END OF MAN

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-c. 322 B.C.) taught that the end of man, or the supreme good for man, is eudaemonia, which means complete well-being and is commonly translated simply as happiness. Most Christian thinkers have accepted this teaching, differing from Aristotle only on the question of what happiness consists in. Whereas he thought that it consists primarily in the development of those intellectual virtues whereby the philosopher contemplates eternal truth, they say that it consists primarily in knowing and loving God and in being known and loved by God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes these Christian thinkers when it says that the end of man – in other words, the ultimate goal of our existence – is beatitude, which can only be a beatitude with God and in God, indeed a sharing in God’s own beatitude (16, 1719).

Aristotle had tried to find the sources of human happiness by exploring human nature and in particular by exploring the soul and the rational activities of the soul whereby it is enabled to become itself fully and to thrive. Christian philosophers and theologians have attempted something similar, namely, to show why it is that human nature is made for beatitude in God and could not possibly find beatitude in anything less than God.
The Human Capacity for God • Thus they have explored the mysterious infinite hunger or infinite capacity of human persons, which was expressed by St. Augustine in his Confessions: “Our heart was made for you, O Lord, and it will not rest until it rests in you” (Bk. I). In our restlessness we often pursue some finite good – some real good and not just a pleasurable substitute for the good – expecting to be supremely happy in the embrace of that good. But no sooner do we attain the desired good than the old restlessness, just when we least expected it, springs up again in our inmost parts; we find that we have a capacity for good that is only stimulated but never fulfilled by possessing even the greatest finite good. This is why human beings do not fit snugly in their environment like the lower animals, but are always surpassing themselves in their efforts at knowing the world and acting in it; they are possessed of an idea of infinite good that drives them always beyond every finite attainment, so that every point of arrival becomes a point of departure. We are thus led to affirm that the human person is capax Dei (“capable of God”) and that he reaches his ultimate end only by attaining union with that which is infinite in goodness.

One will notice that for the Christian the ultimate end of man does not consist primarily in intellectual activity, as in Aristotle; not only is the infinite good of which we are capable the object of our knowing but we also participate in it by willing and loving it and delighting in it.
For our supreme beatitude we have to encounter God as personal being. If supreme goodness were impersonal, as in Plato, we would bear a wound in ourselves that would prevent us from being happy. Cardinal Newman says that human beings “would be overpowered by despondency, and would even loathe existence, did they suppose themselves under the mere operation of fixed laws, powerless to excite the pity or the attention of Him who has appointed them.” We cannot exist and thrive by living only in relation to general laws, not even if these are divine laws, but we are also made for interpersonal communion, which belongs, therefore, to our ultimate end. We can find beatitude in God only if we know him as Deus vivens et videns (“God living and seeing”) and are known by him in our unrepeatable personhood, and know that we are known by him, and in addition know ourselves as we are known by him.

This does not mean of course that the human persons whom we love are not also important for our beatitude. They do not indeed suffice entirely for it; but since we are made for interpersonal communion with them, too, they form an indispensable part of it, especially insofar as we love them in God.
The Glory of God • Some philosophers and theologians have questioned the claim that the ultimate end of man is his beatitude, and have proposed to qualify this claim by saying that the primary ultimate end of man is the glorification of God, man’s happiness in God constituting only the secondary ultimate end of man. Though with this they depart somewhat from Aristotle, they do not think of themselves as departing from the study of the end of man as it is reflected in human nature. For the human person has the capacity, the vocation, even the need to transcend himself toward good beings by giving them what is due to them in virtue of their goodness. He does not approach beings, and least of all other persons, only under the aspect of fulfilling himself through his relation to them; but he can transcend himself by loving them for their own sakes and in their own right. Since the human person is a being of such self-transcendence, he will in his state of supreme fulfillment first of all glorify God because God is supremely worthy, infinite in holiness, and only then will he desire God as the infinite source of his good.

One sees, then, that one can approach the ultimate end of man by studying his nature as person. His infinite capacity for good, his vocation to interpersonal life, his power of self-transcendence, all indicate to us various aspects of his ultimate end. This in turn means that our ultimate end grows out of our nature and is not extrinsically added on to it.
On the other hand, the Church has always been eager to affirm the free gift-character of Christ (CCC 1722), who is the way to our beatitude. From the fact that God creates beings capable of thirst one can infer that he must also create the water they need; but we cannot reason like this from man’s desire for beatitude to the necessity of the Incarnation. And yet, for all the gratuity of Christ, he does not remain extrinsic to human nature; as the Church taught at Vatican Council II, “Christ the new Adam . . . fully reveals man to himself” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 22). It belongs to the interpersonal nature of our beatitude that the other in whom we are happy shares himself with us freely and in a way that we can never predict, which means that our beatitude is signed by the paradox that we are fulfilled in our deepest aspirations by the love that comes from the other as an undeserved gift.

See: Beatific Vision; God, Nature and Attributes of; Heaven; Human Goods; Human Person; Human Race, Creation and Destiny of; Incarnation; Redemption.
Suggested Readings: CCC 16, 260, 356, 1716-1729. Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 22. St. Augustine, Confessions, I-IX. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 1-5. J. Newman, “The Thought of God the Stay of the Soul,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 5. D. von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ.

John F. Crosby




Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.

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Last Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2001 01:25:11 PM