whole to itself, but rather so as to order itself to the good of the whole.32 Why does Thomas refer to part and whole here? Is God a whole of which man is a part? No, not exactly, but God is the common good of His creatures. In the body of the article Thomas writes: The fellowship of natural goods bestowed on us by God is the foundation of natural love, in virtue of which not only man, so long as his nature remains unimpaired, loves God above all things and more than himself, but also every single creature, each in its own way, i.e. either by an intellectual, or by a rational, or by an animal, or at least by a natural love, as stones do, for instance, and other things bereft of knowledge, because each part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than its own particular good. This is evidenced by its operation, since the principal inclination of each part is towards common action conducive to the good of the whole. It may also be seen in civic virtues whereby sometimes the citizens suffer damage even to their own property and persons for the sake of the common good. Wherefore much more is this realized with regard to the friendship of charity which is based on the fellowship of the gifts of grace. Therefore man ought, out of charity, to love God, Who is the common good of all, more than himself: since happiness is in God as in the universal and fountain principle of all who are able to have a share of that happiness.33 The good is that which each thing seeks, insofar as it seeks its own perfection. But, as Charles De Koninck argued at great length in his classic interpretation of Thomas, On the Primacy of the Common Good: Against the Personalists, “its own perfection” does not mean only a thing’s perfection as an individual, but rather a more universal perfection to which it is ordered. 32 Ibid. ad 2. 33 Ibid. c. 436 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. De Koninck shows that Thomas distinguishes four levels of a thing’s “own perfection”. The first level is the good of the individual as individual. This is the good that an animal seeks when it seeks nourishment. The second level is the good of a thing that belongs to it on account of its species. This is the good that animals seek in reproduction. Is this really a thing’s “own perfection”? Is it not the perfection of another? No says De Koninck, “The singular animal prefers ‘naturally’, that is to say, in virtue of the inclination which is in it by nature the good of its species to its singular good… For the good of the species is a greater good for the singular than its singular good.”34 The context of the text to which De Koninck is here referring is a passage where Thomas argues that a natural part always loves the whole more than itself. In natural things, Thomas argues, everything that belongs to something greater loves that greater to which it belongs. Thus, a part of the body naturally exposes itself for the sake of the whole body. Without deliberating, by natural instinct, a hand is raised to protect the body from a blow. And similarly, a virtuous citizen is willing to suffer death for the sake of his city.35 In other words, a part should always prefer the good of the whole to which it belongs to its good as a part. But “part” seems to have several meanings here. A hand is not a substance, it exists only as a part; a citizen on the other hand is not only a part– he is also a whole substance with a private good all his own. “Part” seems to have yet a third meaning when applied to an individual with respect to a species. And yet Thomas claims that in all of these cases of “part” the good of the whole is more desirable for the part itself. The third level, discussed by De Koninck, is the perfection that belongs to a thing on account of its genus. What is meant is the good of “equivocal causes”— that is, of causes that cause something of a different species from themselves. The perfection of an effect is found in its equivocal cause, but in a more eminent mode. In Aristotelian physics, for example, the heavenly 34 Charles De Koninck, On the Primacy of the Common Good: Against the Personalists, trans. Sean Collins, in: The Aquinas Review 4 (1997), pp. 10-71, at p. 18. 35 Ia, q. 60, a. 5, c. COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 437 bodies are the equivocal causes of natural forms, and any perfection found in sublunary things is found in a more eminent way in the things above. The highest equivocal cause is where the fourth level of a thing’s “own perfection” is found: namely God Himself, who causes all things, but entirely transcends them. God is each creature’s “own” perfection, his “own” good on account of the likeness (analogy) that exists between the effects and their cause. Every perfection found in created things is a reflection of the perfection of God, and therefore there is an “analogy” and similitude between God and creatures. This is the true key to understanding why a thing’s “own perfection” is found more in the common good than in its private good.36 Creatures are not parts of their Creator, and yet they are ordered to their Creator the way parts are ordered to a whole. The perfection that they have is a participation in His perfection. To participate is to take part in something without removing a part from it. My reflection in a mirror partakes of my form, without depriving me of any part of my form. God does not have parts, but creatures share in Him in an incomplete, that is, a partial way. Therefore, Thomas can consider the love of creatures for the Creator as love of parts for a whole: Consequently, since God is the universal good, and this contains the good of man and angel and all creatures, because every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God, it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and with a greater love. Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity.37 Each creature “belongs to” God on account of what it is. That means that each creature is for the sake of God the way a part of a substance is for the sake of the whole substance. Created perfection just is a participation in and imitation of the Divine Perfection. As Thomas explains: 36 De Koninck, On the Primacy of the Common Good, p. 19. 37 Ia, q. 60, a. 5, c. 438 EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.CIST. The perfection of each and every effect consists in this, that it is made like to its cause, for that which according to its nature is something generated is then perfect, when it reaches the likeness of its generator. Artifacts are likewise made perfect when they achieve the form of the art.38 The perfection that each creature desires consists in an ever-greater likeness to the Creator. But that means that the perfection that they desire only ever exists in a secondary way in themselves. It exists fully only in God. Thus to love one’s “own” perfection means to love God more than oneself. This is a “self-centered” love only in the sense that it is centered on the good in Whom one participates— God is, as it were, the “true self ” of His creatures. But in another sense this is a thoroughly ecstatic love, in which one transcends oneself toward a good infinitely better than one’s individuality, a beloved to whom one can give oneself without reserve.39 38 De substantiis separatis, c. 12 39 For Thomas’s teaching on the ecstatic nature of the love of God see: Peter Kwasniewski, “The Foundations of Christian Ethics and Social Order: Egoism and Altruism vs. Love for the Common Good,” in: The Josias, February 23, 2015: https://thejosias. com/2015/02/23/the-foundations-of-christian-ethics-and-social-order-egoism-and-altruism-vs-love-for-the-common-good (accessed March 23, 2017); cf. Leonhardt, Glück als Vollendung des Menschseins, section 2.4.3. My argument up to this point has been in some ways similar to Pierre Rousselot’s [The Problem of Love in the Middle Ages: A Historical Contribution, trans, Alan Vincelette (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001.]. Rousselot sees the importance of the part-whole analogy for understanding Thomas’s account of the love of God. But Rousselot does not fully see that such love is nevertheless ecstatic. This comes from the way in which Rousselot reads the relation of desire and the good. As Michael Waldstein has pointed out, Rousselot “does not begin with the good, with its power to cause love […] but with the naked fact of appetite as self-interest rooted in the unity of a being with itself.” For Rousselot, “‘the good’ can be described in no other way than as the object of natural desires.” And the “principle of direct and true love” is “unity,” that is, the unity of a thing with itself. [Michael Maria Waldstein, Glory of the Logos in the Flesh: Saint John Paul’s Theology of the Body (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming)]. In other words, on Rousselot’s account natural love can never escape a certain self-centeredness. It is therefore forever opposed to ecstatic love. But if one begins with the intrinsic worthiness of the good, then this opposition can be softened. COMMON GOOD EUDEMONISM 439 We see, therefore, that Luther’s objection fails. The teleological nature of the powers of the human soul, does not mean that they are self-directed. On the contrary it means that they are directed towards God. And this is the key to solving the problems of love and hope. The desire for happiness that God has written into our hearts is not a selfish desire, but a social desire. Moreover, the hope of complete happiness in eternal life does not make us indifferent to the common goods of earthly societies, rather it makes all the more zealous for the common goods of earthly societies, since we see that they are participations of the eternal common good of the City of God.