What Beatitude Is
This is what Aquinas calls happiness or the highest good.
Beatitude
This is one form of Old Testament law.
10 commandments, covenants
T/F: There cannot be overlap between types of law.
This is eternal law.
God’s plan for all creation
This is the relation between Aristotle and Aquinas.
Aristotle’s work was rediscovered and Aquinas studied this work and applied it to Christian teachings.
“Happiness is an operation in accord with perfect virtue” is this Aristotelian concept.
Function argument/happiness is rational activity in accordance with virtue
This is one form of New Testament law.
Jesus’s commands
This is the law created by people.
Human
T/F: Sciences are part of the eternal law.
True, they describe part of the natural/God-written order of things
T/F: Aristotle and Aquinas agree on the definition of happiness.
True
This form of beatitude is attainable in this life.
Imperfect beatitude
To be a real law, a law must be bound by this.
Reason
This is the law that is God’s plan for all creation.
Eternal
This is why a “plan” for creation can be considered a law.
Because all things have to follow this plan/orders
This form of beatitude is what Aristotle calls eudaimonia.
Imperfect beatitude
This form of beatitude consists in seeing God’s essence.
Perfect beatitude
To be a real law, a law must be ordered toward this
The common good
This is the eternal law applied to humans.
Natural
This is why the eternal law can be known.
We can learn about the world through the sciences and gain knowledge of how God ordered things.
T/F: Aristotle and Aquinas agree on what God is.
False
Aquinas justifies the distinction between perfect and imperfect beatitude through two Aristotelian arguments. This is one of them.
Perfect beatitude is final AND perfect beatitude is self-sufficient/lacking in nothing
To be a real law, a law must have this relation to authority.
Be passed by a proper authority
This is the law that is related to revelation from God.
Divine
This is why the eternal law cannot be known in full in this life.
It cannot be known in full because human knowledge is incomplete and learning takes time.
Aristotle says eudaimonia is found in the speculative sciences/wisdom. This is why Aquinas disagrees.
Because that is imperfect beatitude, and perfect beatitude/eudaimonia is unattainable in this life and found only in seeing God’s essence.