The perennial tradition of virtue, grounded in the real natures of human persons, is essential for giving a robust answer to the question: ‘What is happiness, and how do we get it?’ This essay principally follows the metaphysical, psychological, ethical, and theological principles as expounded by St. Thomas Aquinas, primarily as found in his Summa Theologiae. These principles give us a solid foundation in order to build upon the work of more recent figures, especially Fr. Erich Przywara, Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and Josef Pieper. Their insights, grounded in personalism, produce a genuine and faithful development of a Thomistic understanding of personal happiness as the end of man.
In this paper I propose to analyse Evagrius Ponticus' treatment of emotions, especially happiness, in his Scholia to the Psalms. First, I will contextualise Evagrius' work, which has just been published, with its own characteristics, both in terms of literary genre and in terms of the type of Evagrian exegesis. Then, the place of emotions in the text will be discussed, with particular emphasis on happiness, on the basis of the analysis of all the occurrences of that concept in the Scholia. As a result, it is observed that Evagrius' hermeneutic of the Psalms, at least in the case of happiness, is fundamentally allegorical, which would make impossible the existence of happiness in man in its classical sense, since it could only be experienced as the reaction to the possession of a spiritual good, which is gnosis or knowledge of God. In this way, the Scholia to the Psalms support the spiritualistic interpretation of Evagrius’ doctrine.
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En este artículo se propone analizar el tratamiento que otorga Evagrio Póntico a las emociones, especialmente la alegría, en sus Escolios a los salmos. En primer lugar, se contextualizará la obra de Evagrio, que acaba de ser publicada, con sus características propias, tanto de género literario cuanto a lo concerniente al tipo de exégesis evagriana. Luego, se abordarán el lugar que ocupan en el texto las emociones, haciendo particular hincapié en una de ellas, la alegría, a partir del análisis de todas las ocurrencias del concepto en los Escolios. Como resultado, se observa que la hermenéutica evagriana de los salmos, al menos para el caso de la alegría, es fundamentalmente alegórica lo cual imposibilitaría o negaría la existencia de la alegría en el hombre según su sentido clásico, ya que sólo puede experimentarse como la reacción ante la posesión de un bien espiritual, que es la gnosis o conocimiento de Dios. De esta manera, los Escolios a los salmos apoyan la interpretación fundamentalmente espiritualista de la doctrina de Evagrio Póntico.
The relationship with God allows man to find the sense of life. Christianity is a humanism – it positions man in the very centre of the world according him the highest place – of the being created after God’s image. The revelation of God’s Love endows man with a new way of enriching himself and others. Thus the desire for happiness gains a new perspective of the divine longing for good.Happiness which Christ promises exceeds the limits of our imagination. It is inconceivable and incomprehensible to those living on earth. Heaven is beyond every word, beyond our conception for it bears the meaning which man cannot fully understand. It is the most supreme happiness, absolutely perfect and complete which no one has ever known.A Christian has to achieve in his life something more than the worldly aims. Whoever limits their life to the earth, focuses only on enjoying and using this life to the full; squeezing from it the last drop heedless of the needs of others.
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