As I posted previously, I recently read Receiving the Gift of Friendship by Hans Reinders, and one of the points of that work came to mind as I was reading this David Brooks Op/Ed in the New York Times today. The Reinders book focuses primarily on severe intellectual disability and personhood, while the Brooks piece is a longitudinal overview of the lives of some people deemed "successful," but they come together in this paragraph:
In his book, Reinders wishes to attack the Aristotelian notion that our fullness of being is achieved through the satisfaction and development of our rational faculties. Classical philosophy (and scholastic philosophy following it) has traditionally asserted that what makes an animal "human" is our capacity for reason and, thus, self-expression (or its potential), and thus, the purpose of being human is to live our rational faculties to the fullest. Even the disability-rights groups accept this underlying notion when they argue for the full inclusion of disabled persons into our citizenry, asserting that it is through their capacity for individual self-expression against the negative social order imposed upon them (following most "liberation" narratives) that they 'prove' their full humanity and demand acceptance.
What of the severely intellectually disabled, then? A group of individuals who may never even have the potential capacity for reason. Here is Reinder's project: how can we intelligibly include those with severe intellectual abilities in our modern liberal societies when they don't have the agency to achieve what our culture has deemed the ultimate source of humanity: self-expression? Are their lives worth less because they do not have use of their intellectual faculties? Reinders argues that they are not, but only if we view our humanity as being revealed in our relationships with others, rather than through our individual self-expression.
In my areas of work in psychology, one constant theme continues to impress itself upon my mind: all things about us, our agency and identity, our knowledge about the world and our decisions about how to live, come to us mediated through our relationships. The reason for this is not that we are not free or that we live in a relationally deterministic universe where all of our decisions are foreordained, but because nothing we choose has any meaning apart from others, most importantly those others with whom we are close. We live in a world of ambiguous data points, and only through relationships with other people can we settle on the thing called "truth" and really begin to live something like a human life. For example, even my name, that thing which I cleave to most dearly and expresses my deepest sense of self, is completely meaningless apart from other people. It wasn't something I created, it was something I received.
And what of God? Most religions, whether they be polytheistic or monotheistic or atheistic, see this thing which we call God (or a god) as a person, thing, or cosmic force. Something single and unified. Christianity, to my knowledge, is the only religion that sees God as a relationship rather than a person. Certainly, given the shortcomings of our language, we refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as divine "persons," but remember that Christian doctrine also asserts that no divine person is distinct from any other in substance or being, and that they are together one God.
How can we make sense of this, then? Only if we assert the doctrine that the persons of the Trinity are hypostases or "substantial relations." Normally, given our language, we think of relations existing between two substances. But what we say about God is that in His persons the relations are the substance. That is, the identities of the persons in God are themselves relations.
According to Christian doctrine, one of these relations took on a human nature. If we believe that Christianity is true, and that, if true, it must conform to reason, we must see nothing inherently contradictory between human nature and divine nature since they both existed simultaneously and fully in the person of Jesus.
If that is the case, then maybe we would do well to think of ourselves more as 'relations' than 'substances.'
Returning to Brooks, if relationships are indeed the key to happiness, then "happiness" itself receives a profound definition. Happiness is a life lived in the manner of the divine being, that is, being in its highest form. If fullness of being is to be a relation, and Jesus Christ allows us access to that fullness, then it is in the act of self-giving love, and the receipt of that love that we are being most fully ourselves.
Happiness is being fully human; happiness is love. Full stop.
Shenk’s treatment is superb because he weaves in the life of George Vaillant, the man who for 42 years has overseen this work. Vaillant’s overall conclusion is familiar and profound. Relationships are the key to happiness. “Happiness is love. Full Stop,” he says in a video.I'll write it again: "Relationships are the key to happiness."
In his book, Reinders wishes to attack the Aristotelian notion that our fullness of being is achieved through the satisfaction and development of our rational faculties. Classical philosophy (and scholastic philosophy following it) has traditionally asserted that what makes an animal "human" is our capacity for reason and, thus, self-expression (or its potential), and thus, the purpose of being human is to live our rational faculties to the fullest. Even the disability-rights groups accept this underlying notion when they argue for the full inclusion of disabled persons into our citizenry, asserting that it is through their capacity for individual self-expression against the negative social order imposed upon them (following most "liberation" narratives) that they 'prove' their full humanity and demand acceptance.
What of the severely intellectually disabled, then? A group of individuals who may never even have the potential capacity for reason. Here is Reinder's project: how can we intelligibly include those with severe intellectual abilities in our modern liberal societies when they don't have the agency to achieve what our culture has deemed the ultimate source of humanity: self-expression? Are their lives worth less because they do not have use of their intellectual faculties? Reinders argues that they are not, but only if we view our humanity as being revealed in our relationships with others, rather than through our individual self-expression.
In my areas of work in psychology, one constant theme continues to impress itself upon my mind: all things about us, our agency and identity, our knowledge about the world and our decisions about how to live, come to us mediated through our relationships. The reason for this is not that we are not free or that we live in a relationally deterministic universe where all of our decisions are foreordained, but because nothing we choose has any meaning apart from others, most importantly those others with whom we are close. We live in a world of ambiguous data points, and only through relationships with other people can we settle on the thing called "truth" and really begin to live something like a human life. For example, even my name, that thing which I cleave to most dearly and expresses my deepest sense of self, is completely meaningless apart from other people. It wasn't something I created, it was something I received.
And what of God? Most religions, whether they be polytheistic or monotheistic or atheistic, see this thing which we call God (or a god) as a person, thing, or cosmic force. Something single and unified. Christianity, to my knowledge, is the only religion that sees God as a relationship rather than a person. Certainly, given the shortcomings of our language, we refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as divine "persons," but remember that Christian doctrine also asserts that no divine person is distinct from any other in substance or being, and that they are together one God.
How can we make sense of this, then? Only if we assert the doctrine that the persons of the Trinity are hypostases or "substantial relations." Normally, given our language, we think of relations existing between two substances. But what we say about God is that in His persons the relations are the substance. That is, the identities of the persons in God are themselves relations.
According to Christian doctrine, one of these relations took on a human nature. If we believe that Christianity is true, and that, if true, it must conform to reason, we must see nothing inherently contradictory between human nature and divine nature since they both existed simultaneously and fully in the person of Jesus.
If that is the case, then maybe we would do well to think of ourselves more as 'relations' than 'substances.'
Returning to Brooks, if relationships are indeed the key to happiness, then "happiness" itself receives a profound definition. Happiness is a life lived in the manner of the divine being, that is, being in its highest form. If fullness of being is to be a relation, and Jesus Christ allows us access to that fullness, then it is in the act of self-giving love, and the receipt of that love that we are being most fully ourselves.
Happiness is being fully human; happiness is love. Full stop.
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