Teachings of the Catholic Church - Questions     

Servais Pinckaers, O.P., “Freedom and Happiness”

1. According to Fr. Pinckaers, in the early stages of moral analysis, which stretches from Antiquity to the Middle Ages), all schools of thought understood the moral life as a response to the question about happiness;  "they all accepted this starting point," he says, "without discussion."  Later on, however, a certain "divorce" occurred between the question of happiness and the concerns of morality or ethics.  How, according to Fr. Pinckaers, did this come about?  What, in other words, brought about the change?

2. What are the two different senses of "freedom" identified by Fr. Pinckaers?  Please briefly describe each.

3. According to Fr. Pinckaers, what sort of morality is engendered by the freedom for excellence?  Why?

4. What sort of morality is engendered, then, by freedom of indifference?  Why?

5. According to Fr. Pinckaers, how can we repair the divorce between happiness and the moral life?

6. How, according to Fr. Pinckaers, can the proper notion of "joy" (as distinguished from "pleasure") reconcile happiness and the moral life?
 
 

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