Felicità e Beatitudine by Giovanni Grandi

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 329 Felicità e Beatitudine. By GIOVANNI GRANDI. Trieste, Italy: Edizioni Meudon, 2010. Pp. 173. $27.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-88-904287-7-7. The title of this book faithfully renders the intention of its author. Grandi compares two key concepts in St. Thomas: felicitas (happiness) and beatitudo (beatitude). Grandi considers these notions according to two sides of human desire, stretching between the natural desire for a good life and salvation. At the end of his book, Grandi adds a glossary (159-60) with definitions of crucial concepts. This glossary is a good starting point for presenting the book’s message. Most of the concepts listed here are connected either with the happiness (felicità) related to the temporal life or else with beatitude (beatitudine). The two groups can be compared in two ways: by the paradigm of complementarity (paradigma di completamento) or by the paradigm of coimplication (paradigma di coimplicazione). Using these concepts Grandi explains the development of Aquinas’s thought from the paradigm of complementarity to the paradigm of coimplication (7). The paradigm of complementarity consists in the reduction of both happiness and beatitude to the same idea of eternally perpetuated happiness (25, 159). The second paradigm shows the essentialdifference between them, and Grandi intends to show that Aquinas adopted this paradigm in the Summa Theologiae (8). The following notions can be associated with happiness (felicitas): “bioexistential parabola” (parabola bio-esistenziale), “nature,” and the “good life” (buona vita). Others can be connected with beatitude (beatitudo): “grace” (grazia), “salvation” (salvezza), and the “spiritual life” (vita spirituale). Already here one can notice a separation between happiness and beatitude. They form two distinct realities, which can overlap, but according to the paradigm of coimplication, they are not essentially correlated (159). Grandi defines “beatitude” as a general condition of ontological stability given by relation with God (159), and “sin” as a state of ontological and spiritual separation from God (160). In this way beatitude acquires a more general meaning than it has in Aquinas (beatific vision), and includes the entire order of the spiritual life. Some concepts in the glossary are applicable to both levels. In some cases, however, it results in a double meaning: for example “life” at the level of natural happiness becomes a “bio-existential parable” and also “death as an event,” the moment of its end. In the context of beatitude it becomes “spiritual life” and “spiritual death.” Grandi carries out his intention in a transparent manner. In the introduction he presents clearly his assumptions and main lines of argumentation, which are consistently developed throughout his book. He carefully leads the reader, recalling and summarizing what was already established, and showing the further plan of investigation (78-80, 117-19, 141-44). The book is composed of four parts. The first three form the core, in which Grandi presents numerous analyses of the texts of Aquinas. In the fourth part Grandi outlines a contemporary perspective on his topic. He shows that human beings can overcome human death by either a personal or a communal attempt BOOK REVIEWS 330 to prolong and improve people’s lives in the temporal dimension of happiness (felicitas [148-52]), and in going beyond its natural limits to beatitude according to the paradigm of coimplication (beatitudo [152-58]). In the main part of the book, Grandi shows that at the beginning of his career Aquinas’s thought can be characterized by the paradigm of complementarity (1533 ), and that afterwards he starts to change the paradigm (35-60) with the final result of coimplication (61-144). The first part is based on a few quotations taken from the commentary on Lombard’s Sentences and the Summa contra Gentiles. Next Grandi connects the change of paradigm with the idea of spiritual life and death, in the context of some of Aquinas’s biblical commentaries (In Matt., In Rom., In I Cor.). Then Grandi shows the new paradigm in an extended commentary on the treatise on happiness in the Summa Theologiae (80-140). Although Grandi speaks frequently about the paradigm of coimplication, and even gives its definition in the glossary, it is still not easy to determine its precise meaning. He describes it as “a perspective that...