The Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment

Abstract

In a culture in which happiness—the perennial American idée fixe—is regarded as life's central pursuit and the acme of personal attainment, it would seem to be important (at least for religionists) to know what theologians have to say about the subject. John J. Fitzgerald fulfills that need in his dyadic study of the place of happiness in the thought of two of the most consequential theologians of the twentieth century.According to Fitzgerald's distillation of their thought, both John Paul II and Heschel believed that doing good—that is, living ethically, pursuing the kinds of virtuous moral activities advocated by Christianity and Judaism, and following religious law—leads to increases in happiness, meaning, freedom, and personal fulfillment. Heschel understands happiness as “the certainty of being needed,” while John Paul II interprets it as the ultimate good: God Himself. John Paul II stresses the connection between behaving ethically and achieving eternal life, while Heschel is more willing to countenance the possibility that living a religious life may also involve a measure of unhappiness and anxiety. Ultimately, though, both maintain that living an ethical life is vital to achieving happiness.As the book is somewhat of a vade mecum on happiness in theology, Fitzgerald walks us through what classical and medieval thinkers such as Aristotle and Aquinas had to say about happiness. If Aquinas and Aristotle recognized a good called “happiness,” it was a much more objective notion for them than it is for us today: “it is much more common for people [today] to conceive of happiness in the subjective sense.” (21)Fitzgerald, in a salutary interdisciplinary move, also compares and contrasts Heschel's and John Paul II's views on happiness with those of other key modern thinkers on ethics—the Dalai Lama, Peter Singer, and the school of positive psychology—and finds their opinions to be strikingly similar. Positive psychologists (psychologists who study human happiness) point to “kindness, gratitude, forgiveness, savoring pleasures,” and “exercising” as practices to engage in if one desires happiness. (176) Singer cites studies that suggest that ethical behavior leads to happiness: giving to charity increases the likelihood of being “very happy” by 43 percent and decreases the likelihood of feeling “hopeless” by 68 percent.” (171) And the Dalai Lama maintains that living morally fosters “genuine happiness and joy” and creates a “sense of purpose in life.” (165)Heschel and John Paul II distinguish themselves from the aforementioned figures and movements in specifying that the path toward happiness and fulfillment lies not only in living ethically but in following God's commandments. A godly life is conducive to happiness because it takes the focus off of the “pure consumerism” of secular society, an ethos which can only lead to “radical dissatisfaction” (in John Paul II's words) because of the self-centered attitude it engenders, and places our focus on something Other-centered, something transcendent—the locus of “real meaning” in life (116–17).The regnant view in American (and perhaps all of Western) culture is that the pursuit of happiness is, and should be, the objective of life. But this is an assumption that deserves to be interrogated. Fitzgerald is correct when he writes that “the Hebrew Bible promises rewards for following the commandments” (12), but the reward it promises is that one's crops will grow; it does not promise happiness. According to the Bible, doing good is the goal; happiness is an ancillary benefit that may or may not follow from doing good, but receiving a reward from doing good should not be the reason for acting virtuously. As is written in Pirkei Avot, “Be not like servants who serve the master on the condition of receiving a reward; rather, be like servants who serve the master without the condition of receiving a reward” (Avot 1:3). Maimonides was an ascetic (at least in comparison to today's standards) and certainly did not consider happiness to be life's ultimate goal; neither did Hermann Cohen, who held that the Prophets—the biblical figures after whom we should be modeling our lives—“do not fall short of stoicism.” (Religion of Reason, 134) Kant was no great proponent of eudaemonism, either. But for those who do regard happiness as life's summum bonum, Fitzgerald's brief book is an excellent place to look if one is searching for substantive suggestions on how not only to pursue happiness but to achieve it. The Seductiveness of Virtue, in putting two of the most important modern theologians of their respective faiths in conversation with each other on the topic of whether living ethically can lead to happiness, results in a felicitous theological antiphony, and makes for an excellent contribution to the fields of interfaith dialogue, moral theology, and comparative ethics.