Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 90 No. 5, 2020.
Original scientific paper
To Be Happy or to Be Worthy of Happiness?
Franjo Mijatović
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Theology in Rijeka – Dislocated Studies, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
Happiness has been morally troubling individuals and communities for over two and a half thousand years, cognitively pushing them to enrich their own lives and the poleis they belong to. Only rarely are we aware of the extent to which what we call happiness is credited to a type of effective moral agent who manifests a blend of virtue and duty. Therefore, this article will outline a traditional approach to classifying human moral activity, first and foremost a well -known distinction of the maxim of being happy and worthy of happiness, and a derivation of the effect resulting from such distinction. As soon as we engage in the distinction of being happy and being worthy of happiness, as if it were an exclusive alternative, we lose sight of the vast complex of motivations for human behaviour. Being happy is the oldest and the most significant form of eudaimonistic philosophy whose results exceed the external states of virtue and excellence. A modern subject, as its own moral legislator, secures and intensifies moral behaviour by subjecting itself to a categorical imperative and duty. Which changes have occurred by their collision will be indicated by the question of whether the insights and structures of eudaimonic and deontological ethics can be brought closer or have to be solely diametrically observed. As the history of ethics testifies, one can, in dealing with theory and practice, transform oneself, first and foremost, in the systems of Aristotle’s and Kant’s ethics.
Keywords
good; happiness; virtue; duty, Aristotle; Kant.
Hrčak ID:
251240
URI
Publication date:
28.1.2021.
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