Well-Being and Ontology

Part 7, Common Grace, Natural Reason, and the Science of Human Flourishing

Over the last few posts a question might have been raised in your mind. If well-being can be pursued “non-religiously,” Karl Rahner’s anonymous Christian, then isn’t the “mechanics” of well-being open to natural reason?

One way to think about this is the Protestant contrast between common grace and saving grace. Common grace is the grace that is extended universally to all people, no matter who they are. In light of this series, we could say that contact with our ontological ground, as described over these last few posts, is an experience of common grace. As our ontological ground and transcendent horizon, God is always available to every human person. And insofar as we make contact with our ground and make the “outward turn” toward our transcendent horizon (as I describe in The Shape of Joy) we are walking the sophiological path of the Tao and tracing the shape of the Logos.

This vision, however, tends to be very moralistic. For example, both John Henry Newman and C.S. Lewis describe our inner ontological encounter with God as the voice of “conscience” or the “moral law” within. Lewis even explicitly calls it the Tao. But I’m suggesting in this series that more than morals is involved in this ontological encounter. I am arguing that discussions about Sophia, the Tao, and the Logos need to expand beyond the moral to take in the whole of human flourishing more broadly. Our vision of virtue couldn’t be reduced to the juridicial but should embrace a fuller, larger, and richer vision of eudaimonia, the good life, in all its richness and depth. True, ethical action is a part of human flourishing, but it’s not the whole of it.

If this is true, more than the inner voice of conscience is universally available to humanity. A whole vision of flourishing is gifted, as common grace, to our inner being. More, we should expect to see some regular, even lawful, regularities to human flourishing, regularities amenable to empirical investigation. Because flourishing flows out of a particular ontological situation--the Tao, Sophia, and the Logos--we should expect to see flourishing manifest in particular material, political, economic, social, and personal arrangements that attune with our ontological ground. That is to say, flourishing isn’t the product of random happenstance but manifests a coherent underlying ontological logic.

More simply put, you can have a science of flourishing that is wholly empirical. Since access to our ontological ground is common grace, the regularities of human flourishing are universally available to human reason. We can observe the empirical impacts of those who move with or against the grain of the universe. Not just morally, but holistically. Our well-being has a logic.

This view of things was expressed in the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas. Again, most people read Aquinas’ description of the human pursuit of “the good” in very narrow juridical terms. By “good” we mean “morally good.” But if we broaden our definition of the good to include the eudaimonic, the good life holistically envisioned, then we have a much richer picture. With this eudaimonic vision of the good in hand, here’s Aquinas connecting ontology (”being”), universal natural reason, and the human pursuit of the good:

Now a certain order is to be found in those things that are apprehended universally. For that which, before aught else, falls under apprehension, is “being,” the notion of which is included in all things whatsoever a man apprehends...Now as “being” is the first thing that falls under the apprehension simply, so “good” is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that “good is that which all things seek after.” Hence this is the first precept of law, that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man’s good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.

Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law. Because in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances: inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law. Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue of this inclination, those things are said to belong to the natural law, “which nature has taught to all animals” [Pandect. Just. I, tit. i], such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring and so forth. Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.

We could cite other texts in Thomas, but this passage suffices to make the point. As Thomas argues, the human mind can “naturally apprehend” good and bad outcomes in human social arrangements. Insofar as humans seek, as all animals do, “the preservation of their own being,” we can empirically observe the “means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles.” Basically, a science of human flourishing is available to everyone who wants to take a look. We can make empirical observations across various domains of existence—Thomas mentions human sexuality, social relations, and education—to note where and how humans are thriving. In my world, this is the project we call “positive psychology.”

If all that seems complex, a good metaphor here would be gardening. The ontological logic of good gardening, the science of flourishing flowers and tomatoes, is universally available to human reason. Gardening is a common grace shared by all, Christian and non-Christian alike. An atheist can be a master gardener.

In a similar way, we can observe the ontological logic of human flourishing. Humans flourish, for example, when they are free, have access to education, and are materially secure enough to have time for leisure and creative pursuit. And for the purposes of this series, humans flourish when they come to embody virtues such as justice, temperance, humility, and generosity. Importantly, none of this is arbitrary or accidental but flows from an attunement and synchrony with the Real. You can garden with the grain of the universe or against it. And if you garden against the grain of the universe, say, by refusing to water your plants, you’ll reap an ontological consequence. In the same way, we can arrange societies and live our personal lives with or against the ontological grain of the universe. A society might oppress or promote freedom or education, and each choice affects societal flourishing. On a personal level, I might go through life with no self-control or temperately, and reap the consequences accordingly.

To be sure, virtue is no guarantee of bliss. Read the book of Job. But that life has a general logic of flourishing to it is what all the great virtue and wisdom traditions have long observed. Like gardening, there is a science and art to human flourishing. And this logic is available to human reason anywhere and always as a gift of God’s common grace.