American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

published on November 19, 2014

Distinguishing Desire and Parts of Happiness
A Response to Germain Grisez

Germain Grisez has recently argued that Aquinas’s claim that God alone is our ultimate end is incompatible with other claims central to Aquinas’s account of happiness. Two of these arguments take their point of departure from Aquinas’s distinction between essential perfections and perfections of well-being. I argue that both of these arguments fail. The first, which argues that the distinction is incompatible with the beatific vision being perfect fulfillment, fails because it neglects a distinction between essential and accidental perfectibility. In the second, Grisez argues that Aquinas’s distinction between types of happiness is incompatible with his claim that the beatific vision satisfies all desire. I argue that Aquinas makes a distinction between two types of desire that rebuts the objection. I conclude by explaining how clarifying these distinctions in perfectibility and desire allows for a more nuanced account of the happiness of the separated, beatified soul.