Happiness and Contemplation

AThe ultimate of human happiness is to be found in contemplation.In offering this proposition of Thomas Aquinas to our thought, Josef Pieper uses traditional wisdom in order to throw light on present-day reality and present-day psychological problems. What, in fact, does one pursue in pursuing happiness? What, in the consensus of the wisdom of the early Greeks, of Plato and Aristotle, of the New Testament, of Augustine and Aquinas, is that condition of perfect bliss toward which all life and effort tend by nature? In this profound and illuminating inquiry, Pieper considers the nature of contemplation, and the meaning and goal of life.

AHis sentences are admirably constructed, his ideas expressed with the maximum clarity. But his mind is submissive to what he believes to be the great, the main tradition of European thought. . . . He restores to their position in philosophy what common sense obstinately tells us ought to be found there: insight and wisdom. B T.S. Eliot