Happiness, Ltd.

Aristotle was right that eudaemonia (usually and inadequately translated as “happiness”) is what all men seek, that they are usually wrong about where they try to find it, and that the unimpeded pursuit of virtue is the closest to it we can get. But to this we must append Solomon’s proviso “under the sun” to mark out the realms both of its truth and its limits. What the Greek thinker could not have known is that eudaemonia can only fully be achieved when something else (actually, Someone else) is the absolutely highest Good.

Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.

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more from the online archives

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33.1—January/February 2020

Surprised by Gentleness

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